> As for the generosity of free PI-reuse, and wantingattribution
That isnt why I PI'd stuff in RR. I PI'd it because we wanted to protect important setting content. If you want to see how I handle attribution, when that is importnat to me, see how we did Tome of Horrors where we wanted to credit each individual original author.
So dont set up and knock down the straw man of "attribution" when that wasnt the reason behind why we did RR's license.
i'd actually completely lost track that an RR widget was the original source of this discussion, and thought we were only talking in the abstract, about the advantages and disadvantages and results of PI-with-license for widget names.
In any case, I didn't mean to construct a strawman. Maybe i simply misunderstand your motives for PIing things and then licensing them, or maybe it's justa semantic issue and i'm using the wrong words, so let me state what i *thought* was the situation:
--Certain names/terms/etc. are valuable to you, as they are tied to significant unique creative expression, specifically the Scarred Lands setting
--You don't want to unintentionally give those away, due to error or a legal re-reading of the WotC OGL and the nature of open/closed content, or any other such thing, so you mark those items as PI, to make it crystal-clear that others can't reuse them
--You create a bunch of spells with PI elements in their names. As per the 2nd point, you don't want to just give them away, or open up the PI to arbitrary reuse.
--However, you want people to be able use those names with those spells, so you put in an explicit license that boils down to "you can use the name of the spell, even though it's not OGC, but only to identify that specific spell". [i hope i got that right, since i don't have the book in question to double-check.]
Is that correct? If so, isn't one of the motives for allowing people to reuse the your spell names so that the name sticks with the spell? And isn't the point of that basically free advertising for your setting? Which doesn't work unless they provide some sort of association to your works--i.e., roundabout attribution. If that's not the case, i guess i don't understand why you'd give away the PI-containing names at all (well, and not just make them OGC--my conclusion is predicated on you valuing your IP elements which you designate as PI, as you've said repeatedly).
> Because when you're forced to change the name,you're undermining one of the virtues of open-content development: credit where credit is due.
That is only one of the "virtues" and nothing stops you from crediting the source. That is a lame argument. Attribution is as much the issue for the re-user as for the original author.
For example, lets say there was "Clark's Cool Spell" and I PI'd the name and the content was OGC.
You could rename it to Karl's Cool Spell and use the same OGC content for it.
Here is where your argument falls apart. According to you, now "attribution" is ruined.
No it isnt.
You could easily put in your legal section:
[Name of Book that has Clark's Cool Spell], section 15 info.
Name of Your product, section 15 info.
Note: Karl's Cool Spell is based on Open Game Content found in [Name of book that has the spell], originally written by Clark Peterson.
Hmmm...good technique. I guess i was letting the "you can't attribute things properly, because of trademark/PI restrictions" argument dissuade me from even looking for a way around the limitations of attribution, so i hadn't really thought very hard about it. Thouh i'm not sure that what you're suggesting would always work--see below.
So you can still attribute sources if YOU THE REUSER want to do so.
For example, I just did a product where my author used 5 or 6 rather obscure internet OGC sources. They had bad section 15 designations. So, though I was forced to use their section 15 by the license, I also added a section called: "OGC in this Book" where I said "This book uses Open Game Content from some unique sources that deserve further designation." Then I went on to list them.
Just because the license requires you to mimic the section 15 doesnt mean you cant further elaborate.
Don't you either need special permission, or violate the WotC OGL, given that most company names are trademarks? Or do you just use the name of the work, and rely on readers to locate the product, should they be interested? Or, for that matter, isn't reuse of PI, save to reproduce a Sec.15 entry, forbidden, and don't most people list their book titles as PI? That's been my experience, at least.
-- woodelf <*> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://webpages.charter.net/woodelph/
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