Re: (TFT) TFT Release

[stan <srydzews@ix.netcom.com>]

Michael Taylor wrote:
> 
> >>>>>>> Following Dan's line, if someone did get the rights from Howard is
> >>>>>>> it really worth it except for you gentlemen out there in list land.
> 
> I believe it is. In fact, I believe it so strongly that while Howard
> Thompson may not want a 'shares' deal, I'll offer it anyone else. If you
> dont think it can be successful, donate $1000 dollar anyway. I'll pay you
> back $2000-5000 dollars out of the profits. If there are no profits in
> say...five years,  I'll STILL pay you back. But this only works if I'm the
> exclusive owner (avoiding the whole committee problem!)

This may be the way to go, but it is different from what I beleive the
original
idea was.  Here's my conception of what Brennan originally proposed:

A corporation or non-profit organization is created to collect money 
to buy the rights. (Thats where the legal complications lie.)  Then we
make our offer to Howard (I know someone 'in the industry' whom I
believe
was on good terms with Howard when last they met, perhaps this would be 
a good person to approach him with the actual offer).  If we get it, we 
"publish" it on-line, essentially unchanged--because for us to agree one
a set of changes would really be a nightmare.  It would probably be a
set
of PDF or Word documents.  (OCR can work wonders.)  Perhaps each
foundation
member would be allocated some website space where they could publish
their
own changes and extensions to the system.  But softcopies of the core
system
would be available over the net either for some small shareware-type of
fee,
or free, under a copyleft agreement.  (Now *that's* open source, T$R.)

Such an approach would never make a profit, of course.  If we wanted to
go the way of hiring people like Allston and Loubet, with the intent of 
publishing a paper version through the game distributors, that would be
a
much more ambitious approach.  Profitable?  Quite possibly.  But
definitely
a different approach.

A middle of the road approach would be to set up a "foundation" that
would
seek and retain the rights, and publish softcopies, but that would
additionally 
license the rights to someone with the resources to make a polished
second edition
with quality artwork, re-editing, etc.  

Stan
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