My issue with citations and the OGL is a bit different that the discussion on citing other gaming books as the source of OGC (and I don't think this was ever answered even back when we had the long "OGL and Attribution" discussion on the d20 list).
I'm used to academic citations which in many ways are more of an ethical than commercial copyright protection issue. For example, no one seems to care that Ambrose may have used other sources to write his books, they are just crying foul that he didn't enclose passages taken (almost) verbatim in quotes. The passages are already footnoted, they just don't have quotes. So he's going to fix that and everybody's happy. Now what happens when I use secondary sources and use interesting historical details from the middle ages on say "firearms" or "ships" that someone painstakingly compiled from numerous primary sources? Those little factoids and descriptions of "real life" might be cool (for gamers) to have in a gaming book. It would also be cool (for publishers) to have that text as OGC so they can include it their work without having to worry about re-writing everything or provide citations outside of section 15. But academic tradition says that the next publisher who wants to re-use that OGC should also cite the secondary sources that the text was drawn from. They really shouldn't just re-use the OGC without the citations. Therefore, I haven't been able to provide anything for re-use because I most likely lack the "authority to contribute" even though there isn't a clear copyright violation. So what do you think? Can I use secondary sources for historical information and release my original (yet derivative) text as OGC if it is based on someone else's research? I would prefer to use endnotes in my book, but can I require that of the other publishers that re-use the content? Weldon Dodd [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
