Can WotC be forgiven?

I already have, as soon as people started bringing out pitchforks and torches. Then I realized, that the other side is not better. Different but not better.

Maybe better at bringing the community behind them.

I hate all that pitchfork and torches and never forgive.
That does not make the world a better place.

Making statements and fight for a better world is. But blowing things out of proportions and even miststeps that are taken back still result in unredeemable offenses is too much.

That retoric is what poisions everything today. Is it clicks, is it voters. You donvt go after the issues but the people behind it. 2 dimensional. For or against. Evil or good.

Game of Thrones should have told you, that depending on which side you are of a story, things can look good or evil and most probably it is neither.
I think it would be a mistake to see this as simply as two sides.

There are inevitably those who will take any opportunity to take a stab D&D and WotC , but also those with legitimate greviances through all of this, and those for whom the very idea of things going to litigation is enough to stale them on the OGL forever even if they harbor no ill-will against WotC themselves. The fact all of the above are opposing WotC on this does not mean they have the same motivations.

As I've said elsewhere, I may well forgive WotC for this, but that does not mean I will ever be 100% comfortable creating any new work under the OGL for fear this happens again a year from now. So if there's a more comfortable ORC alternative on offer, I'll take it - not out of hatred for WotC, but simply because it's a better, safer alternative moving forwards.
 

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It really is something of a quandry, because from a 3PP PoV, it's increasingly likely they will move away from the OGL after this for fear of WotC trying to throw their weight around again in future.
However, there are 20+ years of materials licensed under the OGL, in a tangled spiderweb of rights to seperate out if you want to publish them under any other license. For arguments sake, lets say I released a product in 2010 that referenced ten other OGL works, attributing them all correctly under section 15. I cannot unilaterally re-release that product today under ORC, because I do not have the right to release the other ten works I reused under OGL under the ORC license without the permissison of the original ten works owners. Assuming I cannot simply call those ten other publishers and get them to re-license under ORC, I now have to excise those parts that were not 100% my own work - which could prove difficult in actually remembering what those parts were (Was it this spell here? What about that monster there? Is this Feat one of mine? Perhaps I did something as simple as reusing an attack type from someone else's monster for one of mine) , and involve going through the entire text with a fine toothcomb to sort that out (because chances are I do not have a neatly annotated source file with every block of text backreferenced to its original source - something I actually do try to do nowadays, but didn't ten years ago) Which means it's far simpler for me to just leave that old product as-is, under the OGL, and only use ORC moving forwards. This means, of course, that my original work remains closed to reuse by ORC publishers - including myself.

Not every product is this complex, of course - many depend on nothing else, or just a small number of works that they know they can get relicensed to them under the ORC for reuse. But many are complex, referencing large numbers of OGL works in section 15, and the problem is that those are potentially lost for reuse in future ORC works because we can't rely on getting ORC licencing for every single dependency, or having the time to go through and remove those dependencies.

The point I think I'm trying to make here, is that it's always a simple binary "OGL or ORC" decision. It is a binary decision, but by no means simple. Some works will remain locked into only being usable under the OGL, even if their creator wishes otherwise, due to the interdependencies on other works. We've spent 20+ years under the assumption that the OGL 1.0a will be around forever, without a single threat of it ever disappearing, so we were fine building that interdependent spiderweb of collaborative work. Now we're suddenly confronted with a threat (whether legal or simply through WotC throwing its weight around in ways we don't have the resources to fight) that it could, and face a choice of whether to continue and hope we're okay, or throw away much of that 20+ year legacy of collaborative effort to start over with brand-new ORC-licensed works written completely from scratch.

I also think it's almost inevitable that some people will not take the necessary care and attention, and that some rights will get trampled on as some publishers try to redo past works under ORC. Probably a relatively small number, but the sheer amount of works involved and the fact there are still people that publish under the OGL without a full understanding of what it does and does not permit, means it's going to happen somewhere.

Personally, I do not think it worth trying to republish the majority of those existing OGL works (and I mostly mean the 4-8 page shorts by numerous 3PPs here), as it's far too much bother for what is likely to be only a small number of sales. But that does mean they will be lost to the ORC community.
Again, it's not my place to offer you advice. But I think there is more to be said about the general situation you describe.

