Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD. Clearing up confusion.

[Staffan]

I asked a friend -- avid 4e fan -- if there are still people creating 4e content.

"Oh yes! I'm well-connected. There are dozens of people!"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't understand what significant difference to the licensing regime is supposed to flow from this sort of change in the copyright of the open RPG licence.

The problem that would be addressed is the stewardship problem. That is, with OGL WotC 'owns' the OGL, and as a commercial entity with a certain interest in the business, they are not a neutral party. Through section 9 they retain the right to issue new versions of OGL, which could potentially be ANYTHING AT ALL, and to license your OGC under that new license! This makes them a dominant player in the relationship, not an equal one. By vesting both the copyright of the license and the ability to update the license (which is something in this changing world that will almost certainly be needed at some point) in a non-commercial impartial entity they put everyone using the license on the same footing. Any true, enduring, open license should have this basis, as experience has shown that without it one is vulnerable to exploitation, which DOES happen!

All those publishers have for the past couple of decades had the capacity to licence their systems under the OGL, or some other open licence (like Chaosium). I'm not seeing the significant difference that flows from them being licensed under ORC instead.

Sure, but why would I EVER use OGL when WotC could simply change its terms at any time? I don't know anything about the Chaosium License, but I agree with you anything like that or perhaps ORC might have similar problems. Paizo's statements about creating a neutral steward for the ORC would seem to make it better than OGL in some sense however. OTOH unless WotC becomes signatory to ORC, which seems unlikely at this point, it seems to offer limited appeal. I honestly still don't see why I wouldn't just go with CC-BY-SA instead. In theory I guess OGL/ORC includes a strong "hands off product identity" clause, but you can exclude PI from CC and at that point your normal IP rights (Copyright, Trademark, Design Patents, etc.) still exist, along with such things as moral rights, etc. Enforcing ANYTHING is a matter of resources anyway, whether it is OGL or a Copyright, so how does ORC/OGL make me substantively better off here? Yes, someone could use my PI in a 'fair use/fair dealing' manner, but that is a pretty narrow exception for a commercial kind of product!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The Open Source and Open Content movement is a personal and moral commitment born of the draconian IP laws currently in existence.

IP Law is not the problem, in fact Copyleft COULD NOT EXIST WITHOUT IT, there would be no 'stick' and thus also no 'carrot'! GPL, for example, works because if you don't abide by the 'making available' clause, then people can hammer you with the IP laws!

There's nothing inherently wrong with the IP laws (I mean, there may be specific things wrong with them, but as a general concept). What the Open Source community is about is simply demonstrating that the community, with its sharing ethos, is stronger than commercial greed. That by operating as a community we can empower a better industry, a better society, and better people. It is purely a moral and economic philosophy, and construing it as anti IP (though I have objections to the term 'IP' I will use it here) is fallacious.

 

[pemerton]

Paizo is forming a new community and leaving Wizards out in the cold

Yes. I posted this upthread (although whether they are leaving WotC out in the cold, or rather asking the D&D-adjacent 3PPs to walk out into a blizzard, is yet to be seen!).

I was replying to a post that suggested that the creation of ORC is something different from this.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm also nonplussed at Goodman Games. Dungeon Crawl Classics use OGL 1.0a but is extraordinarily stingy on contributing Open Game Content, reserving just about everything as product identity; even labels that they clearly could not copyright, eg "spell check" and "luck check." The result is that a downstream sublicensee agrees not to use these terms. I don't object to publishers keeping their system closed. But if they take substantially from the commons (as DCC does) they ought also give back. I hope Goodman takes the chance to reassess.

IMO, this is one reason the Creative Commons licenses are superior. They are very clear that a downstream sublicensee is not giving up rights to use anything that the licensor lacks copyright in.

Also kudos to Paizo. I'm not a fan of the fiddliness of pathfinder rules, but they are very good citizens in the world of open gaming.

