<<Can you point to any>
statement from WotC in an FAQ or in a list debate where they state
that they interpret the OGL to not include the possibility of closed
content?
>
Can you point me to a single line of the license itself which contradicts the statement from the license itself which says that OGC means the work covered by the OGL except the parts that are PI? That's what's binding on this discussion -- that definition.
Here's an example of my point, to make sure you understand what I'm claiming (it may just be semantics). So I'm going to publish a book with two essays. One of my essays, and one of John Doe's essays. John is feeling like a curmudgeon. He wants to not have his work covered by the license at all. I want to have my work covered by the license. We have published a compiled work. I was going to cover my chapter with the OGL. John has contributed a single piece of art to my chapter. He doesn't want that covered. The compilation of his art and my text make another compiled work.
Compiled work (essay collection)
Subwork: John's Essay
Subwork: Section with Lee's text and John's Art
Subwork: Lee's text
Subwork: John's art
I define Lee's text to be the work covered by the license. I say, "This collection of essays constitutes a compilation. While the compilation as a whole is not covered by the OGL, the text of section 2 constitutes a work which is covered by the OGL. The art in section 2 constitutes a separate work which is not covered by the OGL."
I've just defined a work. While the art in my portion of the compilation is not covered, and while the rest of the compilation is not a covered work, my text is a covered work. In that covered work, there will be OGC, and optionally PI, but no uncovered content.
OGC is defined as the work covered by the license except that parts declared as PI. That's the definition of OGC. If I have no PI, then the work covered by the license, my text in section 2, must be 100% OGC. Then I have to mark 100% of it as OGC.
If it doesn't work that way, then the definition of OGC has no meaning: "'Open Game Content' means ... any work covered by this License..., but specifically excludes Product Identity."
That's the definition of what OGC is. You then have to mark that OGC. There's a redundancy in the definition of OGC. OGC is everything you mark as OGC and it is the entire covered work minus the PI. That's redundant. If it's everything you mark as OGC and if it's the entire work that's covered minus the PI, one must be a subset of the other, since one is broader than the other if you handle the license appropriately.
This means that books could contain content that is neither PI nor OGC. But that content is not covered by the license at all. It exists outside the covered work.
So, Dragon magazine can have an ad with the OGL in the ad. That ad is the covered work. The magazine is not a work covered by the license that happens to be 99% neither OGC nor PI. The magazine is not a covered work as a whole. Only one page of it is covered.
So there may be tons of stuff not covered by the license at all within a compiled work (and it's probably pretty easy to claim that a work contains multiple other separate sub-works). However, within the actual work defined as the "work covered by the license", that work will be OGC minus the part that's PI. In that covered work, there shouldn't be anything else.
That seems to be a fairly internally consistent reading of the license, unless I've missed something that you care to point out. I'll be happy to be enlightened if I'm making a specific logical error.
I think this may be semantics, in that most people do not present things in this level of detail, but it is effectively what they are attempting to do, and that's clear enough.
The only distinctions about this viewpoint that are potentially important are that some prohibitions, advantages, and restrictions about what you can and can't do inside of a covered work would not apply to the parts magazine, compiled book, etc. that aren't covered by the license. In other words, a book can contain a covered work, without being a covered work itself, and for the covered work, the % OGC + % PI = 100%.
Lee
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