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The
license is really at the heart of this project. Since
it is our intent to provide the gaming community with a
truly open and free gaming system, we needed some way to
ensure that goal. After much consideration, we decided
to adopt the GNU (gah - new) Free Documentation License
as our model. This license provides the Open RPG
Projects with exactly the qualities we were looking
for. The
GNU website is located at: A
Text version of this license is here. A
PDF version of this license is here.
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GNU
Free Documentation License Version
1.1, March 2000 Copyright
(C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place,
Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted
to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license
document, but changing it is not allowed. 0.
PREAMBLE The
purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or
other written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to
assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and
redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either
commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License
preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit
for their work, while not being considered responsible for
modifications made by others. This
License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative
works of the document must themselves be free in the same
sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which
is a copyleft license designed for free software. We
have designed this License in order to use it for manuals
for free software, because free software needs free
documentation: a free program should come with manuals
providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this
License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used
for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or
whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this
License principally for works whose purpose is instruction
or reference. 1.
APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS This
License applies to any manual or other work that contains a
notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be
distributed under the terms of this License. The "Document",
below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the
public is a licensee, and is addressed as "you". A
"Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing
the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or
with modifications and/or translated into another language.
A
"Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter
section of the Document that deals exclusively with the
relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to
the Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and
contains nothing that could fall directly within that
overall subject. (For example, if the Document is in part a
textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain
any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of
historical connection with the subject or with related
matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or
political position regarding them. The
"Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose
titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections,
in the notice that says that the Document is released under
this License. The
"Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are
listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the
notice that says that the Document is released under this
License. A
"Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable
copy, represented in a format whose specification is
available to the general public, whose contents can be
viewed and edited directly and straightforwardly with
generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels)
generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely
available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to
text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of
formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made
in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup has
been designed to thwart or discourage subsequent
modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is
not "Transparent" is called "Opaque". Examples
of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain
ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input
format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and
standard-conforming simple HTML designed for human
modification. Opaque formats include PostScript, PDF,
proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by
proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD
and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the
machine-generated HTML produced by some word processors for
output purposes only. The
"Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page
itself, plus such following pages as are needed to hold,
legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the
title page. For works in formats which do not have any title
page as such, "Title Page" means the text near the most
prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the
beginning of the body of the text. 2.
VERBATIM COPYING You
may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either
commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License,
the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this
License applies to the Document are reproduced in all
copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to
those of this License. You may not use technical measures to
obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the
copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept
compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a
large enough number of copies you must also follow the
conditions in section 3. You
may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated
above, and you may publicly display copies. 3.
COPYING IN QUANTITY If
you publish printed copies of the Document numbering more
than 100, and the Document's license notice requires Cover
Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry,
clearly and legibly, all these Cover Texts: Front-Cover
Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on the back
cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify
you as the publisher of these copies. The front cover must
present the full title with all words of the title equally
prominent and visible. You may add other material on the
covers in addition. Copying with changes limited to the
covers, as long as they preserve the title of the Document
and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim
copying in other respects. If
the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to
fit legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many
as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the
rest onto adjacent pages. If
you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document
numbering more than 100, you must either include a
machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque
copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a
publicly-accessible computer-network location containing a
complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added
material, which the general network-using public has access
to download anonymously at no charge using public-standard
network protocols. If you use the latter option, you must
take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution
of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this
Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated
location until at least one year after the last time you
distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents
or retailers) of that edition to the public. It
is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors
of the Document well before redistributing any large number
of copies, to give them a chance to provide you with an
updated version of the Document. 4.
MODIFICATIONS You
may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document
under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided
that you release the Modified Version under precisely this
License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the
Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of
the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In
addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:
A.
Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title
distinct from that of the Document, and from those of
previous versions (which should, if there were any, be
listed in the History section of the Document). You may use
the same title as a previous version if the original
publisher of that version gives permission. B.
List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or
entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in
the Modified Version, together with at least five of the
principal authors of the Document (all of its principal
authors, if it has less than five). C.
State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the
Modified Version, as the publisher. D.
Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document. E.
Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications
adjacent to the other copyright notices. F.
Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license
notice giving the public permission to use the Modified
Version under the terms of this License, in the form shown
in the Addendum below. G.
Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant
Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document's
license notice. H.
Include an unaltered copy of this License. I.
Preserve the section entitled "History", and its title, and
add to it an item stating at least the title, year, new
authors, and publisher of the Modified Version as given on
the Title Page. If there is no section entitled "History" in
the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors,
and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page,
then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated
in the previous sentence. J.
Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document
for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and
likewise the network locations given in the Document for
previous versions it was based on. These may be placed in
the "History" section. You may omit a network location for a
work that was published at least four years before the
Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version
it refers to gives permission. K.
In any section entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications",
preserve the section's title, and preserve in the section
all the substance and tone of each of the contributor
acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein. L.
Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document,
unaltered in their text and in their titles. Section numbers
or the equivalent are not considered part of the section
titles. M.
Delete any section entitled "Endorsements". Such a section
may not be included in the Modified Version. N.
Do not retitle any existing section as "Endorsements" or to
conflict in title with any Invariant Section. If
the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or
appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no
material copied from the Document, you may at your option
designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do
this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in
the Modified Version's license notice. These titles must be
distinct from any other section titles. You
may add a section entitled "Endorsements", provided it
contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version
by various parties--for example, statements of peer review
or that the text has been approved by an organization as the
authoritative definition of a standard. You
may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text,
and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the
end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only
one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text
may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any one
entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for
the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement
made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may
not add another; but you may replace the old one, on
explicit permission from the previous publisher that added
the old one. The
author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this
License give permission to use their names for publicity for
or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.
5.
COMBINING DOCUMENTS You
may combine the Document with other documents released under
this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for
modified versions, provided that you include in the
combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the
original documents, unmodified, and list them all as
Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license
notice. The
combined work need only contain one copy of this License,
and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced
with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections
with the same name but different contents, make the title of
each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in
parentheses, the name of the original author or publisher of
that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the
same adjustment to the section titles in the list of
Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined
work. In
the combination, you must combine any sections entitled
"History" in the various original documents, forming one
section entitled "History"; likewise combine any sections
entitled "Acknowledgements", and any sections entitled
"Dedications". You must delete all sections entitled
"Endorsements." 6.
COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS You
may make a collection consisting of the Document and other
documents released under this License, and replace the
individual copies of this License in the various documents
with a single copy that is included in the collection,
provided that you follow the rules of this License for
verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other
respects. You
may extract a single document from such a collection, and
distribute it individually under this License, provided you
insert a copy of this License into the extracted document,
and follow this License in all other respects regarding
verbatim copying of that document. 7.
AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS A
compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other
separate and independent documents or works, in or on a
volume of a storage or distribution medium, does not as a
whole count as a Modified Version of the Document, provided
no compilation copyright is claimed for the compilation.
Such a compilation is called an "aggregate", and this
License does not apply to the other self-contained works
thus compiled with the Document, on account of their being
thus compiled, if they are not themselves derivative works
of the Document. If
the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to
these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less
than one quarter of the entire aggregate, the Document's
Cover Texts may be placed on covers that surround only the
Document within the aggregate. Otherwise they must appear on
covers around the whole aggregate. 8.
TRANSLATION Translation
is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute
translations of the Document under the terms of section 4.
Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires
special permission from their copyright holders, but you may
include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in
addition to the original versions of these Invariant
Sections. You may include a translation of this License
provided that you also include the original English version
of this License. In case of a disagreement between the
translation and the original English version of this
License, the original English version will prevail. 9.
TERMINATION You
may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document
except as expressly provided for under this License. Any
other attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the
Document is void, and will automatically terminate your
rights under this License. However, parties who have
received copies, or rights, from you under this License will
not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties
remain in full compliance. 10.
FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE The
Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions
of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time.
Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present
version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or
concerns. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/. Each
version of the License is given a distinguishing version
number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered
version of this License "or any later version" applies to
it, you have the option of following the terms and
conditions either of that specified version or of any later
version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free
Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a
version number of this License, you may choose any version
ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software
Foundation. How
to use this License for your documents To
use this License in a document you have written, include a
copy of the License in the document and put the following
copyright and license notices just after the title page:
Copyright
(c) YEAR YOUR NAME. Permission is granted to copy,
distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of
the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later
version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the
Front-Cover Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts
being LIST. A copy of the license is included in the section
entitled "GNU Free Documentation License". If
you have no Invariant Sections, write "with no Invariant
Sections" instead of saying which ones are invariant. If you
have no Front-Cover Texts, write "no Front-Cover Texts"
instead of "Front-Cover Texts being LIST"; likewise for
Back-Cover Texts. If
your document contains nontrivial examples of program code,
we recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your
choice of free software license, such as the GNU General
Public License, to permit their use in free software.
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