Saw it in the link below. Thoughts?

I had some OGL projects in mind and I might use BFRPG and CC BY SA.

I can do it commercially and I don't mind if other people build on top of my stuff, it is only fair IMO.

https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/12wr7fc/basic_fantasy_rpg_4th_edition_was_released_under/

I just found out that the 4th edition of BFRPG was released recently under the (relatively restrictive) Creative Commons - Attribution - Share Alike license. Not sure if it was already announced here, it surely did go under my radar, apologies if this is a duplicate post.

The free PDF is here:

https://www.basicfantasy.org/downloads.html#sn_rules

EDIT:

My "relatively restrictive" remark is causing some confusion and controversy.

"Relatively restrictive" is a factual statement, not a criticism of any kind.

I am not saying that it is wrong or unfair to publish things under CC BY-SA. They are well within their rights and I commend and thank them for their work.

What do I mean by "relatively restrictive"? The CC BY-SA license contains the "share-alike" clause, which makes it:

A less restrictive license than the OGL that the previous version of BFRPG was released under, but

A more restrictive license than the CC BY license that the 5e SRD was re-released under.

A more restrictive license than the one that Swords and Wizardry will be re-released under in the current kickstarter.

The problem now is that tech advancements have made it easy for scammers to redistribute your work and steal your rightful revenues. Even if your work is protected by copyright, scammers are now known to sell stolen work on reputable platforms like Amazon. Copyright law allows you to yank them down and prevent them from stealing your rightful revenues. With a free license, you don't have the legal grounds to do that. Fans aren't going to knowingly buy from scammers if they want to support the author, but the sheer amount of misinformation makes it easier for scammers to trick customers.

It's probably not a big risk if your work isn't very popular. At least right now. I imagine AI bots designed to scrape content and steal revenues will do so automatically to all content they encounter.

By using a free license, you're painting on a target on your back asking for scammers to steal your revenue. We're steadily going back to the Wild West days before copyright law existed and learning precisely why it was legalized in the first place.

I can only imagine the kind of legal problems that proponents of open source content will encounter in the future when they try to fight scammers. Implementing a clause stating "I do not give malicious agents the right to steal my revenues" is gonna be hard to retroactively add to free licenses.

This is why, if I want to make sure my work doesn't get lost and forgotten, then I release it into the public domain. If I or others later make modifications or additions, then those will still be protected by copyright.

Releasing it to public domain is good too.

I'm not worried about people stealing my stuff... most of it is OGL already.

People who want to support me will support me, and I've already found some of my stuff in an old pirate site that got shut down.

My latest PDF costs 0.99 (until Friday)... If someone want to read but cannot pay 0.99, by all means, just find a pirate version.

OSE is OGL (and had a free version), Knave is CC, so is Dungeon World, they are doing fine.

But yeah, bots may change the whole thing... although I'm afraid that IP is the least of our concerns with bots and AI...

EDIT: I was using LL and OGL for my project, but due to recent WotC shenanigans I'm thinking that OGL might be a risky bet.