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Message: <blockquote data-quote="alex_jurkat" data-source="post: 1429469" data-attributes="member: 13781">OgcWulf,<<The OGL supercedes normal copyright law-- which, by the way, does not apply to "processes" (such as the rules of a game-- though this point is under much debate). The purpose of the OGL is to supplant normal copyright law to protect game rules. You relinquish certain protections of normal copyrights when you use the OGL.>>All correct.  And all part of the reason we did not declare Chapters Three and Five OGL.  Regular copyright rules apply to that material.<<You must understand that 3rd party publishers are both unwilling to risk even a hint of trouble, and respectful of your Open Content declarations.>>That's a risk we're willing to bear to protect our work.  We encourage other publishers with concerns to contract us and discuss them.<<It's not really a trademark issue. It is a mechanics issue. If the mechanics of FoB are Open, other publishers can use them. If those mechanics are not Open, we cannot.>>By opening all but two chapters and by opening the terms we used in all chapters, we believe that others can reference our work, and thereby tweak or expand on it, as long as they don't simply repeat it.<<That's understandable, but unfortunately it is inconsistent with the Open Gaming License.  After all, even WOTC has had large portions of their own Open Content (the SRD) reprinted, verbatim, repackaged and resold. That is the purpose of Open Content. Simply one of the risks that must be assumed when you enter under the OGL, and use the SRD yourself. If it were not for the SRD and the OGL, there would be no Fields of Blood.>>We believe that the purpose of the d20 license (and by incorporation the SRD) is to sell as many WotC products as possible.  We wanted to put the d20 bug on BoW to help its sales.  As a result we needed to comply with that license and include OGC materials.  We were not required to assume the risk that other publisher would reprint our entire work verbatim so we did not do so.<<You need to ask yourself a couple of honest questions.1) Are the rules for Realm Management and Battle derived from Open Content (the SRD)?>>In our opinion, Chapters Three and Five present parallel mechanics that allow easy convertability from the SRD but are not directly derived from the SRD.  As such, we determined that they need not be opened.In the end, we made our OGC call based on our objectives in protecting our work while allowing as much as possible follow-up, our review of other publishers actions (for example, Green Ronin's decision not to open the unique feature of M&M -- Power Points), our understanding of the d20 license, and a desire to cleanly identify the sections of the book that we were not opening.  In my view, we are justified in our approach.  If the result does not actually achieve the balance I hoped for, my goal was to err on the side of too much protection.  We can always open later what is closed; we can't close what has been opened.Thanks,Alex JurkatEden Studios<a href="http://www.edenstudios.net" target="_blank">www.edenstudios.net</a></blockquote>

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