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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aspirinsmurf" data-source="post: 8913882" data-attributes="member: 98748">Yes. But it's the Contributors, in the plural, in section 4. It's not "each Contributor separately". They are somehow acting collectively (or on behalf of each other) when they all, inter alia, grant You the right to Distribute, copy and modify "the Open Game Content." They have previously granted each other those rights, and the definition of Distribute includes a right to license, opening the door for sub-licensing. Indeed, the termination clause in section 13 specifies that these sublicenses survive termination.My interpretation does mean that the declarations of OGC downstream should be inclusive of any material included that is already declared to be OGC, yes. This has generally been the case in professional products tough. Even if it's not necessarily how a court would rule it to work, most OGL users have intended to treat any derived works arising from OGC as OGC by default, thus growing the pool of OGC. That's the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft" target="_blank">copyleft</a> part of it. And it's a feature, not a bug.There have been few attempts at taking someone's OGC, altering it only slightly and claiming it as Product Identity. Arguably, this isn't allowed. It's certainly not in the spirit of the thing. Everyone wanted a growing pool of rules expressions available under the license. This makes creating new games and mechanics easier and less risky for everyone, since you can copy others verbatim instead of having to do <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design" target="_blank">clean room design</a>. Innovations would be shared, not closed off.Incidentally, these are the same concerns driving the idea of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software" target="_blank">open source programming</a>. It's not unique to the RPG industry at all.This would almost certainly have to be the case if the license was going to work as originally intended.I agree with your last sentence here.</blockquote>

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