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Trifletraxor

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A really big issue to get over with first is how we would license the work.

Gwenthia uses a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license for the material available at their website (will this continue to be the case for Gwenthia, or will the following publications be copyrighted Tom?).

That license allows people to share and distribute the work as they like as long as it's done noncommercially, and that any derivative work can be made as long as it is released under the same license. The original creator can make a commercial product for it though.

I think that license probably work very well for Gwenthia, as it's developed by a closed group of people. It does stop others from making professional products for the world though, so I think the best license if we want to make a truly open world is the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. With this one, anyone can use the material, for commercial and uncommercial project, free distribution, but very limited rights for those who develope it. Anyone who develope more for this setting would then have to release it under the same license.

I'm not sure how the OGL lisence work. Does it give any advantages? Anyone familiar with any other "some rights reserved" license?

Maybe the best would be a license that allowed a limited copyright, in which the author would retain the commercial rights for original work f.ex. 5 years, after which it went over to the CC license above. Commercial derivative work should be allowed in the meantime though. That way you would make people able to make commercial products with some rights, but without stopping the creative process of others in the meantime.

There a defference between project 1 & 2 though. Project one, created by many people cooperating should probably have the most limited license. Those settings that are created by individual members for the shared universe project should probably be allowed to have a bit stricter license, with the commercial rights, if that's what they would want.

Opinions?

SGL.

Ef plest master, this mighty fine grub!
b1.gif 116/420. High Priest.

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What you want is the most open possible licence.

That way, if someone writes something for the shared world and then wants to make it available to other games, say Mongoose RQ, then they could use Mongoose's OGL for the RQ part and this licence for the shared world part with no problems.

What you don't want is for people to be unable to share the world with other games.

Why would people want to use RQM with the world? Because they might want to use rules from RQM or extracts from settings already covered by an OGL. So, someone using Legendary Abilties or RQ-style magic might want to use the OGL.

Should there be a problem with having multiple licences for a particular piece of work in a shared world? I doubt it and I'd hope there wouldn't be.

Perhaps you could have one licence covering the extra rules and another covering the setting.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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I actually agree and would go for the fullest and free est CC licence or OGL.

OGL is good if you want to integrate with Mongoose RuneQuest, although you'll need to be careful not to actually integrate any copyrighted material from Chaosium into the Open Game Content by mistake. GORE is a good basis, since it is very well licensed under OGL. Problem is is isn't BRP as write by Chaosium. All of this would be so easily solved if only Chaosium would create a core SRD and release it under OGL.

To my mind release all content and new stuff under the widest attribution CC licence. It doesn't stop anyone doing anything with it, but still give credit to the original authors.

Let's face it, we won't make money, so let's share..

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What you want is the most open possible licence.

Fully agree, but it might stop some people from contributing if they have to release all their rights for a setting they have made all by themself (for the shared universe) or from making people make commercial products for the world for the shared world. I think those who contribute entire settings for the shared universe should be able to chose to go for the noncommercial CC license if they want. For the shared world, I think maybe a CC license which allow full commercial use also would be the best way to stimulate new material.

That way, if someone writes something for the shared world and then wants to make it available to other games, say Mongoose RQ, then they could use Mongoose's OGL for the RQ part and this licence for the shared world part with no problems.

Hmm... With the CC license, you couldn't add the OGL license on top of it when doing derivative work, as that would restrict the use further. You're bringing up a valid point there.

Perhaps you could have one licence covering the extra rules and another covering the setting.

That might be a good solution. :)

GORE is a good basis, since it is very well licensed under OGL. Problem is is isn't BRP as write by Chaosium. All of this would be so easily solved if only Chaosium would create a core SRD and release it under OGL.

That would be great, but there's currently no indications that it is going to happen.

To my mind release all content and new stuff under the widest attribution CC licence. It doesn't stop anyone doing anything with it, but still give credit to the original authors.

Not even include the share alike?

