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

[S'mon]

I think you are tilting at windmills now. This sort of careful analysis on non-legal language is, ultimately, a waste of effort and glia.

The actual language of Not Open GL 1.1 will come soon enough. Save your efforts for that dive, I think.

Well I think we disagree in that I think we're looking at something presented to major 3PPs as an actual draft of OGL 1.1, or even the intended final version.

 

[DavyGreenwind]

See a comment (a lot) higher up:

Here, the difference between a necessary condition and a sufficient condition is important. The OGL describes a sufficient condition to terminate the agreement, but not a necessary condition. A sufficient condition is a condition which will always cause a certain result. A necessary condition is a condition which is needed to cause a result, but does not guarantee it. If breach were necessary for termination, it would read something like "This agreement is terminated only upon a breach of these terms."

Here's a D&D example, because I am just like this. Let's say I want to attune to a Staff of Power, and I am a Sorcerer. Being a Sorcerer is a sufficient condition to attune, because Sorcerers may attune to the staff, but being a Sorcerer is not a necessary condition, because Wizards can also attune to it. But it is a necessary condition of attunement that the attuner is a Sorcerer, Wizard, or Warlock, because if they are not one of those, attunement cannot happen (I know the Thief and Artificer have some shenanigans, this is just an example).

 

[GMforPowergamers]

FWIW, Erik Mona was apparently breathing FIRE when he rallied the Paizo troops yesterday at an all staff meeting. They were cheering him on via Facebook, too.

Something's up. We'll wait and see.

the important part is exactly that... we wait and see

 

[Cadence]

Yes, but as have been argued, there are more reasonable interpretations off those two quotes once you put your legalese glaces on ond start reading the context. These quotes were initially leaked and published without the needed context to have any good chance of recognising these alternative in context far more reasonable interpretations.

So someone somewhere leaked very spesific exerps, particularly easy to misunderstand if viewed trough a lense of mistrust and out of context, and let that ferment for a few days.. I am not surprised at all that these misunderstandings have now set emotional roots. And yes, this is caused by words originally written by wizards. But it was someone else that took these words and put it into the context that now make you feel like you do.

Those are both from the 15 page document. Which parts of the document gives a nicer interpretation to "What if I don’t like these terms and don’t agree to..." quote? Or are you saying you think it was highly edited by non-WotC folks?

In any case, we'll all find out at some point I presume.

My "favorite" is still IX.B. "If a claim is raised against You in connection with a Licensed Work, and You aren’t defending such a claim to Our satisfaction, We have the right, but not the obligation, to take over the defense of that claim against You. If We do so, You will reimburse Us for Our costs and expenses related to that defense."

 

[DavyGreenwind]

A good post:

 

[Siltoneous]

grr. apologies.

 

[falconloft]

I'm a little surprised that a lawyer would post the original statement without considering Jacobsen v. Katzer (2008). (I say considering; it's certainly not mentioned.)

Jacobsen v. Katzer says that even a license that is silent on revocation but terms itself perpetual may only be revoked if there was "no consideration". On consideration, JvK says "Traditionally, copyright owners sold their copyrighted material in exchange for money. The lack of money changing hands in open source licensing should not be presumed to mean that there is no economic consideration, however. There are substantial benefits, including economic benefits, to the creation and distribution of copyrighted works under public licenses that range far beyond traditional license royalties. For example, program creators may generate market share for their programs by providing certain components free of charge." In other words, with Jacobsen v. Katzer as a precedent, since D&D gained market share because of the OGL, it can't now be revoked or have authorization removed.

Precedents don't have to be followed, of course, and this is not an exactly analogous case, but it would certainly be part of any legal argument made if this went to court.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Brilliant. Yeah my more left-wing academic colleagues have come up with a thing called "Neo-Classical Contract Law" which is basically the opposite of what it says, it's very much Anns v Merton (which was Tort, right? No biggie) Meanwhile I have to explain to my students that if anything our actual judges/courts are doubling down on a strict Classical approach and all that neo-Classical guff is for the birds (and the Canadians, apparently).

-Simon after 1 cider.

Anns v Merton was our tort divide, Bhasin v Hrynew is our contract divide, and our real property law has been distinct for a long while. Our Criminal law is dominated by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; yours is dominated by a constitution that does not exist and a restraint on Parliament's power which amounts to a guess at how far they can go before a dozen Molotov cocktails are thrown towards 10 Downing. Our securities law dances with NY and the US SEC, yours dances to the beat of a London DJ - and Saudi money.

