In the second half of the inaugural update, owner Eric Gibson talks about an upcoming Open D6 initiative. Here are the relevant parts of the transcript, spoilerized to save space:Eric Gibson wrote:Since the Septimus refunds are so very nearly complete, we can start to move on to the next step, which is Open D6. As many of you have heard, D6 system is becoming an open gaming system, which means it will be freely-available for users and publishers to download and publish their system under. What makes it different is this is actually being done outside of West End Games. Open D6 is being spun off into its own entity. It will have its own website, its own company, its own owners, its own agenda. West End Games will maintain with regard to the D6 system is West End Games will be the first Open D6 licensee.
So what is Open D6? Well Open D6 is three things. It’s first of all a game system. The D6 system is being modified so that it's as customizable as possible. Which means fans will have an opportunity to go to the Open D6 website, design and download their own customized version of the D6 system. No more searching through rules that you don’t want because the rulebook you have will be the rulebook you design.
Second, it’s a website. This website is where you go to find the SRD, to design your own system, to upload your changes to the D6 system. It will also be a community center, a place where players can find other D6 players. You can chat, you can play online chat games, forums, information. Ideally, it’s going to be a one-stop portal for everything D6.
Lastly, Open D6 is the company. What’s unusual about this is it’s not going to be some corporate entity owned by some faceless, uh, game designer. Actually, Open D6 is going to be owned by you. Once the company has been established, you, fans, and other publishers alike, will be given the opportunity to invest in, and buy … shares of Open D6. By doing so we’ll be adding much-needed revenue to Open D6 to help the system as well as owning voting rights in the company itself. This is actual stock ownership of the company, and as such, you’ll have every right to help pick a board of directors, as well as vote on major issues that the board themselves don’t do. Again, the idea is I want a company that’s owned by the community. It’s not about me, it’s not about a select group of three or four other publishers. It’s all about you, and what you want. And that’s what I want Open D6 to be. You can find more information on Open D6 on the West End Games forums, as well as the West End Games Fan Forums down the pipe.
1. West End Games will not own the Open D6 license. A spin-off company will. This presumably means the open license won't be canceled at the whim of the company.
2. The Open SRD website will allow users to upload their own houseruled versions of the D6 system. So not only will there be an open license; there will also be a one-stop shopping center for variant systems.
It'll be interesting to see how this little experiment turns out, since the conventional wisdom about the OGL was that only a company as big as WotC could afford to open its system.
