>Woodelf-
>
>Sounds like the real problem is your "preconceived
>notions of what an open game should look like."
ok, either i'm not understanding your line of reasoning, or one of us
is not being clear, or there is a difference of opinion on
definitions. please excuse if any of this message sounds
adversarial; i'm trying to be clear, but i'm not sure how it'll come
across in email.
>Neither the license nor Diomin as a product is
>misleading or dishonest.
>
>It IS an "Open Game" license. They took a "game" (D&D)
>and made it "open" for you as a developer to use.
then you're saying that the various D20 works are not released under
the WOGL? because they are "games", but they are not (on balance)
"open". or are you saying that they are not "games"? i suppose, in
the sense that they are not stand-alone entertainments, that is true.
but the WOGL is clearly designed for both whole games and game
add-ons. and Diomin, etc., are just as much released under the WOGL
is is the D20SRD, so you have to look at them, too. and it's not the
(Open Game) License--it is not a license to use the D20 system for
other works. it is a license for anyone to give away anything they
jolly well want to (presumably in the RPG realm, though it makes no
such limitaitons). the fact that WotC has generously chosen to
release the vast majority of the core D&D3E rules as OGC under the
WOGL, doesn't change the nature of the license, even if they are so
far the only company to have utilized the WOGL (for an original
game). moreover, the WOGL is not about the consumer, it's about the
producer: it's a license for the producer to give away her work.
do we disagree as to what constitutes "open"? are you saying that a
work that has any open content may, on the whole, be labeled "open"?
in case i wasn't clear before, it is my opinion that it is dishonest
to label something as "open" unless at least the bulk of it, if not
all of it [i'm undecided as to where to draw the line], is open.
it's much like the offer the phone company made me a couple of months
ago. in one sentence, the representative on the phone told me that i
"could have this free phone for only $12.95". and he seemed
genuinely surprised when i told him that wasn't "free". i explained
to him 3 times that i was unaware that the definition of "free"
involved spending money, before he finally understood my objections
and switched to pointing out that $12.95 was much cheaper than a
comparable phone the store. i never could convince him that not
getting a new phone (at a cost of 0) was even cheaper than that. if
you're comfortable with something that will cost you $12.95 being
described as "free" then we simply have a difference of opinion, and
we may as well save everyone else the bandwidth. if not, then our
disagreement may stem from a simple miscommunication, and it may be
possible to come to agreement.
or is our disagreement one of what constitutes a "game"? are you
arguing that only the mathematial elements are the game, and all the
setting/narrative stuff is something else? maybe--i'm not sure; RPGs
are very confusing in that realm. if that's the nature of the
disagreement, then we're talking past each other, because i wasn't
even considering that element of the situation.
hypothetical: if the D20SRD represented about the same percentage of
the 3 core D&D3E books as the OGC did of Diomin, Creature Collection,
or Relics & Rituals, would you still consider it legitimate to
consider D20 an "open game"? for that matter, if you consider the
entirety of the D&D game [for fairness, just the new 3E line), only a
small portion of it is part of the D20SRD--is Defenders of the Faith
not "the D&D game"? is there any non-arbitrary way to designate some
of D&D as "the game" nad some of it as something else? [so far, the
PI designation doesn't seem to be non-arbitrary, because if someone
else were to use that definition, much less of the core books would
be OGC (based on others using that definition (presumably) when
designating what is open and what not in their WOGLed products),
which means that there is some judgement involved in its application.]
>There is no promise in that license
the promise is in the title. it is called "Open Game License".
given no other information than the title of the license, why
*wouldn't* one assume that it's about open content works? yet the
actual text of it says, in effect, "certain material must be
infectiously open, but much material may be completely non-open".
>nor is there any
>requirement that anything other than open game content
>or derived content be open.
and that's exactly my complaint. correct me if i'm wrong, but prior
to the WotC/OGF OGL, there were no open-content licenses that
explicitly permitted a work released under them to contain original
non-open content (several allowed you to aggregate pre-existing open
and non-open work, and tehre may have been ways to get away with it).
ditto for The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which, IIRC, at no point
suggests that releasing a portion of a work as open while keeping the
rest proprietary is the point of open content development models.
the WOGL is purported to be a logical extension of the ideas in
previous open content work, specifically the writings of Eric
Raymond, into the sphere of the RPG. therefore, i think it is a
perfectly reasonable assumption that it would not have mechanisms for
keeping portions of your work closed.
>The fact that you want the license to be different
>doesnt make the use of the license as it is
>"dishonest" or "false advertising."
see above. one last point. my intention is not to say "i want it to
be this way, anything else is wrong". i'm trying to point out that
there are plenty of logical antecedents to my argument, and that
someone not steeped in the OGF could easily come to the same
conclusions i have. the basis of my argument is that i read a couple
of articles/interviews talking about the WOGL, in which the
authors/backers referenced a bunch of existing open content
development models and theories and licenses. i went and looked
these up, and read up on them. i talked to advocates of open
development in the computer world. at no point did any of these
sources (including the ones that the OGF claims are the
(inspirational) sources for the WOGL) say anything about semi-open
content (except to disparage it as not true open content[1]). i then
looked at the completed WOGL (i missed out on all the discussion
during its creation). i was completely taken by surprise by the
whole PI clause, not just the form of it--it had never occured to me
that on open content license (RPG or otherwise) would have mechanisms
for explicitly protecting content, other than perhaps invariant
sections. show me the obvious logical derivation that i clearly
missed, that takes (Open Development) + (RPG) and comes up with the
semi-open WOGL. i'm not saying that the WOGL shouldn't exist, or
that no one should use it, or that it doesn't serve a very useful
role that a completely open game license couldn't serve. but i think
it's a bit silly to claim that i'm naive for expecting it to be more
similar to all the other open development works out there.
[1] n.b.: for now, i'm sidestepping the question of what is "true"
open content, and what isn't. frex, some claim that if someone can
turn it into a commercial product, it's not open enough, because it
should always be free to the world. others say that if you can
restrict someone from turning it into a commercial product, it's not
open enough, because you should always be able to do whatever you
want with it.
woodelf <*>
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An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. - Gandhi
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