On Tue, 25 Sep 2001, woodelf (lists) wrote:
> i had been taking Dancey's pronouncements (on the meaning of the
> licenses) as relays of WotC's lawyers' pronouncements, and thus the
> fact that they disagreed with yours (among othes) was my evidence
> that their could be disagreement. if, on the other hand, Dancey was
> just giving his personal opinion, then it just means he was wrong (at
> least IMHO--i agree with you and Clark on what the license means,
> even if ithink it's too much effort to get there), which is a
> less-serious issue with the license (though, i still question how the
> license could be unclear to one of the guys behind it).
First, I don't know why anyone should take Ryan's statements as being
anything other than his statements. Unless Wizards has a very unusual
set-up, I doubt Ryan is constantly consulting the attorneys before
responding to e-mails, so there is no reason to consider his statements to
be the pronouncements of Wizards attorneys. Even if Ryan said "I've asked
the attorneys about this", I'd likely responded with a question about
whether he asked them or if he actually showed them e-mail just to be sure
the attorneys were responding to the specific question asked. As can be
seen by following any thread on this (or any) list, a lot can get confused
through 1 person attempting to convey what another person said. (This is
also why there's a lot of "consult a lawyer" advice given here - if you
have a question you really need answered, you need to sit down with a
person and work through the question. On a listserv you can get a lot of
good advice, but you also get a lot of tangetials and distortions
occurring.)
Second, if the support for your claim that the license is confusing is to
appeal to confusion between people who are trained in the law (apparently
using mostly Ryan & myself), you should realize that the only disagreement
I can remember is this single statement by Ryan that "anything can be PI".
There have been a few times where he & I might have talked past each other
for a little while, but eventually it became clear that we actually agreed
on the requirements of the license. And the fact that Ryan made that
statement when he really wanted to make clear that game rules weren't
required to be OGC and has not said anything more about PI being able to
cover anything is enough for me to consider this another case of talking
past one another rather than an actual disagreement about the license
requirements.
I also don't remember any disagreements over the requirements of the
license between myself and other legally trained individuals.
Occassionally we have discussions about what can & cannot be done around
the edges of the license, but that's not because the license is confusing,
but rather because we are discussing things the license was not written to
specifically cover. Or we're talking past each other, such as Clark & I
recently concerning a database of OGC. There the problem was the fact
that I consider the phrase "a database of XXX" to mean that the database
actually contains XXX where Clark was using the phrase to mean a database
that lists items that contain XXX. I think if either Clark or I had
recognized that, we'd have had no disagreements as to how the OGL would
effect either type of database.
> >A solid grasp of
> >English tells you that the list in PI is exhaustive (it's a closed list
> >with no language to expand it; if you want an open list you need to say
> >something such as "for example" "like" or "such as") and that the writer
> >can identify anything as OGC (it's explicitly stated in the license).
>
> agreed on both counts. English-wise, the only ambiguity, IMHO, is
> whether the things described as PI *are* or *can be* PI. i don't see
> any linguistic clue that makes that absolute. similarly, did you
> figure out on your own that there was a 3rd sort of content recognized
> by the WOGL? and, if so, did you do so without any info external to
> the license itself (like discussions, FAQs, etc.)?
The fact that the license requires that both OGC & PI be clearly
identified as such makes it clear to me that there is the possibility that
there could be material that is not identified as such. Since that
material obviously is not OGC or PI, then it must just be what it would
normally be without the license. The fact that OGC & PI must be clearly
identified also means that except for where the license specifically
requires something to be either OGC or PI, the explanations of both OGC &
PI are merely explaining what is allowed to be OGC or PI. The only thing
required to be OGC is material that is already OGC or derived from OGC.
Nothing is required to be identified as PI. So, yes, I "figured" this out
without anything more than the license itself (not even FAQs).
alec
(the guy with a law degree who isn't an attorney)
_______________________________________________
Ogf-l mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
