Draft: Limited License for Citing the Source of OGC

[Tav_Behemoth]

There have been a number of threads recently about publishers wanting to directly cite one another's work, and be cited in return when their open content is re-used; I've drafted a limited license that I hope will facilitate such citation, and I'd be grateful for comments or opinions about it.

The first part is a preface that would appear before the license in each book of the Masters and Minions series, the second is the license itself (as it'd appear in Book 1):

Behemoth3, Inc. enthusiastically supports the open source licensing movement, and we salute the creators of the Open Game License for this revolutionary contribution to our community. In this spirit we are honored to release sections of this book as open game content, which we hope other creators will be inspired to re-use and build upon in their own works. If you do, we encourage you to use the following limited license. We feel that citation of the source in which an idea originally appeared is essential to the vitality of all open intellectual systems, and this limited license is designed to facilitate such citation. We hope that other publishers will consider including similar licenses in their own releases.

Limited License for the Use of Product Identity (PI) To Attribute the Source Of Open Game Content (OGC)

Behemoth3, Inc. hereby grants royalty-free limited license to use the product identity elements “Behemoth3, Inc.,” “Masters and Minions”, “Horde Book 1,” and “A Swarm of Stirges” in works which reuse open game content from this book under the terms of the Open Game License. These PI elements may be used only for the purpose of attributing the source in which the OGC that is being re-used originally appeared. Any work making use of these elements must 1) designate these elements as product identity in accordance with section 1(e) of the Open Game License version 1.0a and 2) bear a notice declaring the fact that Behemoth3, Inc. and Masters and Minions are trademarks of Behemoth3, Inc. and that Horde Book 1: A Swarm of Stirges is copyright 2004 Behemoth3, Inc.

 

[D_Sinclair]

There have been a number of threads recently about publishers wanting to directly cite one another's work, and be cited in return when their open content is re-used; I've drafted a limited license that I hope will facilitate such citation, and I'd be grateful for comments or opinions about it.

The first part is a preface that would appear before the license in each book of the Masters and Minions series, the second is the license itself (as it'd appear in Book 1):

Behemoth3, Inc. enthusiastically supports the open source licensing movement, and we salute the creators of the Open Game License for this revolutionary contribution to our community. In this spirit we are honored to release sections of this book as open game content, which we hope other creators will be inspired to re-use and build upon in their own works. If you do, we encourage you to use the following limited license. We feel that citation of the source in which an idea originally appeared is essential to the vitality of all open intellectual systems, and this limited license is designed to facilitate such citation. We hope that other publishers will consider including similar licenses in their own releases.

Limited License for the Use of Product Identity (PI) To Attribute the Source Of Open Game Content (OGC)

Behemoth3, Inc. hereby grants royalty-free limited license to use the product identity elements “Behemoth3, Inc.,” “Masters and Minions”, “Horde Book 1,” and “A Swarm of Stirges” in works which reuse open game content from this book under the terms of the Open Game License. These PI elements may be used only for the purpose of attributing the source in which the OGC that is being re-used originally appeared. Any work making use of these elements must 1) designate these elements as product identity in accordance with section 1(e) of the Open Game License version 1.0a and 2) bear a notice declaring the fact that Behemoth3, Inc. and Masters and Minions are trademarks of Behemoth3, Inc. and that Horde Book 1: A Swarm of Stirges is copyright 2004 Behemoth3, Inc.

Here at ARP, we use superscripted enumeration of the OGC, block by block, and just number the entries in the copyright notice section of the OGL license, sort of a combination of bibliography and footnoting techniques.

Anyway, the OGL requires you include a copyright notice in section 15 of the license for each OGC source you use. So that's already half way to a direct citation.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

Here at ARP, we use superscripted enumeration of the OGC, block by block, and just number the entries in the copyright notice section of the OGL license, sort of a combination of bibliography and footnoting techniques.

Anyway, the OGL requires you include a copyright notice in section 15 of the license for each OGC source you use. So that's already half way to a direct citation.

I commend your use of that strategy! The only other publisher I know of who's taken that approach is Steven Peterson of Second World Simulations (in the cases where he couldn't get permission from the publisher to cite them directly), although I think Joe Browning of Expeditious Retreat Press is also considering it for his Monster Geographica series.

Admirable as it is, though, it's kind of a kludgy work-around. I think a direct citation that's free to use the name of the source and its publisher outside the limited context of the Section 15 declaration has more potential to benefit publishers and readers--so that's what the draft I'm proposing is meant to facilitate.

I don't agree, however, that a copyright notice in Section 15 is anywhere near the standards of citation that are considered essential in other communities like science and academia. In a second or third generation work, the source you're re-using content from has a big list of Section 15 copyrights of its own, so the ratio of actual citations to "junk DNA" can quickly grow very large.