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But only one of us has cited any sources.

As a matter of open licensing jurisprudence, those cases are indeed important. My comments about software being a can of worms is more about the copyright aspect (source code vs object code and all that nonsense). So you are right, case law regarding open software is important in licensing...

It is a useful analogy nonetheless. See my response above.

Open software is different, because software code and copyright is a huge can of worms. I only know enough about it to know to stay the hell away from it.:LOL:

Hahaha, I thought about the young chickens. And if I sound certain, that's on me. You are right, none of this is remotely settled and could have totally different outcomes depending on state and federal circuit. For me, the bottom line is I don't see a United States judge making irrevocable a...

Wow! I loved my Contracts class. And I think our disagreement highlights the difficulty of the question. The reliance principle might be enough to overcome parol evidence issues, but there are other issues which, in my opinion, tip the balance away from irrevocability. 1. In licensing law...

That is absolutely the nature of law.

True. But it is apt as an example, because of the strange nature of an open license. An open license is not like other contracts, whereby two parties agree to take on mutual obligations for a limited period of time. An open license, strangely enough now that I think about it, acts much like...

For this, I refer you to the parol evidence rule, which basically says that discussions or agreements outside of the contract are generally only acceptable to prove the meaning of ambiguous terms (or to prove fraud). If a term is not ambiguous, a court generally will not look at outside evidence...

This, I believe, is the trickiest argument of all. But I stand by my original comment. Let me give you an example. So, quick humble brag, I write laws for a living. Sometimes, a senator or representative will tell me, "Write this law that says X, and that also says that no future legislature...

You make a great point, and I will defer to Ph.D. I agree that an author's "intent" qua work of art is distinct from a party's "intent" qua contract. But I think the question posed, which I attempted to answer, blurs the two. Is the SRD a legal contract, or a work of art? One could argue that...

Intent matters. but the words on the page always trump intent. And open licenses are strange things anyway, not like normal contracts. Especially when it comes revocability, the word on the page matters. "Irrevocable" is a very common word used in licenses, and if it is not there, the license is...

Forgive my squirreliness, but that would be tiptoeing dangerously close to legal advice. I must generally refrain from commenting on specific works. I will say that other genres that are merely using a D20 system are probably on better footing than something that is specifically a 5e supplement.

In Europe and other parts of the world, yes. In the United States, a big nope. Protecting the original intent of the creator in copyright law falls under the umbrella of what are called "moral rights." (I'm paraphrasing and nutshelling here). Basically, content creators under moral-rights...

Oooo, that's a tricky one. I doubt WotC would ever go after anyone publishing under the Pathfinder License. They would basically have to go after Pathfinder themselves. I'd have to think about that one, crack open the textbooks again.

I think it would be tricky to pull off, and depend upon the answers to unsettled questions. For instance, if a court were to find that Druid subclasses were fundamentally derivative of the Druid Class in the SRD, it might be tough to publish a Druid subclass, even if you claim to be basing it...

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

Hello, community. Like many of you, I am a nerd. I am also a lawyer. With all the OGL controversy, I have been seeing a lot of claims on the internet, here and elsewhere, about what the OGL is and how it interacts with third party content and copyright law. Many of these claims are, in my...

Thank you for this list, and for including my DmsGuild work! If you are interested, I wrote a companion work (also pay-what-you-want) here: Dungeon Masters Guild

I whipped up a set of tables for just this thing on DMsguild if you wanna check it out. https://www.dmsguild.com/product/409490/Spelljammer-Wildspace-System-Generator?term=spelljammer+wildspace