Jeff Richard

Let me reiterate that I was not making a major criticism of the license and in fact I was impressed with what you all put together. If I had a Tardis, I think I'd go back and write my original comment differently. I labor under the disability of actually being a lawyer, so I usually think about what if things don't work out or go terribly wrong, what will happen to me/my client. (One of the most bitter disputes between former business partners I ever saw was one that started over who got to use the company's hockey tickets. It sounds nutty, but people are funny.) And I think it is perfectly reasonable for a someone to change his mind about the sort of business model he wants to use. Even if someone can't see a reason he would change his mind now, it's not a crime for him to change his mind later, and I think it's best for agreements to explicitly recognize that.

If I were negotiating a license agreement, I might ask for a provision where if I'm terminated for breach of the agreement, I have to cease selling my stock immediately, but if I am terminated for any other reason, I get 6 months to sell it off. (That's not original to me, by the way, I stole the idea from a standard agreement I read once.)

FWIW, I am also a lawyer and the exact same issues were in mind. The HQ Gateway license is designed so that folk who want to publish stuff using the HQ rules can - without doing much more than letting us know what they want to do and then giving us a few copies of the final product. That's about all there is to it.

Naturally the contract is designed to be flexible enough as to protect Moon Design from a wide variety of potential problems, but for the publisher who wants to do their own books using the HQ rules and doesn't want to hassle with Moon Design, it is pretty ideal. If you proposed to do a big print run and big marketing push and wanted some additional security because of the scale of your investment, of course we'd be open to changing certain provisions - but then again, you are already not the "no-hassle" publisher.

Jeff

I was not making a major criticism of the license. In fact, I am impressed that you all did that much work on it. I just thought that the 30 days was a bit short, compared to the 6 month period that a licensee gets if he terminates the license. If most folks do POD, then it probably isn't something to quibble over. (I know RosenMcStern had complained that he had printed books in his warehouse that he's stuck with.)

Let me just jump in here. Under the HQ Gateway license, our main remedy for most breaches of the license is termination. So if you breach the HQG license (by including Gloranthan material, by reprinting large sections of the rules without our permission, by writing FATAL 2, etc), we are going to terminate the license and then you have 1 month to get rid of your stock. That's pretty much the only context I can ever imagine terminating the HQG license and I think everyone producing product under the license is aware of that.

Jeff