Not trying to stir up too much trouble here, but I've been a bit bothered by the stance that "you can use our rules, but not our text" that Mongoose has demonstrated - and not in a sense that "I'm mad at them" but in the sense of "I'm not quite sure you are allowed to do that." An uneasiness rather than an anger, if you will.
After some rumination last night, I think it finally hit me as to why. I am not a lawyer, but I thought I'd throw a few ideas/thoughts out here and see what the reaction is.
IIRC, the first general principle of Copyright Law is that it is impossible to copyright an idea - you can only copyright the words that are a particular expression of that idea. For instance, the concept of "incrementing a skill check by x points" is a concept. It is not something that can be copyrighted. However, the following text can be: "When you take this Feat, choose a Skill. All skill checks made with that skill receive a +2 bonus."
Now I look at Sections 1a, 1b, and 5 of the OGL:
(1a) "Contributors" means the copyright and/or trademark owners who have contributed Open Game Content;
(1b) "Derivative Material" means copyrighted material including derivative works and translations (including into other computer languages), potation, modification, correction, addition, extension, upgrade, improvement, compilation, abridgment or other form in which an existing work may be recast, transformed or adapted;
(5) Representation of Authority to Contribute: If You are contributing original material as Open Game Content, You represent that Your Contributions are Your original creation and/or You have sufficient rights to grant the rights conveyed by this License.
I could be wrong, but my (unlawyerly) reading of the above tells me that Open Game Content is in fact a subset of "copyrighted material." This is not so important for what it is as for what it is NOT. I believe it is NOT the concept behind a rule (since the concept cannot be copyrighted), but rather it is in fact the text describing that rule (which CAN be copyrighted).
The d20 STL requires a minimum of 5% content be Open. Since "concepts" are amorphous in "size" anyway, I have to continue to think that the only way to interpret Open Game Content is to interpret it in context of "copyrighted material" - be it text, artwork, software code, video, audio, etc. All of these things have a discrete, measurable size and can be compared with the size of the whole work to see whether the 5% benchmark is reached. Exactly what metric is used is not clear; in the case of printed matter I imagine it would be "page count" (or perhaps "total page surface area covered by OGC vs non-OGC") while in electronic documents it might be word count. I'm not here to argue the metric, but rather to point out that there must be something "tangible" to measure for a 5% standard to apply.
I further think it becomes fairly obvious given the above that every d20STL/OGL product MUST include a certain amount of copyrighted material (i.e., art, text, video, audio, etc.) that under the terms of the OGL may be cut & pasted verbatim.
All of this seems to go along nicely with Clark's assertion that under the OGL, 3 types of material can be published:
1.) OGC - Copyrighted material that others can copy/paste provided they follow the terms of the OGL.
2.) PI - Material that would otherwise be OGC (usually thanks to a blanket OGC designation such as "all of Chapter 4"), but is not OGC because it was specifically called out as PI instead. Essentially, PI is the way you get specific "pieces" pulled out from under a "blanket" OGC designation and into normal copyright protection (#3 below).
3.) "None of the above" - Standard copyrighted material, subject to all the normal rules of use.
Hence, every printed product (for instance) must have either (a) text or (b) artwork that can be cut & pasted verbatim. I chose to use a printed product in this example because it usually includes only those two types of copyrighted material (since printed products haven't included software since punch cards and audio/video stuff is carried on different media).
My understanding is that OGC Designations do not trump copyright law - they work with it. You must have permission to re-use copyrighted material - the OGL doesn't change that. What it does do is create a shorthand - OGC is essentially shorthand for "copyrighted material that I have given permission to others to copy/paste/derive from provided they play by the rules outlined in the OGL." IOW, OGC is not concepts, it is in fact copyrighted material.
Mongoose Matt said:By my reading of the OGL, this is not allowed - you have to put out some material that can be cut/pasted without a need for a rewrite.
Yes, it means there is more work involved, as you have to rewrite >everything but, to be frank, that is neither here nor there.
Is my conclusion correct? If not, where did I make my logical or semantic error? Is it possible to open "rules" (i.e., concepts) but not "text?" I think the answer is, "no."
In this light, let's examine the following:
Doug Meershaert said:Why is that, do you think? That's right... the rules for D&D are not copyrighted. They cannot be copyrighted. It is only the particular set of words that WotC used to communicate those rules that are copyrighted. In other words, if you sat down and wrote a book off the top of your head, never referring to WotC books, but using the understanding you currently have of the system, you would be all right (though under copyright law, an argument could be made that your work was a derivative work, but if you crunched D&D down to a set of probability curves and wrote your book based solely on those probability curves, you'd be all right). It's why there are more RPGs than D&D (.e., Palladium), BTW.
Back when he still worked for Wizards, Ryan Dancy stated his position that you COULD copy D&D, rule-for-rule, and publish it without contacting wizards.
Or, if you could get yourself alinged with their interets, you could >e-mail them and ask for permission to copy their text.Note the phraseology - "copy their text." Not their ideas. Important distinction in copyright-land.
The OGL changed that, as Wizards offered their new flagship system for anyone to use--but only if "anyone" used the same license and reciporcated the benefits back to Wizards and anyone else who uses the >OGL.IOW, WotC created a system of granting permission for you to use their copyrighted TEXT.
If your OGL product requires someone to re-write your rules, or to contact you if they want to re-use something, then you're not keeping >up your part of the bargain.This is close but I'll take it a step further - if your OGL product requires someone to re-write your rules (which are ostensibly OGC), you are in violation of section 2. If they have to contact you to find out what is OGC, you are in violation of section 8.
--The Sigil
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