<<And one of those amicus briefs would be the clarifying license. The more
people signed onto using the clarifying license, the more weight it carries
in a court. So whether I use the license or not, it's existence can
jeopardize my holdings in a court.
>>
I'll agree that an amicus brief with lots of political support is powerful, however, I've seen any number of civil rights cases where a strong, intelligent, widely support amicus brief was just punted outright.
So, I agree with your statement. I just don't know how much weight a clarifying license used by smaller publishers would really have.
<<Clarification: I'm neither for nor against such a license. I'm just saying
why I feel it will be hard to get the big publishers on board.>>
Oh, I agree it will be hard. For people who have the financial wherewithal to go to court, a lack of clarification gives them vast liberty to do whatever they want. If they blunder slightly, they don't need to fix the problem or call attention to it, because it's within a gray area of the license's shadow.
You have to tread a bit more carefully when you agree to something more specific.
<< This
meta-license gives them nothing they cannot achieve by picking up a phone
or sending an email.>>
I fully agree. I think a lot of people who collectively have an "old boys" network going for them really need the OGL at all only as a formality at some level. And certainly gray areas likely get taken care of by phone calls and private emails.
<< And OTOH it will involve an interpretation of the OGL
that some percentage of them will feel disadvantages them severely and some
other percentage feels disadvantages them somewhat. As a thought exercise,
it is an interesting idea. I just don't see it becoming a a reality with
major publisher buy in.
>>
I concur in part. I believe that initially it's unlikely to get "buy in". However, I believe WotC might be persuaded to do an OGL 2.0 and put a spin favorable to them on it if such a meta-license gained sufficient support from enough smaller publishers. An OGL 2.0 might have some "carrot" attached to it to make people want to use it.
In spite of having supported such an initiative, I really think a meta-license is a sort of weak secondary approach to a campaign to actually revise and clarify the OGL itself.
Lee
_______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
