From: "Christopher DeLisle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> From: kevin kenan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> > 1. It is easy to overlook the use of a rule embedded in the text
> > when you are marking OGC and each time such a mistake is
> > discovered, you must go back and re-do the entire physical
> > production of the work. This is expensive. After publishers
> > are burned by this a few times, they are likely to cease
> > using OGC material.
>
> There are ways around this. You can always identify the OGC without
> the use effecting the layout of of a product by using plain english
> in the identification area.
How? Unless you say things like "section 1.5.3, words 5-10, 12, and
32-50 are OGC; the rest is Product Identity." If you have a good way of
clearly indicating what portions are OGC that is not obtrusive, please
let us know.
> Even if you are using font changes and/or different colored
> backgrounds to indicate OGC, I really don't see this as a big deal.
> Computer-related publications typically use different fonts and
> blocks of text with darker background to define different types of
> content (code examples, sample output, style suggestions, etc.).
You are right that it is not neccessarily hard to use a computer to
change the style of some text. However, then you must produce new
masters and give those masters to your printer. The printer then
creates plates from those masters and uses those to actually produce
the book. All of these steps add more expense than if you simply
picked up the phone and told the printer to create more copies from
the existing plates.
> > 2. Works using OGC are going to look cluttered since every use
> > of "roll a d20" needs to be marked. A clean layout is
> > important to selling a book, and so OGL works will start from
> > a graphic- design disadvantage on the shelf.
>
> I can't think of many situations where it would be necessary to
> specifically tell the reader to "roll a d20" that would not already
> be included within a block of text that would be considered OGC.
> Simply specifying a monster's AC or listing a DC implies a d20 roll,
> where the AC or DC listing would be marked as OGC (assuming you are
> using that method to identifying OGC).
The general point I was trying to make here was that every time you
use a rule, you must indicate that it is OGC, even rules as trivial as
"roll a d20." This will clutter the layout.
> > 3. Only a minority of a product's users actually care what
> > material is open, so the cluttered layout is irrelevant to
> > most users and irrelevant information leads to confusion.
>
> As I have stated before, I disagree with this line of thought. I
> see every person who uses an OGL product is a potential OGL
> Developer and I think OGL products should take this into
> consideration. It doesn't matter if most people aren't going to
> care about the distinction between OGC, the distinction exists for
> those who do care. If you limit the usefulness of your product to
> OGL developers, they will stop finding it useful and may not even
> bother with the OGL at all.
I don't think the wording changes limits the usefulness of an OGL
product. As a potential OGL developer, it will not bother me one bit
if only the new stuff is marked. As a user of OGL products, I will
tend to buy the product that has the least cluttered layout; so if all
other things are equal, I'll buy the non-OGL product because it will
be easier to read because it will have a less cluttered layout.
> >The proposed wording change eliminates or minimizes these costs and
> >does so with very little downside.
>
> I agree that it adds very little of a downside from a publishing
> standpoint, but from a development standpoint it creates ambiguity
> and confusion which can only be eliminated by the developer wasting
> valuable time (and possibly money) in needless research.
>
> However I could see a change that didn't require you to indicate OGC
> derived from an existing OGL Standard Resource Documents as being
> much less problematic since anyone who will be doing serious
> development under the OGL would only benefit from having detailed
> knowledge of such SRDs. Everyone would have access to the SRDs and
> detailed knowledge of the OGC covered by them. Of course I'm not
> just talking about the D20SRD, but any other SRD that is released
> under the OGL.
Then we'd have to figure out a way to define an SRD work.
But I like a variation of this idea. The license could recognize
'persistent' OGC vs. 'reference' OGC. If you marked your OGC as
persistent, then all uses of that text would need to be marked as is
necessary today. If you marked your OGC as reference, then you would
not be required to mark every use.
This change is a more substantial than the original proposal, but it
has a certain elegance and seems to meet the objections people are
having with the original.
-kenan
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