Ryan Dancey -- Hasbro Cannot Deauthorize OGL

I reached out to the architect of the original Open Gaming License, former VP of Wizard of the Coast, Ryan Dancey, and asked his opinion about the current plan by WotC to 'deauthorize' the current OGL in favour of a new one.

He responded as follows:

Yeah my public opinion is that Hasbro does not have the power to deauthorize a version of the OGL. If that had been a power that we wanted to reserve for Hasbro, we would have enumerated it in the license. I am on record numerous places in email and blogs and interviews saying that the license could never be revoked.

Ryan also maintains the Open Gaming Foundation.

As has been noted previously, even WotC in its own OGL FAQ did not believe at the time that the licence could be revoked.

7. Can't Wizards of the Coast change the License in a way that I wouldn't like?

Yes, it could. However, the License already defines what will happen to content that has been previously distributed using an earlier version, in Section 9. As a result, even if Wizards made a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an earlier, acceptable version at your option. In other words, there's no reason for Wizards to ever make a change that the community of people using the Open Gaming License would object to, because the community would just ignore the change anyway.

​

 

[ThorinTeague]

Speaking of Disney, does anyone know if the in-development Marvel RPG uses the OGL?

If Disney is using the OGL, and they weren't grandfathered in, than I am Mickey Mouse.

 

[Matt Thomason]

unfortunately, usage of those two words in legal documents have two very different meanings; a perpetual license is simply a license which cannot expire, meaning that it will be valid forever, as long as it isn't revoked by the party that issued it, another party that the license states has the right to revoke it, or a court deems it otherwise invalid. Perpetual licenses are not irrevocable unless the license also explicitly states it is irrevocable

Only with a unilateral contract ("you can use my stuff"). If there was consideration (which tends to be read as obligation rather than paying an actual fee) on the part of both parties ("you can use my stuff but you will have to do this in return"), it requires both to agree to terminate.

 

[~ender]

so we now all get to learn the definition of "potate".

Unfortunately I lost my personal copies of the ogf-l and ogf-d20-l mailing list archives.

I'm pretty sure that's "portation."

Yeah, apparently most of us didn't learn the meaning of "potate".

Most hits are for slang, 'be like a potato', which for a second I thought Ryan meant (ie: chill out and wait).

Google says: "Did you mean: define "potato""

Wordnik quotes The Century Dictionary: 'in alchemy, liqefied, as a metal potable.'

Wiktionary goes Italian, to feminine potato, and Latin. Latin doesn't have a definition, but goes to pōtus, to be drunk.

'No, potate is not in the scrabble dictionary'.

https://www.dictionary.com/misspelling?term=potate : 'No results found for potate'

OED isn't online.

Search | Law Insider : 'We don't have any results for your search.'

PORTATION:

Portation Definition | Law Insider :

'Portation means the immediate possession or physical possession of one or more firearms, loaded or unloaded, on the person of the bearer or his immediate reach. Immediate reach will be understood at your fingertips and their transportation.'

Never bring a definition to a gunfight.

----

I, too, hope someone was archiving ogf-l and ogf-d20-l. If you're a data horder, please check your tape backups. TYIA

 

[Matt Thomason]

I, too, hope someone was archiving ogf-l and ogf-d20-l. If you're a data horder, please check your tape backups. TYIA

There's a copy at ogf-l - unfortunately only messages since 2004

I probably have ancient Outlook .pst files with the really old stuff buried in an attic on a burned CD that'll take the next five years to dig out...

 

[Nylanfs]

Yea, I looked through my mail archives and couldn't find my really old emails either.

 

[~ender]

There's a copy at ogf-l - unfortunately only messages since 2004

I probably have ancient Outlook .pst files with the really old stuff buried in an attic on a burned CD that'll take the next five years to dig out...

Thanks, I saw that. Should've referenced that.

I'm specifically hoping for something like your burned CD in an attic; ie: not already online.

FYI: heat degrades the dye used in burned CDs, so maybe pull those out and put on a RAID?

 

[Matt Thomason]

Silly me, why didn't I think of archive.org?
Here we go, from the very beginning with Ryan's test posts.

The Ogf-l 2002-January Archive by Thread

web.archive.org

EDIT: Not quite the very beginning, looks like there was a list issue and it restarted at that time. For older stuff see

https://web.archive.org/web/20011124160307/http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/pipermail/ogf-l/

But that was a restart from the former Majordomo version circa 2000, which does appear to be utterly lost in online sources

I will take a look for that CD (or more likely, a number of CDs), but it may take some time (five years was an exaggeration, but not by much )

 

[~ender]

Silly me, why didn't I think of archive.org?
Here we go, from the very beginning with Ryan's test posts.

The Ogf-l 2002-January Archive by Thread

web.archive.org

Sadly, that's only an archive of the index. Specific messages are missing.

https://web.archive.org/web/20061012104907/http://charibdes.isomedia.com/pipermail/ogf-l/2002-January/000038.html

On the plus side (besides the lurkers) there's a list of participants that could maybe be tracked down and asked if they kept copies.

edit (for your edit):
The opengamingfoundation link, also has some problems, the 'full raw archive (8 MB)' opens a text page that saves as 11k (oops). Does have some messages in it, as well as email addresses (vs. just names).

 

[Matt Thomason]

Sadly, that's only an archive of the index. Specific messages are missing.

https://web.archive.org/web/20061012104907/http://charibdes.isomedia.com/pipermail/ogf-l/2002-January/000038.html

Ugh.
Okay, try these for the gzipped text archives:

Gzips for 2001 from this page https://web.archive.org/web/20011220224149/http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/pipermail/ogf-l
2002-2006 monthly gzips from this page: The Ogf-l Archives

 

[Matt Thomason]

Gzips for 2001 from this page https://web.archive.org/web/20011220224149/http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/pipermail/ogf-l
2002-2006 monthly gzips from this page: The Ogf-l Archives

And now I shall be reading for the next few hours after already noticing such gems as:

I picked up a copy of Crucible of Freya today. Right below the
licensing text we discussed all week, the module contains a
production directive that accidentally made it to print:

"[PRODUCER: Please make this stuff as small as possible so that this
whole appendix fits on one page -- they can make us put it in but
they can't make us use a large font!]"