From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 12:11 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Ogf-l] Ultimate Feats
<< Anyone got this book? >> No. Who's the publisher? And I assume you saw it in a store? I'd like to look for it. << I thumbed through it the other day and, on first glance, the OGC declaration seemed a bit vague to me. I just glanced at it, so it may on further reading, be substantially clearer than I might imagine. The problem is that it referred to "things that were not derived from pre-existing Open Gaming Content" as Product Identity. Without owning all the OGC the product is based on, I couldn't, at a glance, figure out what was OGC in the product and what wasn't. >> I think this is a SERIOUS mistake. The whole point of the OGL was to allow clear, unambiguous license to some material, and clear, unambiguous NON-license to others. This company has stepped right back into the tar pit of "derivative". There has been a lot of legal squabble in the past over what is and isn't derivative; and it was costly, and usually had to be decided on a case by case basis. The OGL said, "Yes, you can make a derivative work, and we can't sue you and won't care, as long as you follow these rules. No messy, expensive legal debate required." This made it possible to create supplemental material WITHOUT having to identify what was and was not derivative. And then, if you wanted to open material, you had to clearly open it; and if you wanted to protect material, you had to clearly mark it as PI. This company hasn't marked anything clearly at all. They have fallen back on that nasty "derivative" idea. So it will serve them right if other companies take the most expansive possible view of what's derivative, and reuse anything where they think they can make the claim stick. Martin L. Shoemaker Martin L. Shoemaker Consulting, Software Design and UML Training [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.MartinLShoemaker.com http://www.UMLBootCamp.com _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
