> You imply that a separation of the game
> and IP is important, but I don't quite follow how these are or can be
> distinguished in any given license.
I license the Star Wars Universe from Lucasfilm.
I publish an RPG product using the Star Wars license.
In that product, I have three types of materials all mixed together: Game
Rules, Descriptions of parts of the Star Wars property using those Game
Rules, and non-game content derived from Star Wars. (Art, short stories,
etc.)
The GFDL provisions in Section 6 and Section 7 would make it very difficult
to construct an easily readable and usable Star Wars product that combined
material using the GFDL and material using a separate copyright. First, all
the material using the GFDL would need to be segregated into a separate
"document" as that term is described in the GFDL. Second, >none< of that
material could be integrated with the Star Wars property directly, because
the GFDL is hostile to multiple licenses - and Lucas isn't about to make
Star Wars a "free" property.
There was a time in the evolution of the OGL where this concept was employed
to define how to create a "Larger Work". The protests (and reasons for
those protests) were loud and consistent.
I have other technical issues with the GFDL too. Primarily, the revolve
around the intention of the license. Stallman thinks that free software
documentation is as important as free source code for that software. The
primary intended application of the GFDL is to write books that look like
the O'Reilly & Associates products but that are "Free" rather than
"Non-Free". Thus we have all the provisions for attributions, cover copy,
presentation issues, invariant texts, etc.
Those issues, combined with the requirement that the resulting text also be
made available in a machine-readable, human accessible format via the
internet (an issue which has nothing to do with the utility of the actual
material, but a lot to do with Stallman's drive for free software
documentation) make a very cluttered license. In fact, I personally feel
that the license is so cluttered that if someone had attempted to create
this license for software and asked the FSF to rule that it was "compatible"
with the GPL, Stallman would have refused.
The current Open Gaming License (simplified) does everything the GFDL does,
except bind future users to a strict presentation of the original materials,
require them to host the content somewhere on the internet, and other issues
unrelated to making the content "free" or "open".
I do notice that they fixed the problem of the use of contributor credits at
the end of section 4; so my concern about that issue was unwarranted.
Ryan
-------------
For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
