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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DanMcS" data-source="post: 2810052" data-attributes="member: 6530">It doesn't have to be open.  Game mechanics are not covered by copyright.  That was Yair's statement; he can republish the mechanics of Ars Magica any way he chooses, because ideas are not copyrighted.  He did so (I assume; I don't own Ars Magica).The rewording is the problem.  The OGL is a license to allow someone else to use  copyrighted material.  Game mechanics are not copyrightable, but the text is.  So Open Game Content is text that can be used by anyone else, under the terms of the license.  By making the game mechanics but not the text "open content", Wulf has theoretically released a product that has no open content.He hasn't really, of course, because the OGL specifies that anything derived from open content must be open content, which overrides his PI claim.  He isn't clearly designating the open content, which arguably makes him in breach of the license, and anyone he references in his section 15 could apply for correction.Trying to force a licensee of your OGL book to rewrite the text is missing the point of the OGL entirely.  You don't need the OGL to rewrite someone else's rules and publish them, you could do that before the OGL was conceived of, under copyright law.  Anyone could rewrite Grim Tales entirely, release it as an OGL product, and not reference it in their section 15, because they would not be using any text (open content) from it, just ideas.  Ideas are not covered by copyright or by the Open Game License.  Text is.</blockquote>

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