<<I'd be interested in knowing how you came to that interpretation.
>>
" 'Open Game Content' ... means any _work_ covered by this License...
but specifically excludes Product Identity."
OGC means any _work_ covered by the license except for the parts declared as PI. That's my reading of the license. The above quote is an extract from the OGL.
I and others here differ on our definitions of "a work", but "a work" is generally a term of art, defined through use, and tends to mean "a commercial unit". In publishing it might be a poem, a book, etc. I can't imagine that it would be construed to mean "an odd collection of designated paragraphs inside of a book."
As such, since the license takes effect at the level of the unit of commercial sale. Now, since works can contain other works (a collected work, like a law review, is a work itself, but contains a collection of other works -- individual articles, which would, if they weren't bound to other works, be considered commercial units in and of themselves).
<<What we need here is a history lesson of the OGL. I'd give that history
lesson, but I don't have the time to look through the archives to find
the important milestones of the development of the OGL.
>>
Agreed, I'll go look through the archives. But again, I don't think that would resolve matters. I seem to remember that I had a much more narrow definition of "work" to base my premise upon than did others.
Again, I didn't entirely rule out a 3rd type of content, I'm just not sure it should exist most of the time per the intent of the license.
<<Alot of people (whether they are "lazy" or don't want to go to the
trouble of identifying all their sections of OGC) tend to say, "all text
in this work is released as Open Game Content. We reserve the following
sections as Product Identity: ..." (or some such).
>>
That's a bad declaration as far as I'm concerned. You should define things exclusively. You should say, "All text in this work _except_ the stuff defined as PI is OGC. The following is PI: blah, blah." Even that definition is, to some degree, insufficient the way most people handle it, if the default assumption is that the work is licensed and that the license wants to OGC everything in sight. Why? People rarely remember to talk about their formatting. They should declare their formatting as OGC or PI.
If you release the "text"
<<Only content in the selected sections (gray shaded boxes and specific
chapters) are released as Open Game Content. The rest of the product
remains as copyrighted material. I only actually declared terms as
Product Identity which actually appeared within the particular sections
of OGC that (at the time), I didn't want to release. >>
Again, I think a more precise wording would declare your OGC to be "X, Y, and Z, excluding items declared as PI". Otherwise you have overlapping definitions for PI and OGC. Ideally those should be 100% separated.
<<Each of the terms
were identifying names for characters and the flavor names of feats some
of them had. I don't have to declare the rest of the product as Product
Identity because the rest of the product doesn't appear within sections
of OGC.
>>
Again, look at the following line:
" 'Open Game Content' means the game mechanic and includes the methods, procedures, processes and routines to the extent such content does not embody the Product Identity ... and any additional content clearly identified as Open Game Content by the Contributor... "
This makes it clear that except where rules embody product identity that they are presumed to be OGC even if not clearly identified as such. Otherwise, I think, the license would say "X is OGC _and_ anything else you clearly identify as OGC". That suggests that the license has a default mode intent on slurping up rules if they aren't PI'd as concepts, etc.
However, at the same time note that it also says that OGC means any _work_ covered by the license. Again, it seems like the default mode is to slurp up the work. However, "work" is not defined within the scope of the license, and in case law it is purely a term of art without a fixed definition.
Contractual terms can become defined through usage as opposed to original contractual intent or their standard meanings. However, I've always found it to be an extremely odd interpretation of a "work" to be a collection of paragraphs scattered in a disconnected fashion about a book.
In fact, the license doesn't seem to use the term "work" that way at all. It seems to use "work" as the commercial unit and notes that not all of the covered work need necessarily be OGC.
"If you distribute Open Game Content You must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are Open Game Content."
A lot of people are writing PI and OGC declarations which are not mutually exclusive. And some are leaving out items and declaring them neither as OGC nor as PI. That seems, to me, to be non-compliance with the license.
Take, for example, a work which has all the rules in chapter 2. The work is licensed under the OGL. Chapter _3_ is declared as OGL. Chapter 2 is not mentioned. If no PI declaration is made that would lead you to assume that the rules in Chapter 2 embody PI, then the default status of the license says the rules are to be considered OGC. You have failed to clearly declare that the rules in Chapter 2 are OGC. I think you should have, ideally.
Again, this is my reading. YMMV. Check the archives. I'm certain this has been hashed over ad nauseum there.
Lee
