Thanks for your reply, Rob. I've been digesting it (and, I'll be honest, distracted by other things).
I did find the conversation with Ryan Dancey very informative, thanks for that. Am I right in thinking that when I ran out of 'Next pages' on that list of emails, the conversation was over? (That is to say, there aren't any related emails outside of that archive?) In terms of lobbying, I'm not sure what would be most effective. We should chime in regularly at the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition OGL?<http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/315854-dungeons-dragons-5th-edition-open-gaming-license.html>thread to defend and advertise free culture. I was thinking of writing an article and trying to get it published on ENWorld or RPG.net. I'm not sure what else to do apart from that. Maybe get in touch with publishers who've benefited from the OGL and have them make statements? In terms of having the OGL recognised as a free culture licence, I asked the FSF whether it would qualify as a free documentation licence (in retrospect, it certainly wouldn't qualify because it's not interoperable with the FDL, but it could be listed under 'Other' with CC BY and CC BY-SA). A volunteer who doesn't represent the organisation's opinions (but who helps answer their many questions) kindly answered that they probably won't be reviewing the licence, at least not any time soon. The volunteer also gave his private opinion that the OGL wouldn't qualify as a free licence "because of the restriction on "indicating compatibility" with other works. This would probably be considered a non-permissive, GPL-incompatible further restriction under section 7 of GPLv3 and perhaps also as a non-free restriction as well." I think that's a valuable insight and not one I'd considered before. Given that the FSF avenue is cut off to us, what would be the right process for trying to get the OGL listed as a free culture licence on the wiki (provided it is a free culture licence, of course)? Would consensus in this community qualify? Finally, in terms of changing the OGL to be freer or CC BY-SA to be usable for D&D 5E, I have a few thoughts. I think you're right that BY-SA's integrity would be undermined if it gave the option to license piecemeal. I also suspect that if D&D 5E is released under a free culture licence, it will be the OGL. To do otherwise would be to split the RPG commons, which I think would be unwise. However, all Open Game Content is usable under any version of the OGL. Perhaps we could come up with a recommended OGL 2.0, which would implement the changes you recommended to avoid Product Identity abuse? That might encourage them to make some changes to the OGL if they do decide to use it. Thanks for your thoughts, Chris *Chris Sakkas **Admin of the FOSsil Bank wiki <http://fossilbank.wikidot.com/> and the Living Libre blog and microblog <https://twitter.com/#%21/living_libre>.* On 10 January 2012 07:34, Rob Myers <[email protected]> wrote: > On 09/01/12 19:55, Chris Sakkas wrote: > > > > D&D 3E was what I'd call free content, although I understand that its > > It's open content rather than free culture IMO. ;-) > > > Open Game License is not included as a free culture licence. I assume > > that's because it allows Product Identity to be declared, blocking off > > part of the content of the work from reuse. > > Yes that's right. It's like the FDL in that it allows invariant > material. If you don't include product identity it's basically copyleft > IIRC. So, like the FDL in Debian Legal's opinion, it's free if you don't > use that provision. > > Ryan Dancey, who was the person responsible for the OGL, talked about > the licence on the old cc-bizcom list in 2004: > > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-bizcom/2004-September/000052.html > > I highly recommend this conversation as it contains in-depth discussion > of the thinking that went into the OGL. (warning: contains me.) > > > Sorry if the history lesson is unnecessary for you. The meat of my post > is: > > > > * The design process for 5E is going to be more open to the public > > than that of 3E or 4E. Can we in the free culture community apply > > pressure to have 5E released under a free culture licence? > > Yes. What do we do? > > > * Has the free culture community resolved to not describe the OGL as a > > free culture licence, or simply not examined it yet? > > I don't believe it's been examined. > > It's worth asking the FSF ([email protected]), particularly if there's a > chance the license can be improved. > > And CC are revising their licenses at the moment. There's a lot of input > from computer gamers going into the discussion, and input from the D&D > community into CC and vice versa would be good as well. > > > * If the former, what changes to the OGL would Wizards of the Coast > > have to make if it wanted to release 5E under a new licence, let's > > call it the Free Game License, that was free culture? > > They could change it so PI must be copyrighted or trademarked characters > etc. rather than just random words that get a "super-copyright". And for > their own materials at least they could rely on trademark law. > > > * Would it be viable for Wizards of the Coast to use an existing free > > culture licence, presumably CC BY-SA, for 5E to avoid splitting the > > commons? > > I'd certainly rather D&D was BY-SA. BY-SA isn't a trademark licence, so > D&D's trademarks wouldn't be affected by BY-SA-ing the text of the > rules. And you can't copyright game rules anyway (which was kind of a > dirty secret about the OGL...). > > But I wouldn't want BY-SA modified to allow copyrighted material such as > character likenesses to be excludable. So unless there was some way of > recognizing their use in BY-SA as Fair Use (and doing so > *internationally*) I don't think there could be a BY-SA Star Wars RPG > for example. > > > This is an exciting time for gaming. Wizards took a brave step in 2000 > > in releasing D&D 3E under what I'd consider a free licence. I think > > tabletop RPGs are the only industry in which the market leader was a > > free cultural work - it is yet to happen in operating systems, books or > > music! I'd like to see 5E continue that tradition. > > Absolutely! 3e was a real win for Free Culture even if it didn't go all > the way. The economic case Ryan Dancey made for adopting an alternative > license was compelling, and the cultural results were clearly a > renaissance of the game. > > > Please let me know your thoughts, > > I'm very glad people are considering this! CC and Hasbro should be > talking, and fans should be making the case to both for a truly Free > Culture license that strongly supports pen&paper roleplaying games. > > Who do we shout at? :-) > > - Rob. > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss > FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss >
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