On 26/01/12 21:47, Chris Sakkas wrote: > Thanks for your reply, Rob. I've been digesting it (and, I'll be honest, > distracted by other things).
Yes I'm having a surprisingly busy January as well. :-) > 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?) That's correct. I found that conversation (and the articles on Wizards of the Coast's site in which Ryan explained his motivation for the OGL strategy) very useful in understanding what the benefits of a free/open strategy can be for a cultural business. They map surprisingly directly onto the arguments used in favor of free software - customer confidence, network effects, etc. I feel its an excellent case study and one that should be wider known than it is. > 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? That all sounds good. An article would be a very good idea. > 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. Yes that sounds right. And don't even think about proposing it to debian-legal, they'll freak out at the "super trademark" aspects of the license. ;-) > 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. Oh I'm not familiar with that, it's new to me as well. :-) > 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? Sorry, which wiki? The SFC one? I would love to be able to say that the OGL is a free license. *Possibly* if the FDL is free as long as invariant sections and cover texts aren't used then the OGL is free as long as there's no product identity? But then there's the compatibility claim ban. This would have to be an in-depth discussion... > 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. Yes that's a very good point. The OGL, for all its flaws, is a widely used and trusted license. > 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. Or BY-SA 4.0 could be nominated as OGL 2.0, or a trivial OGL 2.0 could be created that has a one-way cross-licensing clause covering BY-SA (like FDL 1.3). I was hoping to be able to share some news about a wargames publisher we've helped decide to use NC-SA, but they haven't quite gone public on that yet. I'll let you know as soon as I can... - Rob. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss
