I think it's much, much harder to "quick-start" understanding of the characters as men, as opposed to as Green Lanterns. Cosmic ring-slinging would be too distracting to developing than for new folks...
Not sure how I feel about Old Man Jordan.
I've got a belts and rollers kit sitting on my kitchen table right now for the same reason. Put in a new dishwasher last week under the same logic. Disposal is next.
It did. But if it hadn't been bundled with D20 it would have had as much impact as, say, the Fudge license. I would also argue that the d20STL helped a bit there as well.
Just for my clarity, perhaps - I am reading this (creation of the OGL) as shorthand for creating the OGL and releasing what became the 3.0 SRD. Open licenses released prior to the OGL didn't have much impact...