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Message: <blockquote data-quote="madelf" data-source="post: 2808953" data-attributes="member: 15415">They don't need to. WotC has made it very easy to use their material (including the actual text) under the OGL. Why bother rewriting it all in a different way (which would be a butt-load of work) when you can simply use it, and in it's current form, by following the terms of their license?Now back before D20 and the OGL, there were companies who produced stuff that was compatible with D&D, without licensing anything from them, and I believe it was tested in court, but on trademark grounds rather than copyright issues (which would tend to indicate that they knew they couldn't make a case for copyright infringement). Actually it wouldn't. The OGL wouldn't be relevant to any (hypothetical) court case that might come about from such a use. As they aren't using the OGL to access your copyrightable material, the OGL has no bearing. So you would need to try and prove that they had violated your copyright, which I suspect would be difficult to do in the face of established precedent that the stuff we're talking about isn't copyrightable.No it isn't really a seperate case. It's not even the only SRD. The only thing that makes it different than anyone else's Open Content is scale and timing. It's a big chunk of content, and it was first. But the OGL applies to it in exactly the same way as it does to any other Open Content. It has to, because it's released under the OGL - that makes it the same as anything else that's been released under the OGL.And that still doesn't explain why, if your interpretation of the proper and responsible use of OGL is correct, they didn't just release the mechanics under the OGL rather than the text. And why don't they tell others to release their Open Content in that manner? Because, Open Content is supposed to be text.If you're re-writing it for tone or style, to make it flow better with your own writing elsewhere in the product, then that makes sense. But otherwise you're just wasting time, because (generally speaking - there are the exceptions, like yourself) those people have released the text as Open Content, specifically allowing you to use it verbatim. I'd even go so far as to say that using the Open Content they released, and then re-writing it to eliminate the text (which they had open in their version) from the Open Content in your own product, is not only pretty damn rude, but rather insulting to the publishers who's content you're using. You're circumventing their intent for your own purposes (taking something they made open and making it, effectively, closed) and that is, bluntly (and IMO only), unethical. I know I'd be pissed if someone were to do that to something I released as Open Content.</blockquote>

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