Burt Baccara
Explorer
To give some perspective on the leaked OGL 1.1 here is a March 19, 2000 interview with Ryan Dancey.
Minor note: they added CC BY in 2013, but as of right now their SRDs are still dual-licensed.Evil Hat used to use OGL for Fate, But they've now moved to CC3 BY, for similar reasons as I understand.
Which one is the Street Fighter case? Capcom U.S.A. Inc. v. Data East Corp.?I just read the case, following your link in the other thread. The part of your post I've bolded was confined to the context of that case: they were stock characters and stock abilities. The case didn't overturn or question the soundness of the Streetfighter case that held otherwise in respect of certain imaginative special abilities.
Yes, there are cases holding that "perpetual" licenses can be revoked at will. This seems to be the basis for other lawyers who have expressed the opinion that OGL 1.0 is revocable. However, without having reviewed those cases, I would assume that those courts did so based on an analysis of the specific facts at issue there.
Yep. I haven't read it, but it is set out and analysed, at least in part, in the Davinci case.Which one is the Street Fighter case? Capcom U.S.A. Inc. v. Data East Corp.?
The other reason is because, as a matter of fact, heaps of stuff published under the OGL reproduces others' copyrighted text, or text and expression closely related to or derived from others' copyrighted text. Which is not a coincidence - that's exactly the state of affairs the OGL is meant to encourage!@S'mon[/USER] has mentioned that the OGL is still a safer option because of the safe harbor, which I assume is because it’s not settled just where the idea stops and expression begins for tabletop RPGs.
Q: There's a lot of material in the SRD that seems too simple to copyright or comes from the public domain. Why does Wizards of the Coast call the whole thing Open Game Content (OGL)?
A: One of the objectives of the OGL/d20 project is to create a "safe harbor" that clearly identifies material that can be used, derived from, modified, and distributed without fear of litigation. To that end, the SRD contains material that is public domain, copyright, and somewhere in between. But using the OGL, it all carries with it the same, uniform set of rights, thus creating the safe harbor.