On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, Faustus von Goethe wrote:
> >Only the public domain games could be collected and released in this
> >manner.
>
> Are you sure even the public domain ones could be? How could you (as a
> non-author, non-owner) arbitrarily apply license restrictions to something
> that is in the public domain. Wouldn't you have to change it sufficiently
> that is was no longer even derivative?
Yes, you could include public domain content in the OGL. And no, it
wouldn't be subject to the full license, in that since it is public domain
anyone can use it for whatever they want. However, the original poster of
the question did say that the individual doing this would be adding and
changing where necessary, and I was assuming that portion would be the
copyrighted material of the author. Remember just because something is
derivative doesn't mean the author doesn't hold a copyright in that
material. It just means that the author of the material upon which the
derivative material is derived also has a copyright interest in the
derived material. In the case of public domain material, that basically
means the derivative author has a sole copyright -- it doesn't make the
derived material public domain. Of course public domain material also
removes the risk you'll be sued for creating your derivative material as
well.
In any case, my main point was that much of what is "freely available" on
the web isn't actually public domain, so anyone undertaking the proposed
idea should be careful and double check any material they are using.
later,
alec
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