RangerWickett
Legend
I feel like the family in Knives Out, trying to argue about legal things because we don't like what's happening, and the actual lawyer has to keep shooting down our hopes.
Ah ok, I did also find this link to the original PRD.I'm not sure about PF2E, but the Hypertext one is just a clone of Paizo's defunct PRD, though looking at the Open Game License listing, there's a 2011 listing for a Pathfinder Reference Document, which I'm guessing is the original website.
9/13/2018 - The Pathfinder Reference Document will no longer be updated, but is available for reference in its last updated state. Paizo has partnered with Archives of Nethys to provide the community with online versions of the Pathfinder RPG rules at pfrd.info. You can learn more about this change on the Paizo blog.
You make a great point, and I will defer to Ph.D. I agree that an author's "intent" qua work of art is distinct from a party's "intent" qua contract. But I think the question posed, which I attempted to answer, blurs the two. Is the SRD a legal contract, or a work of art? One could argue that the OGL is a legal contract, with the SRD attached, for reference, as a work of art. In any case, the SRD author's "intent" as to revocability is irrelevant as a matter of copyright law, and the OGL author's intent is probably irrelevant as a matter of license law.This is confusing Moral Rights of the Author (which I did my PhD on!) with interpretation of contract terms. 'Intent' of the author in Droit D'Auteur is a completely separate issue from interpreting what a contract means.
Its possible, that's why I asked.Pathfinder 1e and 2e both use the 3e SRD. It doesn’t seem like using Pathfinder instead would be any more safe.
Intent matters. but the words on the page always trump intent.
So couldn't (for example) Paizo just create a dummy corporation based in the EU and register everything under that, leaving WotC without recourse?In Europe and other parts of the world, yes. In the United States, a big nope.
Protecting the original intent of the creator in copyright law falls under the umbrella of what are called "moral rights." (I'm paraphrasing and nutshelling here). Basically, content creators under moral-rights systems have some control over the way their content is used and displayed, even after they sell it to someone else. If I'm a painter, and I sell my painting to someone, I could sue them if they destroyed it, even though it is "theirs," because I have a moral right to not have my painting destroyed.
In the US, there generally are no moral rights. If I buy a painting, I can throw it into the ocean if I want, and no one could do a thing about it (there may be some weird exception to paintings I don't know about. I'm just using paintings as an example).
All this to say that WotC can revoke the license for any reason or no reason. The best way to think about an open license is like a "lost dog, $500 if found" sign. As long as that sign is up, anyone who brings me my dog is legally entitled to $500. But if I change my mind, take down the sign, and put up a new sign that says "never mind, I revoke my offer," a person could not show up 5 years later with my dog and demand $500.
I think it would be tricky to pull off, and depend upon the answers to unsettled questions. For instance, if a court were to find that Druid subclasses were fundamentally derivative of the Druid Class in the SRD, it might be tough to publish a Druid subclass, even if you claim to be basing it off of a Druid subclass, or even an alternate Druid class, from a third-party supplement.
But then again, a court could find that classes are game mechanics (I don't think so, but who knows), and then we could have Druid subclasses galore.
Intent matters. but the words on the page always trump intent. And open licenses are strange things anyway, not like normal contracts. Especially when it comes revocability, the word on the page matters. "Irrevocable" is a very common word used in licenses, and if it is not there, the license is generally presumed revocable.