OGL, ORC, CC or?...

[Alzrius]

yes, that was the point. The big fish at the top of the chain benefits from this, they can decide what to open up and what not, while everyone downstream does not have that choice. To me they all should

The little fish benefit too, since even if the big fish don't make their derivative content open, everyone else does. That's far and away better than everyone else doing like the big fish, and making large amounts of their derivative content not be open.

I completely agree with you that all the fish should have to make their derivative content open; but if I can't have that, I'd rather that there only big a single big fish who doesn't have to, rather than all of the fish not having to.

 

[mamba]

I'm not sure how that refutes the notion that Open licenses are for publishers.

they are used by publishers, they are not the only consideration here. WotC was not trying to only benefit 3pps by creating the OGL, they did so to increase the ‘gravity’ of D&D compared to other games.

More available content attracts more customers and increases the games popularity and reach, which benefits WotC.

 

[mamba]

The little fish benefit too, since even if the big fish don't make their derivative content open, everyone else does. That's far and away better than everyone else doing like the big fish, and making large amounts of their derivative content not be open.

the little fish can decide what to open up and what not to, just like the big fish. Not being able to do that might discourage little fish to create something in the first place too.

I’d rather have a thriving ecosystem in which not everything is open than one that misses out on a lot of options. The negative impact is hard to quantify however, at most we can see how well ORC is doing in comparison

To me a license with less restrictions is better, that includes mandated virality

 

[Gus L]

I see no reason why you cannot carve out parts of a work with different licenses ... including CC licenses as long as it's clear. You can say things like "The text of this work is released under a CC 0 license, but artist, author or creator reserve and retain all rights to any and all illustrations, layout, and typography within the work." Otherwise it'd be hard to pay for fonts in a text that you released under a CC license - you don't have a right to give other people the right to them...

That said the issue here for RPG authors is ... are you gonna sue? Can you sue? Bringing a copyright action is incredibly expensive and difficult. It's worthwhile perhaps if you are a big company like WotC, unlikely to be feasible for an individual artist or even a small company. There's a reason a huge number of books sold on Amazon are pirated copies ... getting any kind of actual damages or even finding copyright violators in spaces like small press or RPG publishing is very very hard and expensive.

The OGL was originally popular because it gave creators the sense the WotC wouldn't sue them for using D&Disms. Law on game mechanics has evolved since it came out - but there's still very little protection from any sort of general license if a big corporation decides to sue you. Not unless you have thousands of dollars laying about to protect your RPG releases.

Personally... I don't stress about licenses.
If WotC or Hasbro comes at me with a cease and desist for using the word "Beholder" to describe an eyeball monster on my blog - I'll delete the post.
If my stuff ends up in various troves or otherwise stolen and posted as PDFs online ... I consider it a compliment.
If someone in the scene decides to steal my stuff an call it their own, the most effective thing I can do to protect my brand is call them out for being a creepy copy cat and hope that others will care (they generally have in similar situations).
If a shady hustler steals my work and reissues it on Amazon as their own ... I might send a letter to Amazon (they don't care I'm pretty sure. Might send a DMCA takedown but not sure it'd work.

Point being - worrying about licenses as a small scale RPG maker feels like worrying about being bitten by a rabid squirrel. It might matter, but what you do now isn't gonna help much if it does.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I disagree with you here

Yep, and I don't think we're going to convince each other. I'll try to help other folks navigate this. Good news for me, the 5.2 SRD (And 5.2 SRD and A5e SRD) are all CC BY so I have nothing to worry about.

And if the CC SA does require the publisher to release everything, derivative material and original material alike, then that's too far in the other direction. There's no happy medium where derivative material must be shared but original material can be without having to be.

The happy medium is in keeping your CC-released material in a separate document. You get to directly say what's released and everything else is not. Some RPG publishers have detailed what parts of their book are and are not released under the CC but it can get complicated and confusing. I think its better to just release a fully-released CC doc. Again, that's what I do.

Largely because most everyone who was qualified to say so agreed that claim was bunk. It was based on a threat with no real chance of being followed up on. I've said before that shady legal threats which won't hold up in court aren't particular to any license; anyone can threaten to sue anyone for anything at any time; while I understand why publishers find even that too much to countenance, it's still a shame that such bogus threats are able to alter the course of an entire industry.

One major publisher who agreed that WOTC's attempt to deauthorize the OGL asked their lawyer what it would take to prove it and the lawyer said "a half a million dollars and a coin flip". So unless you have half a million to throw in our gofundmes, it wasn't going to get proven. CC, on the other hand, has a ton of support from huge companies (we've talked about this on another thread where we also disagreed if I recall). The point still is, the OGL is suspect now. It's probably safe, but why bother with probably when we have stronger licenses we can use?

Which begs the question of just how much of your derivative content do you make open? Because unless the answer is "all of it," then you're giving downstream publishers less than the OGL would mandate, meaning that they lose out because of your actions.

Now, I hope you don't do that, so I'll ask you to make a public pledge right now: will you release all derivative content that you make as open under the CC-BY-4.0?

Give me a break. I don't owe you anything. I don't even know that you know what I make. I release tons of stuff in the CC. Most of what I make doesn't need any license at all but I put it in the CC anyway.

So no, I'm not giving you a pledge. I'll let my actions dictate my value to the hobby.

 

[Alzrius]

the little fish can decide what to open up and what not to, just like the big fish. Not being able to do that might discourage little fish to create something in the first place too.

