> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf > Of Marty Minick > Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2003 2:11 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [Ogf-l] Possible Formation of Project > > > > I think I my have a solution for this. Include all the > OGC in a seperate, human readable format, entitled (or > at least subtitled) "OGC included in this software"
... > Am I totally off base here, or did I hit the nail on > the head? You missed, but not for lack of trying. What you suggest makes perfect sense to me. What others have suggested -- just declare the whole binary as OGC and thus it's clearly indicated -- also makes perfect sense to me. But it's not my belief that counts. I'm not the one who will decide whether to take action against you. It's what's believed by the owner of the OGC from which you derive, and what the owner is willing to take legal action to enforce. In all likelihood, that means it's what Wizards believes. If you act in a way that makes perfect sense to you but is perceived as wrong by Wizards, then you have sailed beyond the safe harbor. Do so at your own risk. Now when Ryan was the spokesperson for Wizards on these matters, it was his position that the "clearly indicated" requirement meant something like this: "In EVERY PLACE where it occurs, OGC must be readily recognizable as such by a reasonable person (as the law defines that term). It is NOT ACCEPTABLE to include the OGC in an appendix of any sort and require the reader/user to reference the appendix to determine what is or is not OGC. If you do include such an appendix, it is still required that the OGC be recognizable at every point where it appears. For electronic distributions, it is acceptable to require common, ubiquitous tools -- ASCII file readers, DOC/RTF file readers, PDF file readers, Web browsers, XML readers -- because these are readily available and within the skill range of users of electronic distributions. It is NOT acceptable to require debuggers, disassemblers, programmatic reflection, or other means of extracting the OGC from a binary work, because these are specialized tools requiring specialized skills that are beyond the range of the reasonable person. Despite this restriction, it IS acceptable to distribute OGC in human languages other than English. Yes, this puts the OGC outside the reach of English-only readers. Yes, that may seem inconsistent. Too bad. Non-English language skills are reasonable person skills, but programming skills are not." That's by no means a precise quote. It's my summation of what I believe Ryan stated. Please review the archives and form your own opinion. But I think it's pretty close. Since Ryan left Wizards, I am unaware of anyone in authority at Wizards revising this position. Therefore, prudence argues that you should assume that this position still stands. Personally, I don't like it. I think an index of OGC used should count as clear indication. I think that programmatic indicators such as Java/.NET reflection (which allows other code to read your code, discover what's in it, and call your code -- i.e., reuse the OGC you created or derived from) should be clear indication. And I think that if you put these together, they would allow for some nifty OGC components that would allow many software developers to build cool tools and cool adventures on top of a common base of components. But what I think doesn't mean a thing in this. It's what Wizard thinks, and what you're willing to risk. [Cue the sound of skeletal hoofbeats rising once again...] Martin L. Shoemaker [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.TabletUML.com -- The UML tool you don't have to learn! _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
