Creative Commons and PI

[JBowtie]

Some time back I posted a question in the main publishers forum about license compatibility. I posited that an Attribution-ShareAlike license was identical in spirit to the OGL, if wider in scope.
One of the replies pointed out that the OGC must be under the OGL, but the PI could in fact be under another license - such as Alderac's goodies clause that allows reuse of spell names.

So, my plan for my first PDF is as follows:
* Place all rule information under the OGL, including spell and feat names.
* Place the PI in the rest of the book under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons license.

The intention is that all the OGC is reusable per normal, and that you can freely copy, reuse, and repurpose the PI as long as I am credited.
My question? Well, I'm going to release the book as a PDF, and my question is one of packaging. How can I make it clear that the PI is freely available but that the OGC is under a different license?

I'm also curious as to whether or not anyone would use the CC-licensed stuff - besides the artwork, which is mostly public domain or CC-licensed anyway.

 

[Mark]

Necromancer and/or Malhavoc both have some additional licensing in place for such things. If they do not chime in here, you might want to contact them directly.

 

[JBowtie]

The difference with those two is that they're still reserving all rights. If I get a license from Malhavoc, I can't allow others to freely reuse it, they still have to back to Malhavoc for permission.

With a CreativeCommons(CC) license, you don't have to get anybody's permission; just release it under the same license. It's much more like the OGL in that regard; the difference is that I explicitly allow reprinting/reuse/repurposing of my CC content. If you want to do artwork or a novel or a movie using my CC content, you can, without clearance, as long as you release your content under the same license.

So, a self-propogating license that allows reuse, like the OGL, but broader in scope. Everyone in this forum is using the OGL - so what about using CC?

 

[Nellisir]

My question? Well, I'm going to release the book as a PDF, and my question is one of packaging. How can I make it clear that the PI is freely available but that the OGC is under a different license?

I must have missed that thread; could you post a link?

And, don't you mean that the OGC is available under the OGL, and that PI is freely available under a different license? I think that'd be difficult to advertise, and I'm dubious that it'd attract alot of attention. A few (1-5) people might buy it because of that, but PI generally ends up being proper names anyway, and most people can come up with their own.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[The Sigil]

Some time back I posted a question in the main publishers forum about license compatibility. I posited that an Attribution-ShareAlike license was identical in spirit to the OGL, if wider in scope.
One of the replies pointed out that the OGC must be under the OGL, but the PI could in fact be under another license - such as Alderac's goodies clause that allows reuse of spell names.

So, my plan for my first PDF is as follows:
* Place all rule information under the OGL, including spell and feat names.
* Place the PI in the rest of the book under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons license.

The intention is that all the OGC is reusable per normal, and that you can freely copy, reuse, and repurpose the PI as long as I am credited.
My question? Well, I'm going to release the book as a PDF, and my question is one of packaging. How can I make it clear that the PI is freely available but that the OGC is under a different license?

I'm also curious as to whether or not anyone would use the CC-licensed stuff - besides the artwork, which is mostly public domain or CC-licensed anyway.

I have actually thought of this myself... in fact, if I thought I could get away with it (I don't) I would have included a clause in my own PDF works to the effect of "this work is put into the public domain effective Jan 1, 2010" or somesuch. But I don't think I can get away with that under the OGL, and I can't guarantee credit doing it that way (which seems important to you).

Your idea, however has merit, since you are free to license PI in any fashion you wish. The only caveat: make darn sure it's PERFECTLY clear exactly what is PI and what is OGC so that it's obvious which license to use (an extreme version of me says print all OGC and the OGL in black Arial font and all PI and the CC license in dark blue Times New Roman Font - it will look the same coming out of a B&W printer but will be abundantly clear what's under what license).

A great idea, and I applaud it (and will look for it), but that's one thing to make sure is absolutely clear... to use my "six-year-old" rule, make sure that a six-year-old could look at any single word in the document and immediately be able to tell you which license (OGL or CC) applies.

--The Sigil

 

[Angellis_ater]

Sorry to work some Thread Necromancy on this issue - but has anyone published material under both the CC license and the OGL?

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

There is a company, The Impossible Dream, that has published the same game using each license but as separate files, not combined. In a thread on the Open Gaming Foundation listserv some time back, I inquired about the way the OGL and CC play together, and I was told, in very simple terms, they don't because of the way the OGL is structured. I didn't really pursue the issue more at the moment because of time constraints, but it might be worth it to revisit the debate.

Personally I think CC is a lot more flexible, and it's certainly the license of choice for the Forge crew, for example. I, however, still only publish using the OGL and I don't know if I would switch completely to CC yet.