In a community, if you're going to take a stance like this then what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If you're going to hold Wizards to such strict standards then you better be ready to hold Necromancer, Feiry Dragon, Malhavok Press, Green Ronin, Mongoose, AEG, Natural 20 Press, Mystic Eye Games, Bastion Press, and the whole host of others to the same stringent standards.
Then give them the time to do the cost analysis to see if the money they save in rpg development by using the OGL is worth the money they'll loose should they a peice of their IP accidentally slip into a section of OGC.
Tim Dugger wrote:
On 14 Jun 2003 Lizard scribbled a note about Re: [Ogf-l] Employee mistake scenario:Well, when the terms of the contract include "authority to contribute", *and* include a period for cure of a breach, it takes quite a bit to claim something was added accidentally which cannot be de-added.Ok, from the OGL: 5.Representation of Authority to Contribute: If You are contributing original material as Open Game Content, You represent that Your Contributions are Your original creation and/or You have sufficient rights to grant the rights conveyed by this License. To me this says that the authority to contribute is relegated to the individual/corporation/company making the contribution. Now, the way I look at it, some nameless individual employee did NOT release "Dungeon Master" as open content, WOTC released it. Why? Because WOTC, as a company, is the one releasing the SRD as OGC, not that employee. "Joe Smith" the employee may have been the one working on the material, but he was doing so at the behest of the company, using a process (as it has been mentioned before) that gets it reviewed, apparently, by several portions of the company. Since WOTC, as a company, is releasing the SRD, then WOTC has the authority to release a trademarked term into OGC. Since WOTC, the company, has the authority, then the release of that term into OGC cannot be considered as a breach, thus no cure period is called for. It may have been a mistake, but "Joe Smith", as the duly appointed representative of WOTC to release material into OGC, was acting for and as the company in this case. Thus he did have the authority. If you try to say that he did not have the authority, then you are invalidating every single file that "Joe Smith" prepared and released, which I am guessing would be quite a few. To recap, employee "Joe Smith" did not release anything into OGC, WOTC released it, and since WOTC (as a company) DOES have the authority to release "Dungeon Master" as open game content, then there is no breach, and thus no "cure period" in which they can remove it. For those who want to start arguing that "Joe Smith" did not have the authority, do not forget that he was not the only one to review the material released (so we have been told - that being the reason for it taking so long to release those sections). TANSTAAFL Rasyr (Tim Dugger) System Editor Iron Crown Enterprises E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l