Important License Changes

[HighmoonMedia]

One of the biggest points of contention around here has been the license under which CORE would be released due to the fact that one of the sources of CORE was The Shadow of Yesterday, by Clinton R. Nixon. TSoY was released under a Creative Commons: Attribution-ShareAlike license which ensured that anything derived from those rules had to be released as well under the same license.

That is not the case anymore and this is important for CORE:

Clinton has changed and re-released TSoY as a Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 license. Yep, that's it, Attribution.

He has also created a TSoY wiki where you can find the entirety of the text of that book (it's slowly being edited, but the lion's share is already there). It's basically the TSoY SRD.

What this means for CORE is that we can now decide on what the proper open license for it will be, since we are not bound by the previous ShareAlike clause anymore. We can have that conversation below.

[HighmoonMedia]

So new we have a blank slate for the license. As long as we credit Clinton in the CORE book/materials, we comply with his CC license.

That said, I still think that, for CORE, a CC license is a better choice than the OGL, and suggest we go with a Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Unported License, much like Clinton did.

Why?
Because it is simple and achieves the goals we'd be looking for with CORE: this CC license allows anyone to create derivates of the work (new rules, adventures, campaigns, etc.) whether they are for private or commercial purposes (for your game or for sale), requires the source be identified (to which end we create a specific attribution byline, which includes the credits for CORE as well as Clinton, that can be used to fulfill this requisite), and is valid internationally (the Unported part).

I like the OGL, but for this work, I think the OGL may be a bit of an overkill (especially the section 15 part, not to mention that OGL and CC do not play together). We also save ourselves the association with OGL-meaning-d20-without-the-logo. CC allows this game to stand on its own two feet and be accessible to any gamer with a very low legalese entry point.

Thoughts?

[imworlds]

Is there a way to separate story and world content from mechanics content, so that if someone releases a setting and characters that he/she would like to retain commercial license rights for, he/she would be able to do so?

[HighmoonMedia]

I'd have to check how the CC handles that, especially since we're looking to release Lonnie's world as a CORE setting. The OGL allows for this eventuality, and that's where it has a clear advantage. I'll see what I can find.

[Lord Z]

Thanks a heap, Daniel.

[imworlds]

By the way, I'm looking forward to seeing the Daughter of the Sun setting described in campaign terms.

[Lord Z]

I've been unable to actually find a copy of this license that I can paste into the back of the newest version of C.O.R.E. I don't want to image-capture two pages from Version 1 and paste them in as a couple of ugly-big .gif files. Even the Creative Commons website seems reluctant to give up this mission-critical data. Does anyone know where we can get the text of an actual Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license rather than just a description of it?

[HighmoonMedia]

This is the full legalese CC Att 3.0 - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/legalcode
The human-readable version - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

[Lord Z]

Daniel to the rescue! Thank you D, that is exactly what I needed.

Okay, here is what is written directly before a copy of the license...

C.O.R.E. is released under a Creative Commons license. Specifically, this is a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. That means all information in this document is considered to be Open Source – like the plays of William Shakespeare or the music of Amadeus Mozart. Yes, you may use it for free. In fact, you may even any information or text from this document in your own creations. The catch is that any derived products by default become Open Source themselves. Published works you create with Creative Commons content should include a copy of the Creative Commons license. You are also required by the details of this license to give credit to the Dragon's Landing Inn for the creation of C.O.R.E. when deriving other works from it.

Does that look correct to everyone?

We are in the home-stretch. All that remains is one last hard edit, and then I'm finished. During that edit, I intend to give Chuck Dixon credit for the Secret-concept from which we derived our Talents-mechanism.

[Lord Z]

Pardon the tread necromacy. I thought I should document what is happening. I've done a little investgation of the 3.0 licenses. Version 1 of C.O.R.E. was a 2.5 licensed work, so I took a closer look at 3.0. If Chuck can update from 2.5 to 3.0, then I don't see why we can't do this as well. I haven't gotten into the details nearly as deeply as Daniel, but I can confirm the just of what he wrote. 3.0 does seem more in line with what we want. The Share-alike licenses state that derived works 'may' be released under the same share-alike licenses. That seems to indicate that it's an option not a requirement, but I am not certain. I do think it is optional enough to switch to a 3.0 license as a derivative of the original since that seems to be exactly whay Chuck did. Furthermore, 3.0 suggests more freedom for Lonnie and similar authors to protect their own intellectual property.

One mistake I made was in not realizing that Creative Commons and Pulbic Domain are two completely different entities. Thus, I will have to change is my bad wording in the above paragraph.

[Lord Z]

I think I am starting to get a handle on these legal classifications. Creative Commons are not Public Domain. Creative Commons are Open Source. Public Domain is also part of Open Source but a separate category than Creative Commons.

Here is the new question. Who exactly gets the attribution? If we release with a 3.0 Attribution License, then we should explain who the next person needs to credit. We could instruct them to credit Lonnie (since he was the lead designer of Version 1), or Chuck and Lonnie (since they own the DL website), or the entire DLI community. Version 1 never specified.

[glinbog]

Bugger!