Greetings, list!
I'm a recent subscriber, but I've been dropping by the OGF site and
browsing through the list archives every couple of months. Something that
caught my eye was when John Nephew said, last September:
>What I think should happen is that someone should create a Lexis/Nexis of
>Open Game Content. Make a database of all truly open content of meaningful
>value, charge a subscription fee for access, use the proceeds to maintain
>and add to the site and continually make it more valuable (create tools for
>searching the ever-growing database, managing the copyright chain for
>Paragraph 15, etc.). Grab OGC from any source published all around the
>world (maybe even translating content from other languages?). Rename
>anything that has a PI'd title or identifier, so that everything in the site
>is 100% open. The site managers could offer free subscription credits in
>exchange for comp copies from publishers. It would be useful to developers,
>and useful to (and effectively paid for by) fans. It would generate some
>screaming and gnashing of teeth from publishers at the start, but it can be
>totally legit under the terms of the Open Game License. Do it right, make
>it a valuable resource for gamers the world over, and do it SOON so that no
>publishers get too great a sense of entitlement about modes of D20
>publishing that may be threatened by the consequences implicit in the Open
>Game License (which, as we learned this summer, not all of them took time to
>read in the first place... ;-).
I've been thinking a lot about this in the intervening months, and I'm
interested in the opinions of the list on some of the implementation
details of a scheme like this. (If I'm reopening a flame war or something,
*please* forgive me, and let me know.)
1. Reproduction of OGC
I agree with Mr. Nephew that trying to reproduce the Open Game Content in
the repository (rather than some sort of directory or index of content) is
a worthy goal. However, the practical considerations of doing so are a
little daunting. With many of Atlas Games' own products, the Open elements
seem very self-contained and well-delineated (bravo!), and don't total much
more than a few pages of text. However, there are products that are almost
completely composed of Open Game Content (barring some Product Identity).
How best to present this to the user, then? The difference in scale between
an NPC and an entire sourcebook is fairly drastic. And what of something
like the SRD? Should it be broken up into pieces as Wizards has done?
Broken up further (every spell, every item, every creature separate)? Or
recombined into one enormous document?
2. Product Identity
One of the biggest problems in reproducing OGC is the need to avoid
reproducing Product Identity. Identifying the Identity, however, is often
not an easy task. The OGL FAQ on the Wizards site states that PI must be
clearly identified, but as Matt Staroscik (of Privateer Press) pointed out
to me the other day, one could argue that the actual license does not make
such a statement. It says this:
>"Product Identity" means product and product line names, logos and
>identifying marks including [a long list of specific kinds of things]; and
>any other trademark or registered trademark clearly identified as Product
>identity by the owner of the Product Identity, and which specifically
>excludes the Open Game Content
I guess the issue is how firmly the semicolon there separates the parts of
the definition. Is it:
a) PI is anything on this list or not, that you identify, or
b) PI is anything on this list, or that you identify?
(Am I just being obtuse about this?)
In terms of how to remove PI from OGC, what is the best method? To try and
fill in the gaps with an Open equivalent? Simple redaction (i.e. "... this
sword once belonged to the legendary hero ----, who used it to ...")?
Should redactions be made explicit?
Whatever the method, though, it seems that there are plenty of products out
there that do not make a clean separation between PI and OGC. Is there
anything to be done?
3. Credits
In reproducing all of this information, and providing tools to search
through it, my first impulse would be to provide attribution for everything
(who wrote it, where it came from). This seems not only polite, but very
useful in terms of finding the thing you want ("Where is that NPC from
Three Days to Kill? I'd like to use him.").
However, section 11 of the OGL says,
>11. Use of Contributor Credits: You may not market or advertise the Open
>Game Content using the name of any Contributor unless You have written
>permission from the Contributor to do so.
This would seem to say that providing that information (or, to bring up an
earlier discussion, giving another publisher credit in your own work) is
expressly forbidden by the license. (Yes, you could write to every single
person whose work you use, and ask for permission to mention them, but
that's a LOT of paperwork.)
Now, I realize that there are some ways around this. Chiefly, you must
reproduce the "section 15" copyright notice of any OGC you use, so one
could make this searchable. But so much more could be done if dedicated
metadata about the source of the content were maintained.
I'm sure that there are more issues lurking in this idea (even disregarding
the business aspects of it, or any questions of d20-ness), but I think
that's a good starting place. I think that such a repository would be a
true boon to the community, but I don't think anyone wants to run afoul of
the licenses in providing such a service.
Thanks for your thoughts,
Sixten Otto
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