At 10:14 22/08/2000 -0500, John Nephew wrote:
>Suppose we publish a new Atlas Games "Penumbra" adventure. Some new,
>flexible rules mechanic that you published online, say, would fit into it
>really well. Suppose that our adventure, while it has a (closed) original
>storyline and so forth, doesn't really add a whole bunch of new stuff to D20
>as such...maybe it only has non-monster characters, for instance, but it
>would REALLY benefit from your Medieval Stock Market rules set. Should we
>(a) go without your superb web-published rules set, because it would be
>unethical to take and not give in return, and either gloss over it or paste
>together our own rules; or (b) include your rules set, since by putting it
>in our adventure we'll expose it to a lot of people who might not ever have
>found it on the web, and when they *do* find your page they might remember
>"Oh yeah, that was used in Adventure X and I saw this guy's name on the
>copyright page" -- and because your finely honed, long-tested rules would
>genuinely improve the quality of our module?
The latter. It improves your product, and gives the person who wrote it
more exposure - something that they should obviously desire if they put
something under the OGL. You may not be directly giving much back in this
instance, but other opportunities for that will arise, I'm sure. If you're
concerned about how the author feels, it's probably a simple matter just to
ask him - if he declines for some odd reason, then obviously don't do it.
I have seen a few minor situations in the Open Source community where
people have taken dead or abandoned projects and continued them without
permission of the author, and bad feelings have resulted in some cases
because the original author didn't want it to happen. However, I think that
if you place your material under a license such as the OGL or GPL, or even
to a lesser extent if you give it away at all on the internet or anywhere,
you're bound to run into people that don't always respect your wishes over
its distribution.
So ask first, don't do it if the author doesn't want you to, but otherwise
feel free, IMO. (And you didn't mention this at all and I don't think it
really needs saying, but I think compensating the author is of course
appropriate.)
Adam
< http://tss.dumpshock.com / [EMAIL PROTECTED] / UIN 2350330 >
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