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Interesting Article on OGL and 4E
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<blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4041528" data-attributes="member: 1054"><p>Because, uhm, it's NOT THE SAME LICENSE?</p><p></p><p>They have a free license. This isn't the same as the OGL. Mourn and others keep trying to pretend "OGL" is a generic term, when it isn't. When dealing with matters of law, exact wording is very important -- that's why licenses are in "legalese" and not "plain english" -- it's because plain English just doesn't cut it when every word matters and must be precisely defined.</p><p></p><p>WOTC will be (unless they change their mind again) issuing a free (no up-front cost, except for early adopters), no-pre-approval license to use the D&D 4e trademarks and some (we don't know what or how much) content from the 4e rulebooks. They intend for it to be used for D&D supplements only; how much of their intent translates into law we won't know until we see the license, but the odds are good they will have written themselves some very broad, "at our discretion" withdrawal of permission clauses if anyone starts getting too clever.</p><p></p><p>This license is not the OGL. Period, full stop.</p><p></p><p>If it WAS, none of their "community standards" and other clauses could be enforced. Their sudden realization of what everyone who used the license for the past eight years knows by heart is amusing, and is why the license is now the "GSL". As a second consequence of this, no material covered by the OGL is covered by the GSL. The GSL can't just say "Oh, yeah, we cover it, too". Otherwise, I could write "Lizards Gimme License" (the LGL), and declare it allows me to use material released under the OGL without any of those "viral" clauses. Can't happen. Has no legal weight. The OGL does not in any way remove copyright from the creators. It's a license to use copyrighted material in certain carefully defined ways. No one can access that material via another license automagically; it must be explicitly released, by the copyright holder, under the new license.</p><p></p><p>Oviously, any company which owns the *full* copyright to material released under the OGL can re-release it under the GSL -- but that doesn't include any material derived from the 3x SRD, to which WOTC still retains full copyright. (As they should.) Unless WOTC decides to come up with some twistedly complex terms to sorta kinda maybe a little bit release the SRD under the GSL for purposes of "upgrading", but it will be a legal nightmare to do that and not allow the effective use of the GSL to make 3x compatible material.</p><p></p><p>The actual wording of the GSL is going to be...interesting. And if they want the 4e products of the early adopters to be high-quality enough to avoid another "Foundation" fiasco, they'd better get it out to publishers soon...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lizard, post: 4041528, member: 1054"] Because, uhm, it's NOT THE SAME LICENSE? They have a free license. This isn't the same as the OGL. Mourn and others keep trying to pretend "OGL" is a generic term, when it isn't. When dealing with matters of law, exact wording is very important -- that's why licenses are in "legalese" and not "plain english" -- it's because plain English just doesn't cut it when every word matters and must be precisely defined. WOTC will be (unless they change their mind again) issuing a free (no up-front cost, except for early adopters), no-pre-approval license to use the D&D 4e trademarks and some (we don't know what or how much) content from the 4e rulebooks. They intend for it to be used for D&D supplements only; how much of their intent translates into law we won't know until we see the license, but the odds are good they will have written themselves some very broad, "at our discretion" withdrawal of permission clauses if anyone starts getting too clever. This license is not the OGL. Period, full stop. If it WAS, none of their "community standards" and other clauses could be enforced. Their sudden realization of what everyone who used the license for the past eight years knows by heart is amusing, and is why the license is now the "GSL". As a second consequence of this, no material covered by the OGL is covered by the GSL. The GSL can't just say "Oh, yeah, we cover it, too". Otherwise, I could write "Lizards Gimme License" (the LGL), and declare it allows me to use material released under the OGL without any of those "viral" clauses. Can't happen. Has no legal weight. The OGL does not in any way remove copyright from the creators. It's a license to use copyrighted material in certain carefully defined ways. No one can access that material via another license automagically; it must be explicitly released, by the copyright holder, under the new license. Oviously, any company which owns the *full* copyright to material released under the OGL can re-release it under the GSL -- but that doesn't include any material derived from the 3x SRD, to which WOTC still retains full copyright. (As they should.) Unless WOTC decides to come up with some twistedly complex terms to sorta kinda maybe a little bit release the SRD under the GSL for purposes of "upgrading", but it will be a legal nightmare to do that and not allow the effective use of the GSL to make 3x compatible material. The actual wording of the GSL is going to be...interesting. And if they want the 4e products of the early adopters to be high-quality enough to avoid another "Foundation" fiasco, they'd better get it out to publishers soon... [/QUOTE]
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