"Ryan S. Dancey" wrote:
> CONCERN: How big will the COPYRIGHT NOTICE section of the text become?
>
> Response: It could become quite long. That is the nature of the beast - in
> a gift-economy, the primary constrained resource is credit for contribution.
> It is possible that over time, some heavily developed Open Games could have
> very extensive credit lists. (There are, for example, more than 400 people
> mentioned as Playtesters for 3e - we got them all on one page...)
An issue that I would like to see addressed is how the copyright credits can or
have to be sorted. Must they be sorted cronologically (as the PH playtesters
seem to be), or can they be sorted alphabetically? Would it be preferable to
indicate how each person contributed? Would the license allow a d20 document to
list to the best of their knowledge what each person contributed? Would there
be any liability if a mistake was made in this case?
> OPINION: I think the license survived it's trip through the legal
> department. Were I forced to use this license today with no changes, I think
> we'd be o.k.
>
> Whew!
"Yay!"
> WORDING: Section 7 opens up a new path I had not considered previously. By
> saying that you cannot use Proprietary Content (essentially "the setting")
> without permission, the License now allows you to mix material that is
> separate from Open Game Content in with Open Game Content. I think that
> this is Legal's attempt to ensure that "the setting" doesn't accidentally
> get rendered "Open" by mistake.
<snip>
> The thing I like about this approach is that it provides an affirmative way
> for a publisher to ensure they don't accidentally Open "the setting", and it
> gives us a great way to mesh licenses with Open Game Content in a protected
> way.
>
> Comments?
I definitly would prefer the OGL to include this expressly. Being an amatur, I
attempted to do this with my own web-based release, so of course I would feel a
lot better if my actions were expressely approved in the OGL.
> WORDING: One thing I would really like Legal to take a stab at is defining
> "derivative". I will ask them to write some language that defines this
> term, and see how effective it is in describing the scope of Open Gaming.
If the opinions on this list are any judge, I can only say "good luck."
DM
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