Re: [piecepack] Re: Reworking pp games for stand alone publication.

[Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@...>]

On Fri, Feb 14, 2003 at 05:12:38PM -0000, Benedict <boycat_oh@...> wrote:
> So if the published games and competion submissions are not 
> owned is there any point in adding the copyright line to the 
> rulesets?

If you have not placed your game in the public domain (that is,
renounced copyright), you can license it any way you want to: GNU FDL,
one of the Creative Commons licenses, etc. etc.  You can use several
licenses at once if you like, for different groups of people.  This is
widely misunderstood.  You can have an overriding license that says,
"This game is licensed to everyone but people who chew gum, under the
GNU FDL.  People who chew gum aren't allowed to copy it at all."

Of course once you make your game free (as in freedom, not price),
other people can do just about anything they want with it, subject
to the limitations of your license(s), including make copies for
people who chew gum.

However, even if you have placed your game in the public domain
(renounced copyright so that you do not "own" it), commercial
possibilities still exist.  Look at the successful card game Wizard, a
relatively simple commercial tweaking of the public domain card game
Oh Hell.  The same with Rage, which was at the top of the Funagain
best-seller lists for months.

Or, closer to home, look at Mesomorph -- the original piecepack is
completely public domain, but I'd guess the majority of people on this
list own at least one Mesomorph piecepack.

Ron H-E

-- 
         Ron Hale-Evans ... rwhe@... & rwhe@...
           Center for Ludic Synergy, Seattle Cosmic Game Night, 
Kennexions Glass Bead Game &  Positive Revolution FAQ: http://www.ludism.org/
Home page & Hexagram-8 I Ching Mailing List: http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/