Really, their best bet at this point is to just release a 1.0b with the word "irrevocable," ask for suggestions on how to make sure it's extra-super-duper-for-realsies-this-time set in stone, and then make 6e actually significantly different with a GSL 2.0.
Don't Give Ground
ThorinTeague
Creative/Father/Professor
I now believe it's a red herring. Put in "Irrevocable" and then watch them move on to "Abolish, void, nullify, renounce, repeal, retract, vacate, rescind, or repeal" 1.0a. Or just figure out a different attack vector.
The reason WoTC now needs to be challenged and defeated in court is because "revoking" open licenses on a whim has wider implications--there are plenty of [for example software] companies that would just LOVE to do exactly this--and not because anybody in their right mind would even consider for one second publishing anything under any open license stewarded by WoTC.
Really the best way to make them back down would be a letter from the FSF threatening to deauthorize them back to the Stone Age if they go through with their naughty word.
ThorinTeague
Creative/Father/Professor
Which could very well be where this is headed. That, or class action suit... antitrust lawsuit from the government...
Jeepers. (<---Again, as I've consistently restated, this is my official position on this whole mess.)
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Then we have everything we have now lol
Any lawsuit in this whole mess will be filed by Wizards. No one else has any basis to sue them -- not individually and not as a class.
And that means Wizards can leave the whole question unsettled as long as they like.
I think the Justice Department has much, much bigger fish to fry.
Enrahim2
Adventurer
Few might be as easily cooked though. Some times even they might go for a simple snack?
Clint_L
Hero
A simple snack? Not a lawyer, but even I can see that none of this goes anywhere near an anti-trust lawsuit, in so many ways. There is no merger happening, so all that is off the table, there is no monopolization or attempted monopolization, and WotC attempting to become more restrictive of its own IP hardly seems like an unfair method of competition in an anti-trust sense, even if we don't like it (to put it in context, Hasbro's worst offer from a few weeks ago is still miles better than what a company like Disney would give you). Plus...in the greater scheme of things, a controversy around Dungeons and Dragons licensing rights is not something that the US government is going to intervene in. Let's keep our expectations reasonable.
Mod Note:
Posts like this are NOT helpful.
ThorinTeague
Creative/Father/Professor
You are absolutely completely wrong, IF and only IF wizards of the coasts attempts at shutting down ogl 1.0 a would set a precedent for open licenses outside the world of tabletop gaming, for example, software. If that were established as a universal precedent, there is no way it could be allowed to stand and would be challenged in court by other industries regardless of wizards action or inaction. But whether that sets any precedence that apply to the wider world of open licensing would be a big question mark. I guess it would depend on the judge.
But the other way in which your train of thought might be problematic is that there are something in the ballpark of 1500 third-party publishers over the last two and a half decades that have been working under the apparently false pretense that wizard of the coast could not just end this license. So, if they could have legally ended this license all along then all of those third-party publishers for the last two and a half decades have been defrauded and would probably be Keen to put up illegal battle for the fact that wizards lied to them for 23 years.
(Of course never mind the fact that it begs the question why wizards of the coast, if this license was revocable, didn't simply do so in 2008 instead of letting a direct competitor grow into an industry Giant. Seems like kind of a weird choice to me.)
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