The Ethics of Sharing Open Content

[Savage Jim]

Well, if you'd read it you know it isn't there. But tin the past the difference between the two has shown up in many forum topics.

1 (b)"Derivative Material" means copyrighted material including derivative works and translations (including into other computer languages), potation, modification, correction, addition, extension, upgrade, improvement, compilation, abridgment or other form in which an existing work may be recast, transformed or adapted;

1 (c) "Distribute" means to reproduce, license, rent, lease, sell, broadcast, publicly display, transmit or otherwise distribute;

1 (g) "Use", "Used" or "Using" means to use, Distribute, copy, edit, format, modify, translate and otherwise create Derivative Material of Open Game Content.

 

[Man-thing]

A few companies have been "written off" either for their use of crippled-OGC (Mongoose, Malhavoc), confusing or repeatedly incorrect/incompleate OGC-declarations (Mongoose, Living Imagination), and cripple-ware online publishing techniques (Malhavoc).

What is your criteria for writing someone off. I recently wrote a product that is currently in layout and I wanted to use some content from the Book of the Planes by MGP and reading there declaration at the bottom I sought clarification and sent Matthew Sprange an email.

Within a day I got a clear response and was allowed to use the content I wanted. Seemed pretty simple to me.

Not a simple as to use as Ronin Arts OGC info but not particularly difficult.

 

[eyebeams]

In my opinion, since there IS no way of imposing one's ethical views upon others, people should stop trying.

It's INTERESTING to share one's views of ethics, but it's futile to insist other people agree with you.

Actually, general agreement ethical decisions in all walks of life and beliefs is rather commonly attained. It's why we can have things like ethics boards.

Beliefs about what are right or wrong are, by their very nature, prescriptive. By default, failing to hold others to an ethical standard is egoistic. You wish to have certain ethical standards apply to you, but don't care to extend that kind of fairness to other people. So it is in of itself, an imposition.

 

[Savage Jim]

What is your criteria for writing someone off.

Well, let's see...

I recently wrote a product that is currently in layout and I wanted to use some content from the Book of the Planes by MGP and reading there declaration at the bottom I sought clarification...

Stop right there. While this may happen from time to time (poopy happens), fact is that the license insists that OGC must be clearly indicated. So when a company's declarations routinely require clarification, one might ask where their ethics regarding the license is concerned.

For instance, a few publishers like to take the route of "the rule is OGC but the text is ours". This raises the question: If the text isn't OGC, then where in the published work is the OGC? Rather, you have a book/pdf full of text describing OGC, but no actual OGC within the work itself since none of the text can be reproduced.

 

[BryonD]

If someone produces OGC, they have already granted permission for it to be printed, so long as the OGL is obeyed.

It isn't a matter of simply being legal, it is fully authorized by the publisher.
It isn't even slightly an exploitation to do that which you have explicit permission to do.

Now, it may be a really nice gesture to choose to NOT do it. But not doing a nice gesture is simply neutral. I can walk up to a game producer and hand them a $100 donation for doing such cool stuff. That would also be a nice gesture. But there is nothing wrong with not doing that nice gesture.

As to crashing the market, I don't buy that for a minute. Heck, there is WotC stuff all over the web that is flat out illegal. But they don't stop. And if you want to claim that this is because WotC is big, there is Green Ronin and even ENWorld stuff out there as well. I'm certain this does some finite damage to those companies. But that illegal stuff isn't enough to push them out. I certainly don't believe that legal reproduction would do what piracy doesn't. (That's not to say that it won't make a nice excuse for companies that go under anyway....)

Further, I have to shift through a ton of stuff already to see what I want to spend my gaming budget on. In the non-real scenario that some companies bailed, I just have that much less I ended up not getting. And despite the theory of the D20 glut, there still seems to be 3 new companies for every 2 that go under. And the list of semi-famous to very famous free-lancers is only growing. So if anyone does bail, well, "Next."

We've had OGL for 5 years now. When is the reproduction collapse going to start? Why didn't it start 54 months ago?


As for me personally, the last OGL product I bought was the Cavalier's Handbook (Green Ronin, very disappointed in the Order rules, but the rest really rocked and I strongly recommend it). Anyway, if it fell in a fire I'd pay for another print copy gladly before I downloaded some text file of just the OGL stuff.