Suppose, for instance, that X, a 3PP, is confident that there is work that X could republish under ORC provided that X had the agreement of OGC Contributor Y, where Y <> WotC. In that case, X and Y are no better off under ORC than just continuing with that work under the OGL (subject to a possible caveat I will pick up below). Ex hypothesi neither is vulnerable to litigation from WotC.

Conversely, suppose that if X were to republish their work they would be vulnerable to litigation from WotC, in the sense that X's work infringes WotC's copyright. Sticking to the OGL gives X a contractual defence to that claim (as discussed in various other threads that I know you have read). Changing to ORC leaves X without a contractual defence and needing to defend a claim of copyright infringement, which is likely to be more complex, more uncertain and hence more expensive.

So under either alternative it's not clear to me why X would want to republish their work under ORC.

Now here's the caveat: WotC asserts copyright in the text of the OGL itself; and if X and Y have entered a licence agreement in the terms of the OGL, then each has promised the other to reproduce the text of the OGL on a systematic basis. There is a risk in doing that of infringing WotC's copyright in that text.

But there may well be arguments that use of the text is permitted, either expressly or by clear implication. (And again I think you've read my analysis of this in other threads.) So X and Y might want to seek advice on this particular issue, before they make the rather expensive and risky decision to move to ORC and republish their works under that new licence.
 
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I may well forgive WotC for this, but that does not mean I will ever be 100% comfortable creating any new work under the OGL for fear this happens again a year from now. So if there's a more comfortable ORC alternative on offer, I'll take it - not out of hatred for WotC, but simply because it's a better, safer alternative moving forwards.
I don't understand how ORC is safer, if the actual risk is WotC alleging copyright infringement in relation to its SRD and other D&D works.
 

Again, it's not my place to offer you advice. But I think there is more to be said about the general situation you describe.

Suppose, for instance, that X, a 3PP, is confident instance, that there is work that X could republish under ORC provided that X had the agreement of OGC Contributor Y, where Y <> WotC. In that case, X and Y are no better off under ORC than just continuing with that work under the OGL (subject to a possible caveat I will pick up below). Ex hypothesi neither is vulnerable to litigation from WotC.

Conversely, suppose that if X were to republish their work they would be vulnerable to litigation from WotC, in the sense that X's work infringes WotC's copyright. Sticking to the OGL gives X a contractual defence to that claim (as discussed in various other threads that I know you have read). Changing to ORC leaves X without a contractual defence and needing to defend a claim of copyright infringement, which is likely to be more complex, more uncertain and hence more expensive.

So under either alternative it's not clear to me why X would want to republish their work under ORC.

Now here's the caveat: WotC asserts copyright in the text of the OGL itself; and if X and Y have entered a licence agreement in the terms of the OGL, then each has promised the other to reproduce the text of the OGL on a systematic basis. There is a risk in doing that of infringing WotC's copyright in that text.

But there may well be arguments that use of the text is permitted, either expressly or by clear implication. (And again I think you've read my analysis of this in other threads.) So X and Y might want to seek advice on this particular issue, before they make the rather expensive and risky decision to move to ORC and republish their works under that new licence.
I agree totally, hence my conclusion that in most cases it's probably best to just draw a line under that 20+ years of work and start afresh, rather than attempting to republish something just to use the new license (if for no other reason than your audience has likely already bought it previously and is unlikely to want a second copy just because you changed the license on it, but also because of the amount of picking apart you'd have to do to excise any possible copyrighted text you no longer had permission to use)

That doesn't stop me being sad about the loss of all that OGL material we were collaboratively building together as a community if we start over with brand new ORC works that are not dependent on anything that came before, or hoping there's a better solution to it out there somewhere. Individual publishers announcing their OGL contributions are globally ORC-licensed seems possible, but that comes with the complication of seperating their contributions out from other OGL-only contributions used in their work.

I do see the possibility of someone contininuing both with their current OGL product line, and a brand new completely unconnected ORC line - although that's probably beyond the scope of most small 3PPs that consist of a single individual churning out PDFs. But at this point if someone wants to make the move to ORC, I would not suggest trying to port any old OGL material over unless they really, really, really know what they're doing in terms of stripping out anything that could violate copyright. I know I would not be confident doing that myself, so a move to ORC means drawing a line under all the old OGL stuff for me and starting afresh, either with material based on someone's ORC-licensed SRD or creating my own.
 

