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Here is a question that I have been trying to come up with a reasonable hypothesis, but have been unable to. Certain core classes and races have been left out of the PHB and the MM, presumably so that they can be published in subsequent PHB/MMs. This make sense from a marketing perspective if you want to increase sales of your future products, however you do run into one major issue. If you allow a third party to produce products where they can replicate these "missing" items, it will have a definite impact on sales to some degree. The GSL would have to limit this. How would this be possible, if at all?
I don't know (I'm not even sure if the GSL is written up in full yet.)
But they can always:
a) steal the good ideas from other companies "new" classes and races.
b) publish their own version and hope/assume the official version will crush the "unofficial" version. (See A)
c) do a lot of saber rattling if the 3rd party unofficial classes and races hit close to what the official versions were going to look like
d) some other random option
While the GLS can limit this, it doesn't have to. If WotC wants to be malicious, and I am not assuming they are (I'm just presenting a worst case scenario), they can encourage 3rd party companies to publish stuff like this, and then, once every major company that is going to do that does it, blow them out of the water with products that are completely reimagined, munchkinable, and has much better artwork.
All of the sudden those companies that were once known for quality are now known for being "unimaginative" and "lacking" in both production quality and their understanding of the new mechanics. But like I said, this is a worst case scenario and I am not assuming Wizards is being malicious, at least in this case.
But do the research and find out how many books on elves came out after Races of the Wild.
>> How would this be possible, if at all?
"No GSL product may contain classes, races, or monsters not found in the SRD". That would be one way.
Or "GSL products may contain new classes, races and monsters but if, in the future, WotC releases a class, race or monster with the same name, you must use that new official version and stop selling any products featuring your custom content"
Or, since they've hinted that the GSL license can change over time like the d20, they simply change the GSL and invalidate your published product.
All possibilities and all pointless speculation until the GSL is released.
[pointless speculation]
The GSL could also contain a list of "approved" monsters, feats and classes, essentially limited to the first set of Core books (much like the current SRD).
[/pointless speculation]