Why Open Settings?
- This page explains why you should release your work under the Open Setting License, a free and open content license that applies only to elements of a fictional setting. It allows for people to freely create works in a shared universe. For more information on the legal details of the license, see the Theonosis FAQ.
What is an Open Setting?
Open Settings are fictional universes legally available for re-use by anyone. If a novel or movie is marked as an Open Setting work, you may re-use the characters, plots, places and other elements of the fictional setting.
Why use an Open Setting?
Re-using setting elements creates a shared universe that everyone can participate in. Multiple authors can create versions of the same story, each with their own unique take. Authors can share themes and ideas, facilitating communication among creative people around the world. Likeminded authors can work together to critique and promote each other, working on shared plots and ideas.
With proprietary settings, universes tend to be limited. Only a few authors get to contribute, and those who own the rights to the most valuable properties worry that over-use will diminish its value. Open Settings will work in the opposite manner. The more the setting is re-used, the more valuable it becomes because each author brings in a few more readers who are interested in the setting, and may want to peruse other works that share the same characters and places. In this way, authors can build on each other's success rather than fighting for proprietary control.
Audiences like familiar properties - that's why most of the biggest movies every year are sequels, prequels or remakes. But struggling new creators can't afford to buy the rights to familiar properties. With Open Settings, you don't need to. Anybody can use familiar fictional characters, corporations and celebrities.
Big Hollywood studios, publishing houses and other media firms control most of those blockbuster franchises, giving them a competitive advantage over smaller and independent content creators. The Open Setting License prevents this stranglehold, transferring money and power from big media companies to the authors, filmmakers and artists who create the work.
How to participate?
Just label your work "Open Setting Licensed" and provide a link to the text of the license.
Open Settings allow you to participate in many ways. You can play a tabletop role-playing game set in the world of someone else's novel, for example, or make a movie based on an interesting minor character from somebody else's movie. Any little bit of content will help - short stories, for example, even ones that aren't perfect, will help build a fictional universe by creating characters, locations and other elements that can be reused by other creators later.
Open Settings allow you to control your actual works - your novels, artwork, films and songs remain your intellectual property. The Open Setting License can not apply to them in most cases. (When can it? See here.) The Open Setting License also does not give anyone the right to re-use the title of your work in any part of their own work.
The owner of this site (Modrobene) has a standing offer to help with the editing, cover design, publishing and promoting of virtually any Open Setting work, whether a novel, website, movie, song, ballet, graphic novel, game, etc, all for free.
How do you do it? Well, the fantasy setting Theonosis is the only Open Setting that currently has published works in it. ThirdFleet is a brainstorming wiki for development of a science fiction universe, and the website you're on right now, the Open World League, is a miscellaneous and other setting wiki. See each of those websites for more on how to participate in the collaborative novels and other projects that are underway. They are wikis, so if you want to jump right in and start with a project of your own, feel free to do so. You can also email modrobene(AT)theonosis.com with any questions.