The little fish cannot decide what's open and what's not, insofar as derivative content goes. And that's to the benefit of all the other little fish, who can use that content which might otherwise not have been released if the publisher had instead elected to keep it closed.

I’d rather have a thriving ecosystem in which not everything is open than one that misses out on a lot of options. The negative impact is hard to quantify however, at most we can see how well ORC is doing in comparison

More open content is what creates more options, by definition. Likewise, we can't really look at the ORC License as any sort of test case for "mandated openness discourages publishers," simply because there are other factors in play for why publishers might not elect to use it.

To me a license with less restrictions is better, that includes mandated virality

To me, a license that gives the most to the community is better, which is what mandated virality does.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The happy medium is in keeping your CC-released material in a separate document. You get to directly say what's released and everything else is not. Some RPG publishers have detailed what parts of their book are and are not released under the CC but it can get complicated and confusing. I think its better to just release a fully-released CC doc. Again, that's what I do.

This is exactly what I did with GEAS. Just easier to have a separate SRD document that's clear to folks.

 

[Alzrius]

Yep, and I don't think we're going to convince each other. I'll try to help other folks navigate this. Good news for me, the 5.2 SRD (And 5.2 SRD and A5e SRD) are all CC BY so I have nothing to worry about.

I've never been a fan of "I got mine, so nuts to you all" standpoints, which is why I think that making derivative content necessarily open is a good thing. That way, you can not only help folks navigate this, but also provide them with content they can use to make a richer and more vibrant community.

The happy medium is in keeping your CC-released material in a separate document. You get to directly say what's released and everything else is not. Some RPG publishers have detailed what parts of their book are and are not released under the CC but it can get complicated and confusing. I think its better to just release a fully-released CC doc. Again, that's what I do.

I thought you were just saying that it was bad that WotC did exactly this, releasing an SRD that was open while making sure that (almost) everything else they published was closed content. Given that it strikes me as axiomatic (and virtuous) that using open content from the community means that you should give back the material you derive from said content to said community, the parsing of two different documents (one open and one not) seems like extra work just so you can make sure to hold more back.

One major publisher who agreed that WOTC's attempt to deauthorize the OGL asked their lawyer what it would take to prove it and the lawyer said "a half a million dollars and a coin flip". So unless you have half a million to throw in our gofundmes, it wasn't going to get proven.

The point of that quote was that nothing (in the law) is absolutely certain until a judge rules on it (and honestly, not even then, since there's an appellate process); that doesn't mean that all threats are equally credible, i.e. don't treat the "coin flip" part of that as meaning it's literally a 50/50 chance of winning on the merits.

CC, on the other hand, has a ton of support from huge companies (we've talked about this on another thread where we also disagreed if I recall). The point still is, the OGL is suspect now. It's probably safe, but why bother with probably when we have stronger licenses we can use?

Again, that "suspect" status is based around issuing threats whose legality was never tested, and anyone can throw unsubstantiated legal threats at anyone for anything at any time. If it never gets to the point of court documents being filed, then what people are turning on is the appearance of strength/weakness, which is not the same thing as the actual strength/weakness.

Give me a break. I don't owe you anything. I don't even know that you know what I make. I release tons of stuff in the CC. Most of what I make doesn't need any license at all but I put it in the CC anyway.

I'm not sure what you mean by "owe [me] anything," but I am curious if the material you've released under the CC has A) used material from other products that was declared open, and B) released the resulting derivative material as open. Can you speak more about that, in detail?

So no, I'm not giving you a pledge. I'll let my actions dictate my value to the hobby.

Let me rephrase this: what's your stance, as a publisher, on making derivative content (where "derivative" means "derived from open content") itself open?

 

[SlyFlourish]

I thought you were just saying that it was bad that WotC did exactly this, releasing an SRD that was open while making sure that (almost) everything else they published was closed content.

I didn't say what WOTC did was bad at all. I think what they're doing is just fine. I'm not a fan of what Kobold Press did with Black Flag. They based Tales of the Valiant on the open 5.1 SRD in the CC but then put out a subset of their own material under ORC, thus forcing everyone downstream to release everything even though they themselves did not. I'd feel differently if they released Black Flag under a CC BY license so we were free to use it without having to adopt ORC or release everything else related under ORC.

I am curious if the material you've released under the CC has A) used material from other products that was declared open, and B) released the resulting derivative material as open. Can you speak more about that, in detail?

You can go dig into my work and find out.

what's your stance, as a publisher, on making derivative content (where "derivative" means "derived from open content") itself open?

I'll let my work represent my stance.

 

[Alzrius]

I didn't say what WOTC did was bad at all. I think what they're doing is just fine. I'm not a fan of what Kobold Press did with Black Flag. They based Tales of the Valiant on the open 5.1 SRD in the CC but then put out a subset of their own material under ORC, thus forcing everyone downstream to release everything even though they themselves did not. I'd feel differently if they released Black Flag under a CC BY license so we were free to use it without having to adopt ORC or release everything else related under ORC.

Right, but isn't that what WotC did? They put out an SRD under the OGL that was a subset of their own material (otherwise not released under any license), forcing everyone downstream of them (i.e. using the SRD) to release everything derived from that even though they themselves did not. Just like Kobold Press; or is there a salient detail that I'm overlooking?

You can go dig into my work and find out.

I'll let my work represent my stance.

Not the best sales pitch I've ever heard for buying your stuff.