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

[Umbran]

Give it a rest. Are you a shareholder in Fantasy Grounds?

Mod Note:
The next time you are tempted to suggest that people cannot disagree with you unless they have an ulterior motive... please don't. Taking digs at people may feel good or appropriate to you, but they don't help the discussion in the slightest.

The community is undergoing a time of uncertainty and anxiety. We should not be taking that out on each other.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I think your second sentence may not be write. What if that person (X) is currently in a 1.0/1.0a licence agreement with Y, and Y becomes a party to v 1.1? Y appears now to have inconsistent contractual obligations - they have promised WotC to renounce 1.0/1.0a, but have promised X to honour it.

There may be ways of reconciling these obligations - eg perhaps the renunciation pursuant to v 1.1 is relative only to WotC's Licensed Content. But I think it is not entirely straightforward.

This is borrowing trouble now. Most IP discussions in the Internet devolve to this sort of hair splitting and minutiae.

Not every issue leads to litigation. Most lead to...nothing. Your preference for doctrinal and contractual clarity is unrealistic. If nobody cares enough to sue? Nobody cares. Let it be. Don't borrow trouble.

 

[pemerton]

There is a significant difference between what is stated here in the text of the licence and what is stated in the comments section of the licence. It looks like the OGL v1.1 operates on an opt-in basis. If you agree to the terms of the new licence, you agree to give up the rights granted by v1.0a of the licence. But WotC go out of their way to give the impression that their "termination" of the old licence is binding on all licensees under v1.0a, regardless of whether they agree to the new licence or not. I suspect it's pure FUD designed to intimidate people into agreement with the terms of the new licence. They are likely aware they have no power to unilaterally terminate the older version of the OGL. Or am I missing something here?

No, I don't think you're missing anything. And what you say is broadly consistent with what many posters in this thread have been saying - though way upthread, when the two options were canvassed of "deliberate misinformation" and "confusion among non-lawyers reading the document", I (with at least one other poster) thought the second was more likely; whereas it now seems that I was wrong and the first is more likely. (The first leads to the second, of course.)

 

[Siltoneous]

I find it extremely hard to believe that Wizards is playing that kind of 11-dimensional chess. And if they are, they're morons. A publicity firestorm like this one makes impressions which are not so easily erased. The 3PP community is not going to come rushing back to gratefully kiss the ring.

Yea, I'm with you; the publicity firestorm was just too obvious to miss.

However, put yourself in the shoes of a small part-time company with a Kickstarter due to land in 2 months. You've spend multiple $ K's preparing the product, art, editing, layout etc... and now all of the sudden 1.1 lands and you can't publish JACK unless you sign the license. Do you hold your nose, and do it, knowing you've signed away a Chunk of rights? Or do you stand your ground and say "Hell no", waiting for the legal battles to settle? Cause you'll eat those sunk costs, and (perhaps) have family/friends/employee's to think about also. Glad I'm not in that position.

 

[reelo]

Where does OGL v 1.0/1.0a clearly state that section 13 is the only way it can be revoked?

It's a principle of common law: "expressio unius est exclusio alterius"

 

[pemerton]

Not every issue leads to litigation. Most lead to...nothing. Your preference for doctrinal and contractual clarity is unrealistic. If nobody cares enough to sue? Nobody cares. Let it be. Don't borrow trouble.

Sure. I'm not a litigator - I'm a scholar! Apart from anything else I have to set exam questions which invite students to undertake this sort of analysis.

 

[Prime_Evil]

Oh, I agree. I don't think they intended this to happen. My current guess is that they had a lawyer writing the legalese without a full understanding of the context, or the social implications. But now that the naughty word really has hit the fan, and a PR disaster is unavoidable anyway, the question is more - how to make the best out of this unexpected situation after all?

If they really had been fully aware of the level of inflammatory response to this would be, I think they would have had a better damage control strategy prepared. And you would have to be beyond moronic to not understand that a direct threat to the entire 1.0a ecosystem would really blow up. I think it seem slightly less moronic for a lawyer to not realize that "authorized" might have potential wider legal and social meaning than referring to a keyword of another legal document.

This is probably true. The leaked document was given to various publishers in licensing negotiations with WotC. I think it was designed to scare them into submission. But it has escaped "into the wild" and is now causing PR issues for them. It is pretty much the only story I'm the entire industry right now.

 

[Greg Benage]

I read your edit. I just wanted to add: the term you quoted is a term of a licence, and the licence says "by making commercial use of
Licensed Content, You agree to the terms of this agreement". At least on the fact of its text, the licence does not purport to bind non-parties. Which makes sense to me!

But Licensed Content is defined as content in SRD 5.1. So anyone who commercially published content in SRD 5.1 (i.e. Licensed Content), has agreed to the terms of OGL 1.1. Right?

 

[Prime_Evil]

I read your edit. I just wanted to add: the term you quoted is a term of a licence, and the licence says "by making commercial use of
Licensed Content, You agree to the terms of this agreement". At least on the fact of its text, the licence does not purport to bind non-parties. Which makes sense to me!

This is probably a correct reading, but I feel WoTC go out of their way to obfuscate this fact. Or there may be a disconnect between what the company's executives think the license does and what it actually does.

 

[Knuffeldraak]

Thanks for posting this.

Like, god, so many people I talk to about this just completely fail to understand that FanMade works and SRD's are Derivative Works, not Original Works, and thus where Copyright Laws work COMPLETELY differently than your bone-dry "I made this, so it's mine."