SGL.

Ef plest master, this mighty fine grub!
b1.gif 116/420. High Priest.

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Well, I believe the way the OGL lisence works is that not everything is open. In most OGL games there are certain things that are not part of the OGL. That is why the SRD is different from the product. For instance MRQ is open, but Gloanthan MRQ stuff isn't. We'd can just do the same.

I would suggest not going with creative commons just because we can't license the BRP stuff, and would need to go with OGL to use RQ anyway, and a second lisence would complicate things.

But I for one am more concerned with getting something off the ground that intellectual property rights for something that won't be generating a lot of money for any of us anyway. We'd have better odds of making money off a lottery ticket.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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Well, I believe the way the OGL lisence works is that not everything is open. In most OGL games there are certain things that are not part of the OGL. That is why the SRD is different from the product. For instance MRQ is open, but Gloanthan MRQ stuff isn't. We'd can just do the same.

OGL have the product identity, which is a pretty strong copyright the author can put on anything that isn't pure rules.

I would suggest not going with creative commons just because we can't license the BRP stuff, and would need to go with OGL to use RQ anyway, and a second lisence would complicate things.

Whe can license the world though. For the rules, we could go with some very open d100 rules, that would make it compatible with all the other d100 games - or just mark that the rules are not part of the license, that they're the copyright of Chaosium.

But I for one am more concerned with getting something off the ground that intellectual property rights for something that won't be generating a lot of money for any of us anyway.

We're not going to make money on this, that is right. But I think a ShareAlike licence will promote the "openess" part of it.

SGL.

Ef plest master, this mighty fine grub!
b1.gif 116/420. High Priest.

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Would producing the setting as 'systemless' onder a license like the CC work, and then produce statistic packs for individual game systems? Kind of like what Green Ronon is doing for Freeport (though for different reasons)?

For example, produce a city detailing a town, all it's major personalities, etc, but with no rules, so no outside license is required. Then produce a stat-pack under the OGL for MRQ (easy) and BRP (which is where Chaosiums restrictive licensing comes into play :().

Such an approach could work, though I see 2 problems:

1) What to do with new rules as part of the setting, such as new spells or agic systems? I guess those could be treated like the stat packs though.

2) I would really like a tight integration of setting and rules in some areas, such as the CUlt writeups, where spells and game effects particular to cults would be included in the cult writeup.

Help kill a Trollkin here.

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I'd say that a CC or OGL (but not both) core set of rules could be done.

I think the generic core under CC and then an OGL rule pack for RuneQuest or GORE and a "hey don't sue us" rule pack for BRP.

That ways the rules guys can play in their fave system, the setting people can just riff and have fun and anyone who wants to run it with Savage Worlds or Castle and Crusades can..

BTW this is exactly what we did with Gwenthia, how strange I never said it:

Setting and Rules are best Separate

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I don't understand license stuff, but does it accommodate this concept...?

Authors control their own 'World', including anything contributed to that world, but other people are free to copy and extend/modify it (within the project) without the original Author's permission, so long as they mark it as "a version of XXX's World". (I think I've seen software licensed like that (GNU?))

Britain has been infiltrated by soviet agents to the highest levels. They control the BBC, the main political party leaderships, NHS & local council executives, much of the police, most newspapers and the utility companies. Of course the EU is theirs, through-and-through. And they are among us - a pervasive evil, like Stasi.

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1) What to do with new rules as part of the setting, such as new spells or agic systems? I guess those could be treated like the stat packs though.

New rules could be licensed the same way as the world. No problem there, new creation could be shared as we want.

2) I would really like a tight integration of setting and rules in some areas, such as the CUlt writeups, where spells and game effects particular to cults would be included in the cult writeup.

Cult writeups can easily form a part of the setting proper, if you don't use BRP's power chapter straight of the book.

