On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > If people are really concerned about publishers using the OGL to > claim PI on terms couldn't they just use the principle of PI against > itself? Is there anything stopping someone from using an > "Anti-PI" PI licence to stop publishers that cripple OGC from > reusing their content. What I mean by this is: > > 1) Author concerned about non-crippled OGC writes new rules. > 2) The author then deliberately cripples their own rules and > publishes this "Anti-Crippling Content" ACC in the same way as the > SRD. > 3) They write up an Anti-Crippling Licence (ACL) and publish it > separately. > 4) The author then publishes their proper product and refers to the > ACC and ACL in their section 15. > 5) The section 15 entry of the ACL includes a PI licence that > allows anyone to use any PI in the product it contains under the > terms of the ACL. It also includes the URL of a website dedicated to > uncrippled content.
There's one big stumbling block in the way of all this: it costs time and money. There are simpler ways to accomplish some of what you want: Green Ronin published a big book of OGC spells borrowed from other publisher's work. Some of those spells had PI names. Green Ronin came up with different names for those spells, and Opened those different names. Hence those specific examples of PI were now circumvented, and anyone who wants to use those spells with the new GR-created names can do so under the terms of the OGL without worrying about PI emcumbrances. But Green Ronin probably wouldn't have done that work for free as a gift to the anti-crippling movement. They did it as part of a book that they intended to sell for profit; it required them to put time and money to assemble, edit, and print the text, and they presumably wanted to get money back out of it. (I use the Green Ronin spell compilations as an example here because those are the ones I'm familiar with. There are others.) There was a movement to release an alternative SRD that included things missing from the WotC SRD, such as character creation rules and the descriptions of the appearance of SRD monsters. That movement never came to fruition because it relied on volunteers to do all the work: time and money. A number of companies have released products under the OGL but not the D20STL in part so that they could include character creation and advancement rules. They likely wouldn't have done so for free: time and money. Spike Y Jones _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
