<<> I can hardly claim myself that "d20" is neither a concept nor an
> _expression_ using language. Can you?
Yes. It is neither.
>>
By what stretch of logic is a word neither a concept nor a bit of language? Are we going to get into some post-modern discussion regarding the metaphorical nature of words?
Even bodies of work entirely in the public domain, like the Bible, contain concepts and are expressed with specific language.
<<I believe you must demonstrate "an enhancement over the prior art".>
That is, you have to demonstrate that whatever you're making a PI claim
for is original in some sense to you, and not something that could be
alternately sourced from the public domain.
>
Isn't the "enhancement over the prior art" a requirement for _OGC_ and not listed as a requirement for _PI_? Since PI specifically excludes OGC, and since there is no enhancement over the prior art listed, except once, in the entire license, isn't it safe to assume that PI is not required by the license to be an enhancement over the prior art?
While PI may, for many purposes, de facto be a subset of OGC (i.e., it is kinda pointless to talk about PI outside of the OGL and outside the framework of OGC), de jure the two are in some incompatible. The license doesn't say, "oh, by the way, PI shares all the traits as OGC except the following..." The license merely gives a laundry list of acceptable PI usages.
In fact, there are practically no practical limitations on PI at all listed in the OGL, given that PI is not required to be an enhancement over the prior art and it can be composed of concepts, language, art, and formatting (which, taken together, constitute such a broad description that almost any piece of writing in the world must, by definition, be eligible for PI).
I have assumed for some time that the reason some companies have managed to PI their non-derivative rules was because they effectively summoned the power of "formatting", "language", and "concepts", wrote something original, and then locked it all down. I think about 5 vendors have done this to date, and 3 were medium to large RPG vendors.
Lee
