Development of Creative Commons licenses

[longdead <longdead AT gmail.com>]

Mark Havenner wrote:

> If you were to allow others to use the work commercially you could
> potentially increase your market. With "attribution" you and your
> theoretical competitor are using the same brand and you both benefit from
> that. Restricting contributors to non-commercial endeavors undermines the
> point of open content.
>
> There is no incentive for someone to contribute to your RPG if you are
> simply going to snatch and republish it, taking their rights to do so
> themselves. However, if you and theoretical competitors are both publishing
> materials the market can grow and you can tap your materials into a market
> you didn't have before. The economy of open content suggests that the more
> people that use the same brand the larger the brand's market share becomes
> and although you may not have received royalties from others using your
> brand you can tap into that person's market whenever you like.
>
> I would personally reconsider your outlook on this and as a RPG publisher
> myself I know the open economy actually works.
>
> Take a look at this article for more detail on the subject:
>
> http://www.basilicus.org/wiki/index.php/Open_content#Why_Own_an_Idea.3F
>
> On 9/25/05 11:36 AM, "longdead" <longdead AT gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  
Well, I did want to allow them to use, modify and distribute 
non-commercially as much as they wanted.  And I plan on allowing the 
non-commercial use of the book completely for free.  As in I would host 
all the material for free and my website and allow unrestricted access.  
In fact, I would like to allow them to print up copies of my book and or 
website and hand them out for free if they wanted.  I'm not looking to 
get rich off of other peoples work.  While the mechanics of the game 
would be available under either a creative commons or an open gaming 
license, I was hoping for a way to release the game world setting and 
story, non-commercially, but if someone added something significant to 
the game world I would like to be able to reincorporate it into books, 
and not be restricted from selling printed copies of the books.  Unless 
I'm mistaken this actually goes beyond what most of the roleplaying game 
books publishers allow.  Especially since the entire book and any 
contributed content would be available for free on my website.

Matt Carr