Authors control their own 'World', including anything contributed to that world, but other people are free to copy and extend/modify it (within the project) without the original Author's permission, so long as they mark it as "a version of XXX's World". (I think I've seen software licensed like that (GNU?))

Sounds like a good license for the shared Universe. Can you track it down?

SGL.

Ef plest master, this mighty fine grub!
b1.gif 116/420. High Priest.

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Sounds like a good license for the shared Universe. Can you track it down?

Here we go:

The GNU General Public License - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

Yes, it's designed for software, but they say you can use it for any work:

Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses

If you look at "The Foundations of the GPL" and for "software" read "setting", it seems right:

A Quick Guide to GPLv3

These guys seem to know what they're doing, and it's a worthy cause. Freedom!

Britain has been infiltrated by soviet agents to the highest levels. They control the BBC, the main political party leaderships, NHS & local council executives, much of the police, most newspapers and the utility companies. Of course the EU is theirs, through-and-through. And they are among us - a pervasive evil, like Stasi.

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Are there problems with the CC license? Has Gwenthia experienced any limitations to it in practice? It seems well suited.

While I fully acknowledge the need for a good license, I admit researching good licenses is not my primary interest in the project. If CC has worked for a shared project in the past, I'm all for using it.

As much as I'd like to have the setting integrated with the rules, the lack of an open license for BRP kind of prohibits that, so rules free setting material under the CC and rules specific game packs under the OGL seem the way to go.

Help kill a Trollkin here.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Having some descent knowledge of licenses and law (law school student) I'd like to throw in my 2c.

If you want to keep the project accessible to as many as possible I would go for GNU GPL. While the Creative Commons licenses have been specifically designed for works other that sourcecode and works very well, the CC licenses lack one feature that (IMHO) would be important in a project such as this and that is access to the "source". Even if you publish PDF-files that are easy to print people that wants to build upon your material will need the raw text in a word-processor format. You will also want to have easy access to the creations of those that spin off from this project and the GPL enables you to request the source and CC licenses don't (nor does the OGL). So I would recommend you to go with GPL.

As for splitting Setting and Rules. That's probably a good idea - design wise. Statblocks aren't really copyrightable nor are rules as such so there's no real reason - legally speaking - to separate the two but it's probably a good idea out of practical reason. When designing computer software the mechanics (the code) is as much as it's possible separated from the user interface so that the UI designers can work without having to bother with the doings of the coders. Having a setting with all the details needed for play would enable people to use the setting with their favourite system. Which would make your material much more useful and allow you to target at wider audience.

/Peter Brink

Peter Brink

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...the CC licenses lack one feature that (IMHO) would be important in a project such as this and that is access to the "source"... So I would recommend you to go with GPL.

This sounds like there may be problems with the CC after all. But what would it mean in practice? Could someone create their own setting based on the SharedWorld(s), and deny the rest of us the ability to use that version? Could they use it for their own profit? Would we be unable to modify anothers work, and be stuck with their exact text?

Britain has been infiltrated by soviet agents to the highest levels. They control the BBC, the main political party leaderships, NHS & local council executives, much of the police, most newspapers and the utility companies. Of course the EU is theirs, through-and-through. And they are among us - a pervasive evil, like Stasi.

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This sounds like there may be problems with the CC after all. But what would it mean in practice? Could someone create their own setting based on the SharedWorld(s), and deny the rest of us the ability to use that version? Could they use it for their own profit? Would we be unable to modify anothers work, and be stuck with their exact text?

With the CC3 license, people can try to create profit from ShareWorld, but anything they create must also be released with the same license - which means everyone can distribute copy it, distribute it, etc. (so making a profit from it will be very hard).

The only difference is that with the GPL license (as I understand it, please correct me if I'm wrong), if someone created a pdf for ShareWorld, they would also be obligated to hand over the word document it was created from if anyone requested it. Maybe we should take a closer look at that license. :cool:

SGL.

Ef plest master, this mighty fine grub!
b1.gif 116/420. High Priest.

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