Profitable sales of free-culture Piecepack (was: Sad ToyVault news)

[Ben Finney <ben+yahoogroups@...>]

Emily Page <emily.page@...> writes:

> I am constantly in a state of disgusted surprise that this whole
> system hasn't been properly profited from. :) So... the latest failure
> is just par for the rolling my eyes course.

One thing which is needed is freely-licensed game rules. Currently there
are many game rules published, but very few of them under free licenses.

Free licenses entail that there are no restrictions on commercial
redistribution <URL:http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC>. The Creative
Commons Non-Commercial clause makes a work non-free.

Free licenses entail that any modification is allowed in any
redistribution of the work. The FDL (despite its name) places non-free
restrictions on modification, and the No-Derivatives clause of the
Creative Commons licenses also makes a work non-free.

It's unfortunate that “Creative Commons” includes options for making a
work free, and also options for making a work non-free. The brand isn't
helpful for distinguishing the freedom of a work.

    <URL:http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101020/09352711499/creative-commons-branding-confusion.shtml>

I recommend the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license as being a free-culture license
that still provides the necessary protections for the work and the
copyright holder.

    <URL:http://questioncopyright.org/cc-pro>
    <URL:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>

> I am still waiting for a fast food chain to make it a collectible
> thing with their logo on the back.

If there were a body of Piecepack game rules under free-culture
licenses, that might be more possible: anyone could reformat them and
translate them and modify them and mass-produce them and profit from
them, without needing further license negotiation.

What I'd really love is for a large number of the popular existing
Piecepack games to be released under a free-culture license like
CC-BY-SA-3.0.

What I hope for is that we encourage all future Piecepack games to be
released under free-culture licenses, without restriction on format nor
modification nor commercial redistribution.

> But I think I'm a bit on the unusual side on the list here... :)

I hope not.

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Ben Finney