----- Original Message ----- From: "Lizard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 1:24 AM Subject: Re: [Ogf-l] Future Versions of the OGL
> The thing is, in the year or more since the first OGL products appeared, > we've seen none of this. We haven't even seen people extracting and > archiving OGL on the web. There's really very little economic incentive to > release the same text someone else has already released, only several > months later after everyone who is interested has bought the book, and from > a publisher with no rep in a crowded field. > > There's far more profit loss from good old fashioned asshol^h^h^h^h^h > pirates who just scan and post entire books, OGLed or not. The feared flood > of ripoff artists (acting within the letter of the OGL) never materialized. > I agree and I think it's feasible to release a wholly open content work under the current license. However, in that same period of time exactly how much open content sharing have we seen other than material taken from the SRD? In theory publisher should have a huge battery of feats from other d20's to use in their modules and monsters; there should be a huge battery of spells to use as well. > And, of course, open means open. While, as far as I can tell, all sharing > done thus far between publishers has been cordial, and by permission, it's > neither unethical or illegal to simply copy what you want without informing > the source that you're doing so. (Though, of course, it's a GOOD thing that > there's cooperation between publishers!) In the future, as D20 publishers > fail, there will be a lot of OGC whose publishers have vanished into the > mists. > > You can't have your Kate and Edith too, as the judge said to the bigamist. > If you want the benefits of open content, you have to accept the risks. > Lots of publishers are currently getting the benefit of using open content such as the SRD and yet closing material to such an extent that it's unusable by anyone else. I'm not trying to provide a means of getting access to open content without making your work open too; I'm trying to provide a means of making large portions of one's work open and available to others while minimizing the worry that someone take your entire text, slap some art around it and release the same book. I agree that this might be an unfounded worry since the main problem seems to be normal piracy but I have it anyway. Am I the only one? > (And, as a side note, OGL compliance has been so spotty that the odds are > good anyone just ripping stuff off will have screwed up *somewhere*, > leaving them vulneable. I'm still seeing some odd gaffes from reputable > publishers. (One book I recently bought used someone else's OGC, thanked > the original source in the introduction, and failed to include the > copyright of the derived material in 'Paragraph 15')) > The difficulty of ripping stuff off while maintaining OGL compliance goes up drastically the more complex you make your Open Content and PI designation; that's a strong incentive to use complex designations. The side effect of that is that complex designations also prevent legitimate use, use a publisher might want to promote. Steven Palmer Peterson www.Second-World-Simulations.com _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