There's just not that much we have in common re: our common law anymore!

 

[Enrahim2]

Those are both from the 15 page document. Which parts of the document gives a nicer interpretation to "What if I don’t like these terms and don’t agree to..." quote? Or are you saying you think it was highly edited by non-WotC folks?

In any case, we'll all find out at some point I presume.

My "favorite" is still IX.B. "If a claim is raised against You in connection with a Licensed Work, and You aren’t defending such a claim to Our satisfaction, We have the right, but not the obligation, to take over the defense of that claim against You. If We do so, You will reimburse Us for Our costs and expenses related to that defense."

(IANAL!) The full arguments for the alternative interpretations are earlier this thread. However there are no analysis of how in particular the most publicized leak (Gizmodo) was extremely misleading: "This agreement is, along with the OGL: Commercial, an update to the previously available OGL 1.0(a), which is no longer an authorized license agreement." cursive was not present in the Gizmodo leak. I first saw a leak with the full paragraph, hence immediately associating this statement with the update statement in 1.0a section 9. Further already on the D&D beyond piece before that people was wondering what would prevent people to simply publish 1.1 content under 1.0a, and I had that conversation fresh in memory. Hence I immediately recognized this as an attempt to attempt that. I am quite convinced that the entire intent of this formulation was to have a legal backing of saying no to anyone trying to publish oneD&D 1.1 content under a 1.0a license.

As for the other statement regarding "But if you want to publish SRD-based content on or after January 13, 2023 and commercialize it, your only option is to agree to the OGL: Commercial.". This was not part of the first leak I saw, but it was in the Gizmodo leak. When paired with the "no longer authorized" excerpt, that make it seem like these two might be related, and it appear that coupeling very quickly make people think that they want to get rid of 1.0a, as that is the only way one can seem to lead to the other, and the brain is amazing at finding potential causality relations. However what the Gizmodo leak did not clarify was that this was not part of the legal text, but rather a part of an explaining FAQ; and when looking closer at the full document it appear much more likely it simply is a way of making the following formulation from the legalese more prominent: "by making commercial use of Licensed Content, You agree to the terms of this agreement". If paired like this, I guess the connection seem at least quite plausible? But this formulation was not present in any leaks before the full leak, and hence the only "tool" the mind had to try to make sense of the faq "claim" was the other formulations in the leak, of witch the "authorized" was a clear candidate.

In other words those two really viral formulations leaked out of context by Gizmodo make it seem pretty "obvious" that wizards want to get rid of 1.0a. If you have read the full document without being presented the potential of 1.0a being revoked, and with the weird use of authorized 1.0a in section 9 fresh in mind I really think quite few would have reached the conclusion that this document provide any evidence wizards want to get rid of 1.0a as a valid agreement framework. Rather there are several evidences they want to keep and build on the existing 1.0a material - most obviously the fact that they insist on calling this an "update" to 1.0a (which is what allow for the use of OGC contributed by third parties), but also as recently discovered the at first glance very weird long definition of "Unlicensed Content", that turn out to basically include exactly everything not distributable according to 1.0a, with the exception of PI in the 5.1 SRD.

Don't get me wrong. There are definitely big bad things about this lisence, like how wizard for all practical purposes try to steal and seal all 1.0a OGC content so that it can only be used with 6ed on their platform (and they can sell any OGC there anyone have created without any attribution). And the license seem to be crafted specifically for making sure noone but them is going to gain any real value from the arrangement. But saying that they try to Terminate/Revoke/Nullify 1.0a with this I believe is not the case.

I have really tried the last week to raise awareness around these issues I am convinced being there, but it is really hard when everyone seem to believe that wizards want to kill 1.0a, in which case my concerns would indeed be unfounded.

 

[S'mon]

I have really tried the last week to raise awareness around these issues I am convinced being there, but it is really hard when everyone seem to believe that wizards want to kill 1.0a, in which case my concerns would indeed be unfounded.

My gut instinct from everything I've seen is that they want to kill it, but they may not actually try to kill it. Right now they are in a Schrodinger's Cat state of indeterminacy. When Gizmodo asked them specifically, they did not answer.