<<If something good or bad happens or could happen as a result of that licensing I want to know about it before it becomes an issue with my products. I donât think many successful businesses jump into a market with out first trying to figure what issues they are going or could possibly face and that involves hypothetical situations.
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Ditto. I've already used the license for a few projects (all amateur releases on a small scale).
For example, when Joe Mucchiello put out his excellent d20 fantasy Character Customization product I saw that he had a few ideas in common with my development. I built a program online in PERL to automate some parts of his system, as a testbed for porting my own ideas later. The user interface was weak because it was a proof of concept, but it was probably my first significant use of the OGL.
It was my way of experimenting with software development with the OGL in such a fashion that the code was not made public knowledge and it wasn't compiled. I don't know if I buy that all compiled software is out-of-bounds under the OGL, but I figured I'd take one step at a time.
Testing out hypotheticals in a risk free environment (like a discussion list) or with a lower priority project is a lot safer way to familiarize yourself with an environment than the "leap right in" acid bath.
It's part of the reason in debates here I occasionally take up a position contrary to my own gut instincts on what a given interpretation of the OGL should be. It's not what I'd call "fun", but I'd rather examine all opinions on the issue when there isn't a $50,000 copyright infringement or breach of contract suit on the other side of the inquiry. If you take up an indefensible position on a mailing list you may sound like a fool. If you take it up in a courtroom you may sound like a bankrupt pauper.
For people doing small, non-controversial products, which have no complex PI/OGC interactions (like those I described for the supers games I own right now), hypotheticals will be a waste of time. There's a 99.9% chance those people will never inadvertently create a breach of the license and get dragged into court.
For people who also borrow very little from anything other than 100% OGC sources, then the license will be 100% clear for most practical uses provided no litigation results (which it probably won't under such circumstances).
For those of us who aren't even going that far out on the limb, but who are working with products with PI declarations that are at odds with the OGC we have, or who are working with products with vague OGC/PI declarations then questions of liability for breach are a much more pressing concern. There's not a good way to press other people into writing clear OGC/PI declarations that don't conflict with other people's OGC/PI declarations.
Lee
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