I don't doubt my wording is confusing, I'm trying to describe a scenario I think is hypothetical and I hope is nonsensical because That's Not How It Works...You wording is a bit confusing. The issue is not whether "OGL v 1.0a which granted the licence is gone". Its whether or not Paizo continues to enjoy a licence in virtue of its entering into a licensing agreement with WtoC. And this has been discussed upthread. @bmcdaniel said that the better view is that WotC can't unilaterally end its agreement with Paizo, but that if it now revokes the offer to enter into new licences, it's unclear how that would effect Paizo's ability to sub-license into the future.First, PF1 was built on the SRD from WotC. If that is no longer licensed (because OGL v1.0a that granted them license is gone), do they still have the right to license the formerly-licensed open content?
One view, which I think is quite plausible as a matter of contractual construction, is that insofar as Paizo retains its rights under the agreement, one of the rights that it retains is to continue to license OGC to other parties. But given that an expert has said this matter is unclear, the view that I think is plausible can't be regarded as anything close to certain!
What I meant was
- If OGL v1.0a is revoked and Paizo thus loses the license to use the open content previously licensed under OGL v1.0a (which I think most of us believe cannot be the case, that while the license might no longer be offered existing licensees would be grandfathered); and
- Paizo has sublicensed the Pathfinder Reference Document (PRD) to their third-party publishers (as they have); and
- the PRD contains (now 'formerly') open content from the SRD that (in this scenario) Paizo no longer has license to use...
I see OGL v1.0a says that if a licensee loses the license due to their breach that sublicensees are still licensed for the contributor's content (i.e. in this scenario, if Paizo lost the license due to breach then they could no longer use SRD content but still have obligations to let Paizo licensees use Paizo open content), but I think that doesn't apply in this case because 1. Paizo wasn't in breach, the license was revoked, and 2. if OGL v1.0a is no longer a valid license then Paizo can't use it to license their open content to their licensees.