You do bring up an interesting point. It sounds like GG is basically using OGL to PREVENT anyone from using their content, which is a behavior that would certainly NOT be possible under a CC license! This sort of flaw would also exist in ORC if it provides a similar type of clause, effectively a dominant publisher can force you to either be 'incompatible' (at least in terms of terminology, which means a lot to gamers) or else pound sand.

 

[ThorinTeague]

Note that this is a myth. According to a flawed reporting methodology, PF1 outsold 4e in particular channels. Meanwhile DDi alone was making staggering amounts of money.

I'm not an expert but as far as I knew I was looking at raw data. I worked in private sector commercial art for the better part of a decade. So I wouldn't be much of an authoritative numbers guy. But I worked closely with various PR and marketing departments throughout that time, so I am somewhere above layman and beneath expert.

 

[ThorinTeague]

If WoTC has the right change the terms of the OGL implicitly, the why should it be explicit in the the new one? And why in 22 years was it never changed?

 

[pemerton]

why would I EVER use OGL when WotC could simply change its terms at any time?

I don't think this is an accurate description of the legal state of affairs. WotC has no power to change the terms of the OGL v 1.0/1.0a. It has a power to promulgate variations, and each licensee has the power to choose which of the variants they will use when they reproduce, copy or modify OGC.

The problem that would be addressed is the stewardship problem. That is, with OGL WotC 'owns' the OGL, and as a commercial entity with a certain interest in the business, they are not a neutral party. Through section 9 they retain the right to issue new versions of OGL, which could potentially be ANYTHING AT ALL, and to license your OGC under that new license! This makes them a dominant player in the relationship, not an equal one.

In practical terms, what difference does it make?

There's been no actual example, from the first promulgation of the OGL up to now, of this ownership by WotC actually making a difference to anything. What hypothetical(s) are people envisaging?

Perhaps for clarity I need to add: some people seem to think the current furore has some connection, in legal terms, to section 9. But I've read just about every post i this thread, and I don't think I've seen any of the lawyer contributors try to make out such an argument. In my view, those who connect what is going on at the moment to section 9 are just wrong.

A neutral third party controls the content of the license.

My reply to this is the same as to @AbdulAlhazred. Given that no issue (including the current one) has ever arisen in relation ship to WotC's ownership of the copyright in the OGL, or in relation to its authority under section 9 to promulgate variants, what practical difference does it make that under ORC a third party not-for-profit enjoys that right and that power?

The difference AIUI is that any new versions of the licence will come from the non-profit, not from Paizo or any other for-profit corporation. Therefore, greed and market control will never be the motivation for a new version of the licence the way they are for !OGL 1.1 or 2.0.

This isn't true.

Nothing stops Paizo, in the future, insisting that its licensees under ORC agree to a new licence on less favourable terms, just as WotC is doing now. The issue of who owns the copyright to ORC has no relevance to that. (I mean, maybe it will preclude Paizo calling its proposed new licence ORC v 2 - but that doesn't seem to me to be of any great significance.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Note that this is a myth. According to a flawed reporting methodology, PF1 outsold 4e in particular channels. Meanwhile DDi alone was making staggering amounts of money.

While I agree that the idea that 4e was some sort of miserable commercial failure is a bit silly, Paizo did exploit a series of WotC blunders to make its game pretty popular, maybe more so than any previous RPG (at least in this Century) vis-a-vis D&D. As for DDI, we have little idea, though there was some anecdotal evidence that it had something over 50k subscribers. It may have been fairly successful at its peak, but from things I heard from IT people and whatnot, it was nowhere near being the big success that WotC was looking for. The huge problem though was GSL plus DDI together, which basically killed 90% of 3PP interest in 4e.

 

[pemerton]

This seems to assume that all or most of the people who use the ORC will be basing their work on Paizo's SRD. Why would that be the case?

Because they want to sell their product?

I mean, nothing up to now has stopped 3PPs trying to establish new RPG ecosystems around new SRDs licensed under the OGL. But they haven't been doing so, presumably because they think there is no market for them.

Some people seem to think that over the past month or so the market for non-PF, non-D&D-adjacent RPGs has grown tremendously in size. Personally I'm not sure what the evidence for that is.