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

[Garthanos]

So applying that to RPGs, including the math, the actual formulae on how to replicate the charts would open things up to use and replication. Presenting the mechanical pieces as distinct, fluffless units of mechanics would make them more portable and less likely to infringe.

Nothing necessarily needs to be fluffless exactly just distinctly written.

Edge is a situational dramatic benefit not always about combat. But it comes shining to the forefront when opposed forces are arrayed. In combat one or another side is always seeking an edge over their adversaries or to cancel the edge their enemy may have gained. When you have the edge you can roll twice and take the better instead of once to determine success of your action. Similarly if the subject of an action has an edge against that action (sometimes referred to as having a defensive edge) this may force the action which they oppose to roll twice and accept the lesser roll or cancel any edge the other may have gained. Once you have lost your edge you cannot recover it for/or against a particular action though other (usually lesser) modifiers may also affect success.

Someone else might word it better... I am probably missing something or making it complex in some way but that is my on the fly.

 

[Nylanfs]

I wonder if Kate Walsh had taken into account that the OGL was written with the GPL in mind (per an interview with Ryan hosted on wizards.com) where explicitly compared them.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

Kit Walsh has an email address and even a phone number available by clicking on her name. I am sure if someone (I suggest a lawyer) wants to ask questions or point out facts, then it is possible to do so.

 

[overgeeked]

Nothing necessarily needs to be fluffless exactly just distinctly written.

Edge is a situational dramatic benefit not always about combat. But it comes shining to the forefront when opposed forces are arrayed. In combat one or another side is always seeking an edge over their adversaries or to cancel the edge their enemy may have gained. When you have the edge you can roll twice and take the better instead of once to determine success of your action. Similarly if the subject of an action has an edge against that action (sometimes referred to as having a defensive edge) this may force the action which they oppose to roll twice and accept the lesser roll or cancel any edge the other may have gained. Once you have lost your edge you cannot recover it for/or against a particular action though other (usually lesser) modifiers may also affect success.

Someone else might word it better... I am probably missing something or making it complex in some way but that is my on the fly.

Right. And probably better than I could do on the fly.

Part of my reply was still in my head when I hit post. The point was more about intentionally writing a game that can be open to use that just gets to the point and doesn't waste anyone's time. There's only so many times you can read overly wordy ways to say "roll this, add that, then compare the result to this other thing". I'm not really interested in yet another overly verbose description of a simple mechanic. Describing the mechanics, math, and process in the barest terms possible for maximum usefulness.

Like explicitly including the math used so that others can replicate the charts. Like describing the resolution mechanics as simply and succinctly as possible so the word count isn't absurd.

So writing the list of basic ingredients and providing the most basic and straightforward recipe for the mechanics. Then keeping the fluff separate and going wild there. Specifically to make things...easier.

 

[Garthanos]

Right. And probably better than I could do on the fly.

Part of my reply was still in my head when I hit post. The point was more about intentionally writing a game that can be open to use that just gets to the point and doesn't waste anyone's time. There's only so many times you can read overly wordy ways to say "roll this, add that, then compare the result to this other thing". I'm not really interested in yet another overly verbose description of a simple mechanic. Describing the mechanics, math, and process in the barest terms possible for maximum usefulness.

Like explicitly including the math used so that others can replicate the charts. Like describing the resolution mechanics as simply and succinctly as possible so the word count isn't absurd.

So writing the list of basic ingredients and providing the most basic and straightforward recipe for the mechanics. Then keeping the fluff separate and going wild there. Specifically to make things...easier.

Nods I also like separating flavor and mechanics so that it is easy to adapt refurbish.

 

[Enrahim2]

OGL 1.0a, "You may use any authorized version of this License"

(IANAL) The way you quote this is extremely misleading. At the very least you should have added "to (...)" The statement appear to me to be formulated so that any "authorized" lisence have one aditional ability than the one stipulated in section 4. Section 4 allow the use of all 1.0a content in 1.0a publications. Section 9 grants in addition the ability for other versions to also use 1.0a content as long as they are "authorized", grant 1.0a the right to use any 1.1 or 1.0 material as long as 1.0a is considered "authorised", and interestingly the way I read it grants any parties to 1.0a the rights to use any 1.1 OGC in other 1.1 OGC products, despite 1.1 itself not mentioning the word OGC or any such rights beyond its passage that it is an update to 1.0(a)

indeed this last observation show that with this interpretation, the "update to 1.0a" make defining OGC, and describing rights asociated with it is redundant if wizards intend to limit the uses of 1.1 OGL in 1.1 to those described in section 9, rather than the wider rights granted in section 4.

