... now with 35% more arrogance!

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Clone License

While I work on the tables for the cheat sheets (finally!) I've been thinking about licensing. Even though I kind of find the OGL annoying, I figure this will be an OGL document; it will help to protect the stuff that resembles stuff in the LBBs but is also included in the d20 SRD. Anything that isn't in the SRD will have to be tinkered with to make it unique.

However, I've been thinking about how to create a supplementary license for the product identity stuff, similar to the way the D20 STL defined under which circumstances you could use WotC trademarks to indicate compatibility with their products. I want:
  • to allow people to use certain parts of my product identity in their own products, so long as they give proper attribution;
  • to allow people to make comparisons or references to or express compatibility with Liber Zero in their own products without having to go through semantic gymnastics;
  • to protect the text of a complete, final document, particularly if I plan on publishing such a document commercially.
I figure I can do that by creating two versions of Liber Zero: an SRD (which I've previously referred to as a summary) which would include all the core rules and would be completely playable, and a full document, which would have things like unique spells, monsters, and setting material. The SRD would be released under a Creative Commons Attribution license, allowing anyone to build derivative RPGs, copy tables, or create supplements for Liber Zero as long as they include the proper attribution, such as "based on Liber Zero by John Laviolette". The full document would not be under that license and would thus be protected.

I'll have to work on exact wording of the attribution clause and decide what other material beyond the basics should go into the SRD. If anyone has any comments about what they think should be included, or personal experiences with licensing their own game materials, I'd appreciate it.

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