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Electronic Freedom Foundation weighs in on the OGL!
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<blockquote data-quote="Uta-napishti" data-source="post: 8890548" data-attributes="member: 7026422"><p>I thought it was a decent article, she clearly knows both D&D and the law, and compares the pieces of a license to the invisibility spell.</p><p></p><p>It's just an issue of different agendas. What I think her agenda is is to encourage folks to move en masse to a more bulletproof license. This would be a good idea if we are all starting over without cooperation from WoTC. To advance that agenda, she downplays the value of the OGL and is skeptical of its protections. She's right as far as that goes.</p><p></p><p>My agenda is somewhat different because I <strong>do</strong> value three things about the OGL license: 1) the peace between WoTC and the community that bilateral buy-in to the OGL 1.0a brought, 2) the compatibility between corporate and independantly sponsored work that largely worked to benefit everyone and 3) the value of existing material released under the OGL 1.0a. Because of these things, I would be happy to return to a refreshed and irrevocable-ized OGL lisence in the future.</p><p></p><p>Anyone who has read the GPL would recognize that the OGL 1.0a wasn't a particularly open or clear license, but what it did have was enough buy in from both the trademark owning corporation and the community to create a very fertile and profitable creative space. This was it's value -- as a peace treaty all could gather around to a large part in compatibility and apparent legal security.</p><p></p><p>And create we did! Despite the limits on claims of D&D comparability that kept WoTC on top in terms of "official" D&D books, most creators slapped an unprotected 5E moniker on their book and found their audience. Now, we have huge sunk investments in OGL 1.0a material. Those of us who own the copyrights could reissue the parts of that material that we own under another license now, but in friendliness to our readers, we had often mixed in many things from the SRD into our work (Monsters, Spells etc... so that the DM reader wouldn't have to crack the player's handbook to run an encounter. Picking all that stuff out, or fighting WoTC over whether it is fair use is too much work, or impossible in the case of physical books, so all of that material is now commercially dead if the OGL 1.0a is revocable.</p><p></p><p>For the record, I don't agree that the OGL 1.0a will be declared revocable by a court. I think it it gets that far, it will be upheld because of the clear intention to make it irrevocable despite the absence of what ( in the years since ) has become somewhat of a magic word.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Uta-napishti, post: 8890548, member: 7026422"] I thought it was a decent article, she clearly knows both D&D and the law, and compares the pieces of a license to the invisibility spell. It's just an issue of different agendas. What I think her agenda is is to encourage folks to move en masse to a more bulletproof license. This would be a good idea if we are all starting over without cooperation from WoTC. To advance that agenda, she downplays the value of the OGL and is skeptical of its protections. She's right as far as that goes. My agenda is somewhat different because I [B]do[/B] value three things about the OGL license: 1) the peace between WoTC and the community that bilateral buy-in to the OGL 1.0a brought, 2) the compatibility between corporate and independantly sponsored work that largely worked to benefit everyone and 3) the value of existing material released under the OGL 1.0a. Because of these things, I would be happy to return to a refreshed and irrevocable-ized OGL lisence in the future. Anyone who has read the GPL would recognize that the OGL 1.0a wasn't a particularly open or clear license, but what it did have was enough buy in from both the trademark owning corporation and the community to create a very fertile and profitable creative space. This was it's value -- as a peace treaty all could gather around to a large part in compatibility and apparent legal security. And create we did! Despite the limits on claims of D&D comparability that kept WoTC on top in terms of "official" D&D books, most creators slapped an unprotected 5E moniker on their book and found their audience. Now, we have huge sunk investments in OGL 1.0a material. Those of us who own the copyrights could reissue the parts of that material that we own under another license now, but in friendliness to our readers, we had often mixed in many things from the SRD into our work (Monsters, Spells etc... so that the DM reader wouldn't have to crack the player's handbook to run an encounter. Picking all that stuff out, or fighting WoTC over whether it is fair use is too much work, or impossible in the case of physical books, so all of that material is now commercially dead if the OGL 1.0a is revocable. For the record, I don't agree that the OGL 1.0a will be declared revocable by a court. I think it it gets that far, it will be upheld because of the clear intention to make it irrevocable despite the absence of what ( in the years since ) has become somewhat of a magic word. [/QUOTE]
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