That doesn't stop me being sad about the loss of all that OGL material we were collaboratively building together as a community
I don't understand how it is supposed to be lost.

All the licence agreements between all the parties are intact. Even if WotC purports to revoke its licences, and everyone goes along with that, all the licences between the Xs and the Ys remain in place.
 

I don't understand how ORC is safer, if the actual risk is WotC alleging copyright infringement in relation to its SRD and other D&D works.

ORC feels safer, from the perspective of starting over with brand new ORC works that have no WotC content whatsoever. The threat of a copyright case from whoever wrote whichever SRD (any any other content) you're referencing still stands, but the ORC itself will have that extra added "irrevocable". As, in 23 years of using the OGL, the only time I've ever felt threatened was WotC saying they believe they can de-authorize that license, this being in any new license is pretty important to me. I therefore feel much safer with my income not dependant on the continued use of WotCs material under OGL 1.0a (and certainly not under 1.1 where the terms could potentially change weekly) - something which, in retrospect, was very much a mistake on my part of putting too many eggs in one basket anyway.

I want a solid foundation to build on, and OGL 1.0a+a WotC SRD feels decidely shaky now.
 


@Cadence checked last year's books.

  • Call of the Netherdeep: Printed in the USA.
  • Monsters of the Multiverse: Printed in China.
  • Radiant Citadel: Printed in the USA.
  • Shadow of the Dragon Queen: Printed I'm China.


So, hit and miss.
Shadow of the Dragon Queen seems to vary based on the cover. The deluxe boxed set is China, but the Soth alt cover is USA.
 

@Matt Thomason

If you and the rest of your community agree that the OGL is irrevocable as between you all, then it is. You can even all enter side agreements to that effect.

I am genuinely puzzled as to what you believe the move to ORC gets you. All I see is an increased vulnerability to litigation from WotC (with the one exception, of my caveat upthread, but I do not get the sense that that is the basis of your concern).

If you are intending to not reproduce any work over which WotC would have a copyright infringement claim, then WotC "de-authorising" the licence is neither here nor there. I mean, I could send you a letter telling you that I hereby "de-authorise" the lease between you and your landlord, but you would quite sensibly just throw it in the bin!
 

I don't understand how it is supposed to be lost.

All the licence agreements between all the parties are intact. Even if WotC purports to revoke its licences, and everyone goes along with that, all the licences between the Xs and the Ys remain in place.

It's lost in as much as moving to ORC for a new work means we no longer have the right to use something produced under the OGL in that work. Dual-licensing is a possibility if all contributions referenced are also dual-licensed, and we know of one glaring entry that is not likely to be ;)

So what I mean is it's lost to the ORC community, because it can only ever be reused under OGL, or by completely rewriting it in a way not to infringe copyright - the latter is something many of us would be very uncomfortable attempting, or by ensuring you have an ORC license for every single component used.

Yes, I can continue using it under the OGL. If I want to keep releasing stuff under the OGL.

I also understand that it is my choice of no longer working under the OGL that has caused this. That is something I'm willing to accept as a consequence. I just wish it wasn't a consequence - it makes me feel sad and disappointed ;)

Example:
If I use a hypothetical Pathfinder 2.5 SRD from Paizo (released under the ORC) for my new work, that will not allow me to reuse a class by Oliver K Stennhauser that he only ever released under the OGL for PF2.0. Even if he grants me permission, he also referenced a Feat by Joe Reyman in that, which means I need him to ORC-license that. However, that Feat was only ever published in a book that he reused twenty other OGL licensed works in, and cannot recall whether or not he reused anyone elses work in creating that specific Feat (he only noted what was used in the book as a whole), and is relying on the OGL to cover his usage. Now I have to get all twenty other contributors to ORC-license their work. And, finally, all of the above contributions were theoretically dependant on an SRD by WotC, which is unlikely to ever get ORC-licensed, which means I have to tread extremely carefully to excise anything I'm not sure is 100% the original work of one of the people I do have a license from.
 
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