azmodean said:
I understand the difficulty of policing new material for OGL compatability, but couldn't you just lock the SRD portion of it to eliminate that part of the headache? (the whole point is to get the extra content nayway, right?)
That's not the part I'd be most worried about.
The extra content, worst case scenario, could be swiped from other people's books, including Intellectual Property, it could be rules that someone didn't release in their books to OGC, it could be someone just copying straight out of a WotC book - hence the need for Universe's diligent moderators, or my "advisory staff" (same thing basically).
Example:
Someone copies one of Monte Cook's spells, whole cloth. They've just violated the OGL, because his spell mechanics are open content, BUT his Spell names are not. Someone needs to edit it to avoid lawsuit.
A more complicated example? Someone copies part of the Unearthed Arcana - the portion on Vitality Points. There are so many Star Wars and other IP references in that section, that it would almost need to be rewritten to be used. Cergorach (poster here) ran into this same deal with his OGL projects, and had to go slower to take this into account.
A more close-to-home example? Someone starts posting (legally) all of Phil Reed's Ronin Arts stuff to the OGL Wiki. Phil gets out of the business, or changes his practices such that ALL future material is non-OGL.
We've had the discussion on re-posting all OGL as SRD's in PDF format in the past, and the discussion never ends well.
A site where people could VOLUNTEER their own OGL rules would be great (the "spirit" of Wiki), but in practice there are a lot of people who don't consider the ramifications of ripping off someone else's material, legally or not, and do it "just to screw The Man."
NOTE: Not saying anyone is actively doing this that I know (Cergorach included) - most people wanting to reuse OGL are at the least trying to act as ethically circumspectly as they come. But we ALL know that there are some rather crass people in the world who don't consider it.