At 08:36 AM 8/22/00 -0400, Morbus Iff wrote:
>What are your opinions about someone collecting all these free games,
>messing with them, explaining them a bit more, adding optional rules and
>illustrations, and then rereleasing them as OGL/OGC?
>
As I understand it, unless the author *explicitly* places the work under
OGL, this cannot be done. "Public domain"<>OGL, neither does "Well, this
text file has been around for ages and the author got lost, so I guess that
means it's public domain."
The OGL, like GNU, works because it's based off copyright law, and it is
enforceable, if need be, because it's an assignation of rights by the
legitimate copyright holder.
A game which is in the public domain can't be retroactively placed under
OGL, and a game with no *known* author can't be (legally) assumed to be
public domain.
I'd like to see authors of freeware games CHOOSE to use the OGL as their
liscence, of course, but that's up to the authors.
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