Kenzer & Co. have announced a 4E version of Kingdoms of Kalamar — which is being released without the GSL and without the special D&D license they had with WOTC for their 3rd Edition stuff.
Over in their forums, David Kenzer writes:
“…. we no longer have an agreement with Wizards. Why? Is there some “magic” restriction in IP law that restricts people from making new creative material that doesn’t use any TMs, patents or copyrights of another company?”
[…]”That is not copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is basing your work on someone else’s creative expression. Rules are not creative expression. Also, it is not “based” on their rules. It happens to “work with” their rules.Should every programmer that writes a program that works with a computer have to pay the owner of the OS it runs on? I think not. I could be wrong, but fortunately, the US and International copyright laws agree with me.”
Hopefully, this should help demonstrate to J. Random Gamer that existing copyright is valid, and the GSL is not an absolute requirement for support of 4E.
In other news, Louis Porter picks through
I picked it up. He spends nearly a full page (of the 6 1/2 pages of actual content) arguing his justification of why he’s covering topics which Phil and I did years ago. Ouch.