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Editing Licenses/OGL
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In 2000 the world's most popular tabletop roleplaying game, | In 2000 the world's most popular tabletop roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons, had its third edition released. A large chunk of the game—most of its rules and some descriptive text—was released under the Open Game License (OGL), a share-alike public copyright licence. | ||
To my knowledge, that was the first time that a market leader adopted a public copyright licence. The OGL was hugely influential within the tabletop roleplaying game industry: many products continue to be released under the OGL, there are databases of OGL content, and | To my knowledge, that was the first time that a market leader adopted a public copyright licence. The OGL was hugely influential within the tabletop roleplaying game industry: many products continue to be released under the OGL, there are databases of OGL content, and D&D's main competitor—Pathfinder—is also under the OGL. | ||
The OGL is also interesting as one of the few examples of a public copyright licence drafted by a private company rather than a government organisation, activist group or individual. | The OGL is also interesting as one of the few examples of a public copyright licence drafted by a private company rather than a government organisation, activist group or individual. | ||
Next year the fifth edition of | Next year the fifth edition of D&D will be released. The fourth edition of D&D wasn't released under the OGL, and is widely considered to have done more poorly than D&D third edition. Given there are current discussions about whether the fifth edition should come under the OGL, it seems appropriate to discuss whether the OGL is an open knowledge licence. | ||
You can download the OGL as an [http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/OGLv1.0a.rtf RTF] here or [http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/ogl.html view it online]. | You can download the OGL as an [http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/OGLv1.0a.rtf RTF] here or [http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/ogl.html view it online]. | ||
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I would be very interested to hear your opinions on whether the OGL could be considered an open knowledge licence. I consider it a libre licence myself, but I can see that Sections 7 and 11 raise problems that might be unresolvable. It's a historically significant licence that's still in wide use today, so I think it's worth discussing. | I would be very interested to hear your opinions on whether the OGL could be considered an open knowledge licence. I consider it a libre licence myself, but I can see that Sections 7 and 11 raise problems that might be unresolvable. It's a historically significant licence that's still in wide use today, so I think it's worth discussing. | ||