<<> "9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish
> updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version
> of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content
> originally distributed under any version of this License."
An OGL 2 could include a clause excluding OGL 1. Doing so would negate
OGL 1's legality to cover OGC released under OGL 2.
>>
Does anyone else share this particular reading of paragraph 9, that material explicitly declared under OGL 2.0 as "Open Game Content" in fact would not necessarily be reprinted under "any version" of the OGL?
Doug, you are de facto reading in the term "previous" into the phrase "orginally distributed under any [PREVIOUS] version of this license", since you effectively contend that OGC released under subsequent versions of the license can be released with the restriction that they cannot be reprinted using an earlier version of the license, and so that paragraph 9.0 de facto can only be guaranteed to apply to v. 1.0a and any previous incarnation of the license.
Effectively what Doug is suggesting, if I understand it, is that OGL 2.0 could include a clause that says something to the effect of:
"Open Game Content originally released under version 2.0 of this license may not, under any circumstances be copied, modified, or redistributed as Open Game Content under any previous version of this license. Open Game Content originally released under version 2.0 of this license may be copied, modified, or redistributed as Open Game Content under any subsequent version of this license.
Open Game Content originally released under any previous version of this license must be marked as such, noting the version of the license that such content was published under, and may continue to be copied, modified, or redistributed under any previous or subsequent version of this license."
If anyone agrees with Doug on this, does anyone care to speculate on the problems that might arise in trying to include older OGC in an OGL 2.0 product? I think that it would turn people's section 15 and OGC declarations into a nightmare. It would be far clearer to have two distinct categories of open content so that people didn't inadvertently conflate them. Even with some new "shared content" category to distinguish OGL 1.0 content from OGL 2.0 content, however, I think things would get messy.
It's an interesting reading of the document, Doug. I don't know whether or not I agree. I would have to think about it longer to formulate an opinion. Your proposal is de facto very similar to defining a new type of content in many respects.
<<
Such a revision _might_ make it difficult to udpate someone else's
original OGC>>
I'd say it would be very ugly. Perhaps others will comment with ideas.
<<but given the low rate of non-SRD re-use, this wouldn't be
too great of a problem.
>>
Actually I see a very high rate of non-SRD re-use in most products I own. 80% of the OGL products that I own make use of some 3rd party OGC. Particularly among PDF publishers there's a lot of content sharing.
Lee
