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

[RangerWickett]

I feel like the family in Knives Out, trying to argue about legal things because we don't like what's happening, and the actual lawyer has to keep shooting down our hopes.

 

[Art Waring]

I'm not sure about PF2E, but the Hypertext one is just a clone of Paizo's defunct PRD, though looking at the Open Game License listing, there's a 2011 listing for a Pathfinder Reference Document, which I'm guessing is the original website.

Ah ok, I did also find this link to the original PRD.

9/13/2018 - The Pathfinder Reference Document will no longer be updated, but is available for reference in its last updated state. Paizo has partnered with Archives of Nethys to provide the community with online versions of the Pathfinder RPG rules at pfrd.info. You can learn more about this change on the Paizo blog.

 

[DavyGreenwind]

This is confusing Moral Rights of the Author (which I did my PhD on!) with interpretation of contract terms. 'Intent' of the author in Droit D'Auteur is a completely separate issue from interpreting what a contract means.

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 the OGL is a legal contract, with the SRD attached, for reference, as a work of art. In any case, the SRD author's "intent" as to revocability is irrelevant as a matter of copyright law, and the OGL author's intent is probably irrelevant as a matter of license law.

I totally agree that a distinction should be made between the two.

 

[Art Waring]

Pathfinder 1e and 2e both use the 3e SRD. It doesn’t seem like using Pathfinder instead would be any more safe.

Its possible, that's why I asked.

 

[S'mon]

Intent matters. but the words on the page always trump intent.

Well in English law we have "over riding oral undertaking" - even where the words on the page are clear, if you tell someone they mean something different...

From what I can tell, the meaning of 'perpetual' has been held to depend on the context.

 

[Haplo781]

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 systems have some control over the way their content is used and displayed, even after they sell it to someone else. If I'm a painter, and I sell my painting to someone, I could sue them if they destroyed it, even though it is "theirs," because I have a moral right to not have my painting destroyed.

In the US, there generally are no moral rights. If I buy a painting, I can throw it into the ocean if I want, and no one could do a thing about it (there may be some weird exception to paintings I don't know about. I'm just using paintings as an example).

All this to say that WotC can revoke the license for any reason or no reason. The best way to think about an open license is like a "lost dog, $500 if found" sign. As long as that sign is up, anyone who brings me my dog is legally entitled to $500. But if I change my mind, take down the sign, and put up a new sign that says "never mind, I revoke my offer," a person could not show up 5 years later with my dog and demand $500.

So couldn't (for example) Paizo just create a dummy corporation based in the EU and register everything under that, leaving WotC without recourse?

 

[S'mon]

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 off of a Druid subclass, or even an alternate Druid class, from a third-party supplement.

But then again, a court could find that classes are game mechanics (I don't think so, but who knows), and then we could have Druid subclasses galore.

The issue is that the Druid class was released - licenced - under the OGL 1.0 in the 3e, 3.5e, and 5e SRDs. The OGL licenced the creation of derivative works based on that. They included a sample subclass in the 5e SRD so that 3PPs could make their own subclasses on the same model.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

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 generally presumed revocable.

I would quibble a little with the phrasing here. It's not that the words on the page trump intent; it's that the words on the page are the evidence of the intent! After all, you memorialized your intent in writing.

The reason we have these complicated rules about parol evidence (extrinsic evidence) is not because intent doesn't matter, but because we are trying to avoid situations wherein people are pointing to other documents (or conversations) instead of the actual text of the contract as the evidence of the intent of the parties.

That said, given that there appears to be some ambiguity in the license, a lack of any merger clause (or similar), and the repeated contemporaneous statements of intent by the author of the contract that it was meant to be irrevocable- I am less certain than you about the results of a court action.

 

[Mistwell]

I am also a lawyer, and this is my 28th year as an attorney. I also have represented RPG companies using the OGL. Companies almost everyone here know. I am familiar with these topics as I've had to work with them, on a practical basis not just a theoretical one, for decades now.

I disagree with your legal interpretation. I am not interested in that debate as I think it's unwise to be posting definitively on this topic. But I think you're legally in error on several important points.

 

[Siberys]

Even if this is all true, does the fact that Wizards claimed in an official capacity (via the FAQ) that it was unrevocable factor in at all? Wizards is essentially claiming they lied to the entire industry about intent, and a large number of people worked based off of that statement. Like, even if 1.0 and 1.0a are revocable, is it enforceable?