At 06:52 PM 9/5/00 -0700, John Kim wrote:
>
> None of the other points say have any clause that overrides
>the restriction of point #7 as far as I can tell. Thus, by the
>current wording, you cannot use other people's spell descriptions
>in your OGL work without an independent agreement.
>
Well, here's Ryans take on it:
======
"(e) "Product Identity" means [ list of things it could mean deleted ]
clearly identified as Product Identity by the owner of the Product
Identity;"
So if you define something as Open, and you don't exclude it specifically by
saying that some subset of that Open material is instead Product Identity,
then the whole section is Open.
=====
So, MY interpretation is:
a)Anything not explicitly 'product identity' is open.
b)ONLY things which can be classed as product identity can be closed.
THEREFORE, the restriction is not a limit on what can be open, but on what
can be closed -- specifically, only product identity CAN be closed, but it
does not NEED to be closed. Further, of course, anything derived from open
content, even if it could be considered product identity in the derived
document, remains open.
Thus, if I post "Really Big Fireball", and declare it open, your document
may contain both "Really Big Fireball" and the variant spell "Really,
Really Big Fireball" -- which remains open even though, in theory it could
be closed. However, the game mechanics of "Really Big Fireball" must remain
open no matter what, since they are not 'product identity'.
Can any lawyer types vouch for my interpretation?
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