[freeroleplay] Re: Revising OGL Section
- From: Samuel Penn <sam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: freeroleplay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 18:50:27 +0100
On Thursday 18 August 2005 18:02, Ricardo Gladwell wrote:
> Open Game License, version 1.0a (OGL)
> There are a number of reasons we can't consider the OGL to be free.
> First and foremost, only those parts of a work licensed under the OGL
> and identified as OGC are free for downstream user's: it is prohibited
> to adapt, modify or redistribute the rest of the work.
Is this a problem with the OGL as such? If you used the GPL license,
you could publish a book with GPL content, and a second book with
non-GPL content, so it's technically not preventing you from doing
anything you couldn't do with any other license.
Thinking about it, how is the OGL different from the LGPL? The OGL is
saying: "These rules must be Free, but may be used in a non-Free
campaign setting."
The LGPL says: "This library must be Free, but may be used in a
non-Free program."
> The OGL also permits the ability to mix OGC with non-copyleft,
> copyrighted work and Product Identity in such a way that can make it
> difficult to identify exactly what is and isn't usable OGC. Section 8 of
> the OGL stipulates that the licensee must "clearly indicate" which
> portions of the work are OGC but makes no mention of the precise
> mechanism by which OGC sections should be indicated. This leaves Section
> 8 open to interpretation which could be abused for the purposes of
> making re-use of OGC difficult.
How does this differ from the difficulty in working out what is meant
by 'source code' for GPL licensed text content? This is really just a
side issue of the first paragraph - you can mix free and non-free.
In a content (rather than source code, where there are well defined
interfaces) environment, this sort of thing is always going to be
difficult.
> PI can also be used to restrict modification and redistribution. PI is
> those trademarks, parts and even concepts (storylines, themes, etc are
> covered) of the OGC that are explicitly exempt from the copyleft terms
> of the OGL and thus cannot be modified or redistributed unless
> permission is sought from the PI licensees.
If the PI can be considered part of the Free content, then this is bad.
Could a set of Feats which implement a 'theme' be considered PI, even
though they are part of a rules section?
> Finally, Wizard's of the Coast also claim that the OGL restricts the use
> of OGC in software. The OGL Software FAQ[1] indicates that Section 8
> implies that licensees must publish OGC in a "format that is easy to
> understand", ie. not object code or binary, or that software must make
> OGC data or information viewable while the program runs. If true, this
> clearly restricts how you can adapt or modify OGC.
How is this different from the proposed change for GPL 3, where people
want to be able to force download of code from a GPL'd server program? It
seems very similar. I'm against both btw.
--
Be seeing you, ---------------------------
Sam. http://www.glendale.org.uk/
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