[Trifletraxor]

A really big issue to get over with first is how we would license the work.

Gwenthia uses a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license for the material available at their website (will this continue to be the case for Gwenthia, or will the following publications be copyrighted Tom?).

That license allows people to share and distribute the work as they like as long as it's done noncommercially, and that any derivative work can be made as long as it is released under the same license. The original creator can make a commercial product for it though.

I think that license probably work very well for Gwenthia, as it's developed by a closed group of people. It does stop others from making professional products for the world though, so I think the best license if we want to make a truly open world is the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. With this one, anyone can use the material, for commercial and uncommercial project, free distribution, but very limited rights for those who develope it. Anyone who develope more for this setting would then have to release it under the same license.

I'm not sure how the OGL lisence work. Does it give any advantages? Anyone familiar with any other "some rights reserved" license?

Maybe the best would be a license that allowed a limited copyright, in which the author would retain the commercial rights for original work f.ex. 5 years, after which it went over to the CC license above. Commercial derivative work should be allowed in the meantime though. That way you would make people able to make commercial products with some rights, but without stopping the creative process of others in the meantime.

There a defference between project 1 & 2 though. Project one, created by many people cooperating should probably have the most limited license. Those settings that are created by individual members for the shared universe project should probably be allowed to have a bit stricter license, with the commercial rights, if that's what they would want.

Opinions?

SGL.