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ust making a binary and saying 'everything here is OGC' isn't enough... For IP reasons, Wizards is going to want to make sure of that. �So would other publishers if you used their work. �Now they may be willing to shell out money for a program to interpret it, or they may not. �and if a decompiler/interpretor doesn't exist outside of the functioning product, they could have grounds to be upset.
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I'll address viewing software that doesn't exist outside the functioning product, and paranoia about license breaches arising from not having the right software to read something.
I'll specifically address the issue of someone who is NOT attempting to obfuscate OGC, but who is is merely distributing something that requires a piece of software the other person has, and particularly a piece of software that might only be available with a CD-ROM distribution that also contains OGC.
First, publishers have no rights granted by the OGL to free copies of anyone's publications. �I think one of the GNU public licenses makes some type of requirement like that (I can't remember) -- that if somebody asks you for a copy of the open, licensed content, you have to give them a copy under certain conditions.
There's no such requirement for that in the OGL. �Once my publications hit the market, the OGC can be extracted by somebody else and distributed for free, but individual vendors have no legal right to say, "hey, you've got a CD-ROM you're distributing and my company's name is in Section 15. �I demand a copy of the CD-ROM to verify the OGC.". �That just goes well beyond the scope of the language in the license.
Under the scenario you set out above, WotC might have grounds to be upset. �But they wouldn't have grounds to make more than a wholly frivolous claim at breach of the license. �If, as part of the functioning product, I built my very own text viewer with its very own encrypted binary file type, and distributed a copy of the viewer as PI, with no rights to distribute the text viewer, and then had an all OGC word processing document that only my text viewer could read, then that should be within the bounds of the OGL.
People who want the OGC could see it on screen, print it out, and type it up into their own products using their own word processors if they want. �The text content would be, indeed, OGC, but just not one viewable by anyone who hadn't bought the distribution package. �However, once anyone bought the distribution package, then, because the text is OGC, they could type up a copy and send it to everyone on the planet using ASCII text email if they included the OGL with it.
In fact, were I so foolhardy, I could even charge a million dollars for the CD to anyone who wanted one. �It would be legal. �However, once a single legal copy made it into anybody's hands with the will to use it, then they could retype all the OGC and freely distribute it.
I think you are confusing ease of access to a given piece of OGC with breach of license.
I can create some OGC give my friend a copy for free, and then refuse to distribute it to anyone else for less than $500.00 cash. �If WotC believes I am in breach, they have no right to demand a copy just off their kneejerk desire to have a copy. �They could only demand a copy through a discovery process of a lawsuit.
Now, WotC could make your life ABSOLUTELY MISERABLE if you gave them the cold shoulder and didn't play ball on some things. �But I think that's very different from claiming that such behavior is a per se breach of the licensing agreement.
So, while I think it's useful to keep open channels of communications and to respect other vendors, there's also no licensing requirement that you spend a lot of time and effort doing so. It makes a lot of practical sense to do so, I agree. But that's different than discussing what the license per se requires.
It might be a better world if we all got together in the same sand box and learned to play Utopian games together, but that's different than what's actually required, at a minimum, by the OGL.
IANAL. �YMMV (and probably does)
Lee
