On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Brad Thompson wrote:
> Forgive my ignorance, but isn't the reasonable person standard tied to the
> interpretation of "clear indication", a statement of our own choosing?
The two are tied together, but if the reasonable person standard is used
(which is automatically is if "clear indication" isn't specifically
defined) neither can be defined by the writer of a contract. The two
choices are either to use a reasonable person standard of clear indication
or to specifically define how one must indicate OGC. So yes the licences
could specifically define how all OGC must be presented in any and all
material types published using the license and not worry about the
reasonable person standard at all. Of course such a licences would become
enormously cumbersome. Have any two publishers used the exact same method
of identifying OGC in products published to date? This would extremely
restrictive for anyone wanting to use the OGL. You'd need to spell out
exactly how all OGC must be presented and need to either attempt to cover
all possibles types of presentations or constantly be re-writing the OGL
as people think up new ways of using OGC. The current OGL is extremely
non-legalistic (the PI clause everyone complains about is plain english,
not legalese - just pay attention to punctuation and rules of grammar)
having to spell out how OGC must be indicated would result in a massive
and legalistic licencse.
Right now the OGL is extremely open in terms of allowing publishers to
present their material in the manner they feel best. Any attempt to move
down the lines you are suggesting will remove this freedom. Nothing
prevents publishing OGC in computer programs & applications right
now. It's just that the publishers needs to find a method of clearly
identifying the OGC in such a way that any person taken off the street
would be able to look at the product and determine what is and what is not
OGC. Ryan is not the final voice on this matter (altho he's probably done
more research into the issue than anyone else so he's view carries some
weight) and if anyone is working on computer programs (i.e. things that
aren't simply going to the same in electronic formats as they are in
hardcopies -- pdf for example) using OGC they need to figure out for
themselves if what they are doing makes the OGC clearly identifiable (and
available) to a reasonable person using the product. And the more serious
you are about your work the more you probably need to be dealing with
someone who understands both IP law as well as computer law.
Unfortunately with the state of the legal system's understanding of
computer software this is simply a murky area. That's the legal
system's fault not the OGL's (if we are assigning blame). And without
becoming extremely legalistic and complicated a license simply is not
going to fix this problem. Not being a programmer, I'm still not certain
how much of a problem this really is however. Certainly there should be
some means of clearly indicating and providing OGC within the program
itself (rather than outside the program, such as through an attached
folder). It may not make for the easiest or prettiest programming, but
the same can be said text presentations which combine OGC and non-OGC in
various ways.
No one can really say if the separate folder idea is a clear indication
until a court has to address the issue and decide whether or not that is
sufficient for a reasonable person. Given that many people use computer
programs with absolutely no understand of what occurs other than what
shows up on the screen, it's probably a gamble on whether or not this
would be acceptable. I'd also have to check the OGL again about whether
or not you can provide OGC in a work in such a way that in some places it
shows up as clearly identified OGC and in others it does not. To put this
in terms of a text work, I don't think the license would permit some to
publish a book such as the Creature Collection, not identify any of the
OGC in the main work but simply reprint all the OGC in an appendix.
(Obviously in printed material this would also be cost prohibitive, but
it's essentially what the separate ancillary folder idea amounts to.)
alec
_______________________________________________
Ogf-l mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
