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This has some unfortunate consequences for a lot of open source-software, some of which is responsible for running a lot of critical infrastructure (unlike the SRDs in the OGL, which are "merely" cultural products). I don't think the reasoning is very sound if this is a consequence of it.

Can you get injunctive relief in preparation for a lawsuit seeking a declaration of right? Can multiple plaintiffs band together to do this, in Washington and against WotC specifically? How can I get standing to join such an attempt? (And where do I send the money if I can't???) It would be a...

@pemerton argues that the license text could be interpreted to somehow support a theory that the owner of the copyright to the top dependency can revoke their offer to license that text at-will and thus poison the entire ecosystem from the root.

Yeah. Is the argument here that there is a fatal flaw in this particular license text (or the circumstances)? Or does this line of reasoning suggest that there is a problem with the very notion of a copyleft license to begin with? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft

Something they tore down from the DM's guild over a discretionary morality clause in that agreement, I gather. Not sure about the details or the timeline.

Oh, they can. But nobody is going to, at least not before this "playtest" thing is over and WotC actually make a decision about what make-believe fairy tale wording they're going to go with to try to convince people that they haven't broken the law. I suspect the kill-switch will end up in some...

"Functioning" rather obviously means without exposing himself to litigation from WotC, as the latter have agreed not to do under the terms of a perpetual and viral copyleft license for over 20 years now.

But his example project also has the 3.5 SRD as a core dependency. If that goes away, he effectively doesn't have a functioning product anymore.

Mr. Alexander's work cites OGC from 9 different publishers. If there's anything like that in a non-d20 ecology going back to the early 2000s, you're almost guaranteed that one of those publishers will have gone AWOL. We're talking stuff posted for free on old websites and so on.

For e.g. www.d20pfsrd.com, it's impossible. But that ecosystem has the 3.5 SRD as a core dependency anyway.

That depends. If there's anything like Justin Alexander's example in the Traveller ecosystem, it could be onerous.

Of course, the problem is that they would technically need to it in exactly the right order, neatly undoing the matroshkya doll of dependencies and teasing out the strands of the spiderweb. But if everyone is on board, that probably won't matter. This is assuming that they want to re-license...

If there are no orphan works of critical importance in the ecosystem already, this wouldn't be too difficult. Just tedious. And everyone would have to update their licenses, in the right order. I'd hazard a guess that doing so is actually preferable to having anything to with WotC or the new...

They can terminate for breach of contract, as per section 14. Or rather, this happens automatically. Which is how it should be. Agreements ought to be kept. ;)

Do you think this problem was exacerbated by the relative ubiquity of OGL 3PP when that became a thing?

I'm not. I'm saying they are lying now if it wasn't. It would be negligent of them to be unaware of the representations they made at the time.

I think you sum it up in #2,161. Why wouldn't this evidence be considered? It seems crucial to me, along with the representations they made when they first launched the OGL and in the FAQs.

I haven't agreed to those terms. And I never will.

Not a lawyer. Just a consumer activist.

That analysis is tortured and wouldn't survive even brief contact with the judicial system where I live.