Section 9 says to the licensee: "you may used any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any open Game content originally distributed under any version of this License".
Since authorization is ambiguous, WOTC would be making the argument that they have sole prerogative in determining what versions of the OGL are currently authorized and which are not. Contrast with the hypothetical - 'you can use any version of this License that has ever been authorized at the time of your Use to copy, modify and distribute any open Game content originally distributed under any version of this License'.
*Note I don't think this is a great argument but it's certainly one they can make.
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If they deauthorize OGL 1.0a for all then it would effectively revoke all their existing license agreements utilizing OGL 1.0a as well.
I don't think it's an argument they can make at all.
To see why I say that, think through who would they be making it to, and in what context. I mean, suppose that WotC make some public statement purporting to give notice to all OGL v 1.0/1.0a licensees that from hereon in WotC is revoking their rights under that licence by exercise of a power under section 9. (Which is what you are suggesting they might do. There is no difference between what you are calling "deauthorisation" and unilateral revocation of existing licences.)
Then suppose that publishers keep publishing, exercising their rights under the OGL v 1.0/1.0a. And suppose that WotC sues them for copyright infringement, arguing that the infringement is the result of the licence having been retracted by exercise of a power conferred on WotC by section 9. In my view that is a ludicrous scenario, and WotC will not do it.
I think it's clear that section 9 confers a power on WotC - to issue variant licence terms - and confers a permission on licensees - to use those variant terms in their licensing. And that's it.
I'm yet to see an argument that WotC has a power to revoke the contracts unilaterally, but if it purports to do so I'm pretty sure that it won't be by a spurious appeal to a notional power under section 9.
I mean, if WotC argue that the term is ambiguous, then they open themselves up to all the extrinsic evidence as to what the parties understood it to mean. But if they don't, there is no basis at all for their claim to enjoy a power of the sort you're conjecturing they might argue they enjoy.
Only one that they can argue is implied within the license agreement.
There is no argument I've heard, or can envisage, that section 9 - which refers to WotC publishing updated versions of the licence (ie licences with variant terms) - also by implication confers a power on WotC to revoke existing licences unilaterally.
It doesn't seem to me to match what we have seen from the leaks.
I don't know what you are thinking of: the leaks I have seen all point to a term of the new licence being an acceptance that no OGC or Licensed Content will be distributed by the party pursuant to the OGL v 1.0/1.0a.
I'm not understanding the significance of this observation
It is a further way of making clear that the OGL v 1.1 is not a version of the sort contemplated by section 9 of the OGL v 1.0/1.0a. As
@S'mon pointed out in some of his early posts on this issue, if WotC is not clear about this then licensees under the OGL v 1.0/1.0a could claim to be already licensed to use OGC issued by WotC under a different licence, by arguing that it is exactly the sort of variation that section 9 contemplates.
that the community is misinterpreting a new license whereby a specific licensee agrees to terminate the OGL as a general termination of the OGL. Based on the way that most corporate attorneys work, I suspect option
