<<Sig: Yep, just head on down to www.netbookoffeats.org all OGC all the
time and much of what's in ultimate feats pluss more is available there.
>>
Um. Actually no. Ultimate Feats draws upon more sources than this. And I'm not gonna declare as PI something that Mongoose or somebody else opened up already. Nor am I gonna declare as OGC something that Mongoose wants left as PI and subject only to private agreement. I was given this latter permission, but it dawned on me that this still would not be sufficient to keep me from misdeclaring things.
<<
But I think Mr HUDarklord was being a bit harsh with Mongoose. They are
nice guys, not likely to jump on your back about using their OGC
material. Sure their declaration is a tad on the lazy side,>>
Actually, it's not on the lazy side. It's closer to being on the overt non-compliance side.
If you read my post, I noted that their offer to let me use _their_ OGC was _generous_. Matthew had a lot of guts taking the heat he took here on OGF-L. No doubt he's got good intentions.
However, I was gonna just note that the text was used under agreement (he gave me some private permissions to use stuff), but that's not accurate. There are some parts of that which happen to be other people's OGC or which may or may not have been previously OGC, in which case the onus would be on me to track down the original sources and check on a feat-by-feat basis as to whether or not the text was copied verbatim. The onus shouldn't be on me. The clear purpose of the OGL is to make sure that I don't have to go do research homework to figure out what is and is not OGC.
Otherwise _I_ might become liable for not appropriately declaring OGC (such as if I had noted somebody else's OGC was actually Mongoose's PI).
I think Mongoose Publishing sounds like a generous company. I appreciate that. I wish more people were. But that doesn't in any way free them of the responsibility of coming up with an OGC declaration that is clear enough that I can label OGC in my products appropriately if I draw from their resources.
<<
and they are more intent on
that than worying over their license obligations. Chances are they are
alos too busy to bother running you down if you accidently use a little
of their non OGC mixed in with the OGC stuff.>>
The problem is they use OTHER PEOPLE'S OGC, and those people might decide to file suit even if Mongoose doesn't. I doubt it, but why should I bother getting in that legal morass instead of asking for an unambiguous OGC declaration. The onus is on Mongoose to come up with an OGL compliant OGC declaration.
I appreciate their generosity, but generosity does not free one entirely from legal liability.
<<Their collection series is clearly different from their other works.
They are a collection of OGC materail and you could probably use any of
it verbatem without problems.
>>
But I'd either have to declare it all OGC (which I may not have the right to do since Mongoose may want to declare certain aspects of it PI), or I'd have to declare parts of it I didn't recognize as PI, and take the chance that the material:
a) wasn't formerly declared as OGC by Mongoose
b) wasn't somebody else's OGC that I then botched up and declared as Mongoose-owned PI.
We just went through a month of email exchanges regarding failure to designate people's OGC appropriately. I think asking for an unambiguous OGC declaration is not asking for a lot.
I don't even think it's particularly harsh or rude. It's a minimum requirement for OGL compliance, right? And I'm asking for it, because if I get it, I might go out and pay cash money for Mongoose's product to use it as a reference for the work I'm doing. Consider it pre-sales customer support.
Asking for an OGC declaration that's unambiguous so that I can pay money for one of their products sounds like a completely fair trade, not unfair criticism.
Lee
