We got an official leak of One D&D OGL 1.1! Watch Our Discussion And Reactions!

[Glade Riven]

This seems plausible enough in the abstract - ie that a condition of taking up rights in a revised SRD under a new licence is waiving whatever rights one might have enjoyed under an old licence.

Yeah, generally you have to have some sort of superficial "I agree" and usually in software licenses using the software is a "de-facto" agreement (with court support, at least under US Law). So if you create something under One D&D's OGL you are de-facto agreeing that anything you made under 1.0 or 1.0A has been replaced with 1.1. This means that if, say, Paizo published ONE adventure for One D&D under OGL 1.1 then they just handed ALL of Pathfinder and Starfinder over to Wizards with a perpetual, irrevocable license to do whatever they want. Hence, the "Gotcha." Wizards could, in turn, post a 30-day notice revoking all usage on their website and still reprint anything Paizo made consequence and repercussion free. Although that might get a little tricky with trademark law and it's still a bit of a mess but in theory it could happen.

 

[SteveC]

As someone who was waiting to hear what the carrot was, this looks like another, bigger stick. I think this warrants a "it's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays off for them."

We don't know if this is real and accurate, but I follow the people behind the link enough to know that it isn't a troll. Now you don't know me, I suppose, so take this with all the salt you'd like: I'm thinking this is not the whole story, but it certainly isn't gaming insiders burning all their credibility down.

 

[Minigiant]

My speculation on the leak. At best it reads as a high level summary of the goals for a new OGL v 1.1 and not the actual legalese that it will be written in. My take is that if it is a true leak they took it from a PowerPoint rather than a drafted legal document.

This is close to my going speculation. This looks to me like secondhand summary of a detailed summary of someone who saw or hear info of potential OGL from WOTC.

And due to the mass hysteria over this, this secondhand info is tainted as there is too much negative press and purposeful economic discrimination about it. Its just way too negative to be trustworthy.

 

[Glade Riven]

Section 9 has the relevant clause - "you may use any authorized version of this Licesne to copy, modify and distrbiute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this license.

I'm with you that I don't see how WOTC can deauthorize OGL 1.0a for existing material (for example if it was deauthorized for SRD 5.1 then it would in effect revoke the whole license, which does seem to go against the terms of the OGL 1.0a license). However, deauthorizing the use of OGL 1.0a for material released under OGL 1.1 would seem potentially doable and would be a statement made so that there is no confusion about whether certain content released under OGL 1.1 could be rereleased by others under OGL 1.0a (the question of whether OGL 1.1 would be legally considered a version of OGL 1.0a at that point might be in contention but outside that I think it would make sense).

They could only do it for existing material if you publish something under the new OGL, because by using the 1.1 even once in a product you have agreed that 1.1 replaces 1.0a.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm honestly not sure. From what I understand, anybody who uses the OGL (even if they're not using D&D's SRDs) needs to replicate the WotC copyright bits. Evil Hat does it, Paizo does it and EN World does it with Level Up too (Level Up's OGL page even includes Paizo's copyright notice, which I guess means Level Up borrows some mechanics from Pathfinder). But I honestly can't tell the reason why they have to do it. The depth of the legal discussion is above my capabilities. My last brush with law was in undergrad where I took three courses on French constitutional law, French contract law and Roman Law, and I don't think any of these would apply here!

Section 10 of OGL 1.0a specifies that copy of this license must be included with every copy of game content you distribute.

 

[FrogReaver]

This is close to my going speculation. This looks to me like secondhand summary of a detailed summary of someone who saw or hear info of potential OGL from WOTC.

And due to the mass hysteria over this, this secondhand info is tainted as there is too much negative press and purposeful economic discrimination about it. Its just way too negative to be trustworthy.

I made no comment on the trustworthiness of it. In fact I think it's as likely to be trustworthy as untrustworthy.

But one must be careful with leaks. Sometimes the leaker is doing it to shine a light of warning. Sometimes the company itself is doing it to gauge reaction so they can either hold firm or soften their stance before officially releasing something.

 

[EpicureanDM]

Probably Black's Law Dictionary.

I asked for a legally-controlling source. From your own Wikipedia link:

The sixth and earlier editions of the book additionally provided case citations for the term cited, which was viewed by lawyers as its most useful feature, providing a useful starting point with leading cases. The invention of the Internet made legal research easier therefore many state- or circuit-specific case citations and outdated or overruled case citations were omitted from the seventh edition in 1999. The eighth edition introduced a unique system of perpetually updated case citations and cross-references to legal encyclopedias. The current edition is the eleventh, published in 2019.

Black's is published by a private company, not any particular state government or the federal government. It finds its definitions by examining case law and publishing what they find. They are a secondary source, not a primary source.

Given all of that, what state's laws govern the OGL? What state law (or federal law) would Black's be looking at to extract the definition of "sublicensee" as it is used in the OGL?

 

[Remathilis]

So my personal theory...

WotC is still good friends with Kobold and Darrington and Green Ronin and Goodman and Paizo. Even though they are competing in the RPG space, there is no way they are burning all those bridges. Those companies are all big enough that they can flip WotC off, create a new license between themselves, declare all of Pathfinder part of the new license and this becomes GSL debacle 2.0. There is no way WotC is lighting the entire RPG space on fire like this.

 

[Alzrius]

I asked for a legally-controlling source.

Fair enough, though it might have been more helpful if you'd specifically cited that you were referring to controlling law.

 

[FrogReaver]

I asked for a legally-controlling source. From your own Wikipedia link:

Black's is published by a private company, not any particular state government or the federal government. It finds its definitions by examining case law and publishing what they find. They are a secondary source, not a primary source.

Given all of that, what state's laws govern the OGL? What state law (or federal law) would Black's be looking at to extract the definition of "sublicensee"?

Your question presumes there must be some legally controlling source such as a law for the term sublicense such that the source determines it's meaning.

Most often in contract law it's not a law that determines the meaning of a term but either a) the contract itself or b) case law/precedent.