<<This message is, on its own, indicative of the types of gross generalities from
Mongoose that people have been complaining about on this board. "If you use
the _rules_ not the text"? What is that supposed to mean? 'Text' is printered
letters, numbers, punctuation and other characters on the page, and all of the
non-graphics content (rules, PI, descriptive text, the license, etc) is
literally 'text'.>>
To clarify, I'd almost be willing to go with a declaration of "you can use the rules and may not reproduce the verbatim text" _IF_ I were certain that all the verbatim text was wholly unique to Mongoose. If, however, any of it were appropriated verbatim from other sources (such as feat names, feat text, etc.) then such a declaration is insufficient, because it inadequately describes what was open _before_ Mongoose touched the stuff.
Were Mongoose to want to open "concepts" as OGC and close "language" as PI, then cool by me, provided they own all the language they are intending on closing up. But if they close up feat names, etc. that they don't have a right to PI to begin with, then that's an improper OGC declaration.
I don't think this should be a big deal. If it's so obvious then Matthew should simply be able to type up a paragraph of declaration for this product to make this wholly unambiguous. If he borrowed NONE of the feat names and NONE of the feat text verbatim from any non-Mongoose source, then perhaps his declaration merely looks vague, but isn't.
Lee
