Updating the SRDs?

[GypsyComet]

Also the OGL requires that the OGL be in any and all products that use the OGL. No exceptions. Not even Wizards of the Coast and they wrote the thing.

Only for certain definitions of "they". The current WotC, which is to say "Wizards of the Coast, a Division of Hasbro", would like nothing better than to erase the OGL and all material their independent predecessor (the WotC that released Magic and bought D&D) released under it. The two companies bear very little in common, at any level, other than their collections of trademarks.

Fortunately for our endeavors here, Ryan Dancey and the rest of the team that wrote the OGL knew better.

WotC still retains two forms of control over the OGL, however. Neither is worrisome alone, but together they could put a publisher in a rough spot. The first is copyright of the legal document that is the OGL. The second is the "super editorial" control that was added in the 2.0 version, that give WotC the right to C&D any product published under the OGL for "objectionable" content. OGL 2.0, and thus that clause, was tied to the "D20" trademark agreement. Since the D20 TA has now been rescinded, most everyone is using OGL 1.0.

If Mongoose is using OGL 2.0, they should really examine why they are doing so.

 

[Jon Brazer Enterprises]

The Community Standards Clause was in the d20STL, a completely separate license from the OGL. The OGL is irrevocable on a broad spectrum. There are ways to do it to individual companies, but any company that violates them have no business being in business.

There isn't an OGL 2.0. The GSL (the license used for D&D 4E) is a completely different license from the OGL and has no relation to it (from a legal standpoint).

Wizards published 2 books with the OGL in the back of it. MM2 and Unearthed Arcana. All the rest of their books didn't have the license in it because they did not use any open content.

 

[GypsyComet]

Hmm. Something has changed somewhere, then. I saw that clause in a context that threatened far beyond D20, and recently. Since it does not appear to affect MGT, however, I'll leave it alone for now.

 

[rust]

It could have been the trouble with Valar Project's Book of Erotic Fantasy
that caused some minor policy change, as far as I know this was the only
case where a license was withdrawn because of the community standards
issue - but I do not know whether there were other and more general re-
percussions, like a change in the wording of any later license.

 

[Jon Brazer Enterprises]

Also both the Traveller Logo License and the Foreven Free Sector Logo License possess similar community standards spelled out in the license and Mongoose is free to update and modify the license as they see fit at any point in time. So I do have to hold to those standards for products that I want the logo on. This isn't a problem for me. But if I wanted to ignore that part of the license, all I'd have to do is to not put the traveller logo on my product.

For the record, I do not plans to not have the traveller logo on my products for the above reason.

 

[captainjack23]

Also both the Traveller Logo License and the Foreven Free Sector Logo License possess similar community standards spelled out in the license and Mongoose is free to update and modify the license as they see fit at any point in time. So I do have to hold to those standards for products that I want the logo on. This isn't a problem for me. But if I wanted to ignore that part of the license, all I'd have to do is to not put the traveller logo on my product.

For the record, I do not plans to not have the traveller logo on my products for the above reason.

And may I compliment you on not trying to have your cake and eat it too. The book of erotic fantasy did indeed cause a big fallout -particularly by proponents who wanted to use the logo for the (percieved) sales advantages but also ignore the requirements they perceived as stodgy.

I agree that unless you are totally bought into the OTU/FFE vision of what a traveller roleplaying adevture should be, minimizing the connection is the best idea...it may cost you some sales, perhaps, but you get to keep your own ideals -always an advantage.