Hypothetically, could you not do the following?
On page X, print the "short" OGL for the non-Eternal-Rome publications. On
page X+1, print the "long" OGL from Eternal Rome.
Then at the bottom of each page in the magazine itself, or at the start of
each article, or somesuch, say, "this article is published under the OGL
contained on page X" (or page X+1, as the case may be).
It would, hypothetically, be similar to a "compilation work" where you had
two OGL works, perhaps sourcing different items, published in the same
physical book back to back (i.e., pages 1 to X are Work 1 and pages X+1 to Y
are Work 2)... the difference would only be that you don't have them "Back
to Back" but you've mixed the pages up, as it were.
Of course, IANAL, TINLA.
--The Sigil
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Spike Y Jones)
Reply-To: ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org
To: ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org
Subject: [Ogf-l] Long Section 15 (and the e-mail's long too)
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 13:50:01 -0400
Hey, everybody, I'm looking for opinions on a practical problem
involving a long Section 15.
A couple weeks ago, Highmoon Media Productions released the first
issue of its PDF magazine Targum, a licensed magazine supporting
Green Ronin's Testament setting. No problems with that one.
With issue #2, though, Highmoon was given permission to expand
coverage to include two other Green Ronin Mythic Vistas settings:
Trojan War and Eternal Rome.
The problem is that the Section 15 entry for Eternal Rome is
horrendously long: 71 upstream references, and just shy of 1,000
words. (And I don't want to get into a debate about the way the OGL
is setup up to cause just this sort of Section 15 monster; I'm having
that discussion elsewhere without much satisfaction.)
Nothing can be done about the length of the Eternal Rome Section 15:
If someone wants to borrow OGC from that book, or from a magazine
that borrowed OGC from that book, then that's what they're stuck
with. Sorry folks.
But what if someone reading issue #2 of Targum, with its mix of
Testament-, Trojan War-, and Eternal Rome-derived articles, wants to
borrow some Open Content from a Testament-based article? Is there a
way to keep him by being frightened away by the requirement to use
the whole Eternal Rome Section 15 notice, since there were also
Eternal Rome-based articles in the issue?
Taking the currently-projected contents of Targum #2 as an example,
there's going to have the second part of an article on the 12 Tribes
of Israel (which uses Testament OGC), an article on writing materials
used in the ancient world (which really doesn't use much of any OGC,
but let's call it Testament anyway, just for the sake of argument),
and one on Roman villas (which might use some Eternal Rome OGC).
If Highmoon does the usual thing, and just prints one license
covering the whole magazine, anyone wanting to reuse OGC from either
of the Testament articles will have to use the overly-long Eternal
Rome Section 15.
One option would be to print a separate license and Section 15 for
each article. That would cover the situation accurately and
license-legally. With a paper magazine it would be impractical,
because of the large number of pages of repetitive license pages that
would be required: 1 page each for the two Testament-derived
articles, and 2 pages (or more) for the Rome-derived article (and
possibly more pages if there are more articles in the issue, which is
the current plan).
That would work, but would still be annoying to buyers who'd accuse
the publisher of padding the page count, and it would be enraging to
people who open the PDF and hit "print" without previewing the pages
to see which ones needn't be printed.
But stealing an idea (but not the application of it) from
Necromancer's "Tome of Horrors," can Highmoon do a single license
page with multiple variant Section 15s?
Could it print a single OGL, but when it gets to the Section 15 put:
"12 Tribes of Israel: Part 2"; author Daniel Perez, and "Ostraca:
Ostraca," author Spike Y Jones, Targum Issue #2; publisher Highmoon
Media, copyright 2006 -- and then include the Testament-derived
Section 15.
then, in big, bold letters:
OR
"Roman Villa"; author Daniel Perez, Targum Issue #2; publisher
Highmoon Media, copyright 2006 -- and then include the full-length
Eternal Rome-derived Section 15.
That would mean that anyone using Testament-derived OGC would only
need to reproduce the Testament Section 15 (plus the Targum copyright
notice, of course), and only anyone using Rome-derived OGC would be
forced to use the Eternal Rome Section 15.
There'd also have to be a paragraph (right under the P.I. and OGC
declaration paragraphs) on how to use the two different Section 15s
-- something akin to "Tome of Horrors'" page of instruction on how to
use that book's more complicated Section 15 system. (But this
implementation is simpler, so wouldn't need as much explanation.)
I think this would be license-legal, and would be seen by readers as
a nice gesture on Highmoon's part to try to make the best of a
difficult situation. What does everyone here think?
Spike Y Jones, developer of Eternal Rome and Testament, and Targum
columnist
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