OGL and Creative Commons

[JBowtie]

I'm looking at releasing some free OGL material, and was wondering if anyone else has thought about the implications of using a Creative Commons license.

Ideally, I would release the material as public domain material, but I believe that is incompatible with the OGL and d20 licenses.

After a careful reading of the various licenses at creativecommons.org, I *think* that the Attribution-ShareAlike license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/) is most compatible with the OGL, since it requires attribution (per section 15), allows commercial use, and requires perpetuation of the license (per the OGL).
The Attribution license is also attractive but may not be compatible with the requirement that derived works also carry the OGL.

I am interested in opinions on the matter of compatibility with the d20 license as well.

 

[The Sigil]

Ideally, I would release the material as public domain material, but I believe that is incompatible with the OGL and d20 licenses.

{ #include IANAL.disclaimer }

You are correct. In fact, I don't think you'd be able - easily - to use the Creative Commons license "side-by-side" with the OGL unless you were creating something "whole-cloth" and did not reference the System Reference Document. Why not?

Because when you use another's material as a source - either copying it or making a derivative work thereof - you are in violation of copyright UNLESS you have a specific agreement with the copyright holder on the original (we will exclude for a moment "Fair Use" applications for the sake of simplicity).

One of the provisions of the OGL is that you must use the Open Game License to re-distribute OGC and/or derivative works thereof (material that would be in violation of copyright absent the OGL). The direct consequence of this is that you do NOT have a license to release copied material/derivative work into the Public Domain or under the CC license or any other license - it HAS to be the OGL.

Now, there may be portions of your work that are NOT copied/derived from OGC sources but are your own inventions. The easy example is a monster... the description of the way the monster looks, how it acts, what it eats, and so forth is probably "whole cloth" your own invention (i.e., you are the clear copyright holder and it is not a derivative of another copyrighted work). However, its "stat block" of Hit Dice, Damage dice, Saves, etc. is clearly derivative work of the SRD. Conceivably, you could designate the Stat Block as Open Game Content and release the description as Public Domain material (or Creative Commons-licensed or what have you). But that does increase the "Degree of Difficulty" in getting your designations right.

In essence, if you had to use the OGL to get "permission" to do something (copyright-wise), you can't Public Domain it or use the CC license. You CAN conceivably create a dual-licensed work - one that has some portions of the work OGC and some portions PD/CC. (Note that since OGC can include "anything the copyright holder wants to add," all PD/CC material can be made into OGC, though not all OGC can be made into PD/CC material).

At the end of the day, though, I think it's simpler to just release the *whole thing* as Open Game Content - perhaps with a small license that says, "if you use my work, you may credit me using this phrase: blah blah blah" so that Credit can be given pursuant to a "separate agreement" as required by the OGL. Regardless, you are assured of receiving credit in the Section 15 of the re-user's OGL copy. What you CAN'T do is mandate that they release the entirety of their product as OGC (a real pity, IMO), but that is the cost you pay for simplicity and ease of designation.

Hope that was more or less clear.

--The Sigil