(Full sentence for easy reference: "You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License."

Seperate license grant from section 4: "In consideration for agreeing to use this License, the Contributors grant You a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license with the exact terms of this License to Use, the Open Game Content."

Definition of "Use" in the primary license grant from section 1 (g): ' "Use", "Used" or "Using" means to use, Distribute, copy, edit, format, modify, translate and otherwise create Derivative Material of Open Game Content. ')

 

[pemerton]

Question: if you "can't see any pathway to an argument that says that Matt can lose the right from WotC at their whim and yet his sub-licensing to you is irrevocable" doesn't that mean that every license is a license and that there are no sub-licenses?

And yet sub-licenses are explicitly discussed in the OGL. Were all licenses between just "You and Wotc", what exactly is the sub-license that falls under "sublicenses shall survive the termination of this License" in the OGL?

I'm happy to be corrected, especially by @S'mon if he thinks I'm getting this wrong.

But here's my take.

Suppose I ask you to look after my house on the weekend while I'm away. You ask "Is it over if I have a few friends over on Saturday evening?" and I reply "Sure!"

Now I have licensed you to be on my land and in my house. And I have authorised you to license your friends - ie to create sub-licences.

Suppose my plans fall over: I get sick, and come back earlier than planned, on Saturday evening. I come in and say "Sorry everyone, I'm contagious and need to rest, you'll have to all go home." I've terminated your licence, and also the sub-licences. This also illustrates that the difference between a licence and a sub-licence is not their subject matter (for both you and your friends, the licence has the same subject matter - ie hanging out in my house) but their mode of creation - you dealt directly with me, whereas your friends didn't, they dealt only with you in circumstances where I had vested you with an appropriate legal power.

Relating this to the OGL v 1.0/1.0a:

The argument that WotC can revoke vis-a-vis Matt Finch is based on an analogy of the contractual licence that fails to specify its revocability, and the gratuitous licence in my story just above. If that argument is sound (I personally have doubts that it is, as I've posted many times in this thread), I don't see how it can apply to Matt but not his sub-licensees. Or to put it another way, I can't see how the licensor's rights to turf out all the visitors can be stronger against the one they directly transacted with, than against the ones who are only there at the invitation of the person being turfed out.

Turning to Section 13:

Section 13 is expressly concerned with termination for breach, and its clear purpose seems to be to ensure that links in the chain/network don't break because of one party breaching, provided those downstream of them cure any inherited breaches. That's one reason why it calls out sub-licensees. Another is this: if you lose your contractual rights due to breach, you have nevertheless agreed that the rights to your content that you sent downstream (to the sub-licensees) remain in place. But I don't see how section 13 gives sub-licensees any general claim to enjoy the benefits of the licence that are stronger than those to whom the the benefits were directly licensed.

 

[Mistwell]

(IANAL) The way you quote this is extremely misleading. At the very least you should have added "to (...)" The statement appear to me to be formulated so that any "authorized" lisence have one aditional ability than the one stipulated in section 4. Section 4 allow the use of all 1.0a content in 1.0a publications. Section 9 grants in addition the ability for other versions to also use 1.0a content as long as they are "authorized", grant 1.0a the right to use any 1.1 or 1.0 material as long as 1.0a is considered "authorised", and interestingly the way I read it grants any parties to 1.0a the rights to use any 1.1 OGC in other 1.1 OGC products, despite 1.1 itself not mentioning the word OGC or any such rights beyond its passage that it is an update to 1.0(a)

indeed this last observation show that with this interpretation, the "update to 1.0a" make defining OGC, and describing rights asociated with it is redundant if wizards intend to limit the uses of 1.1 OGL in 1.1 to those described in section 9, rather than the wider rights granted in section 4.

(Full sentence for easy reference: "You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License."

Seperate license grant from section 4: "In consideration for agreeing to use this License, the Contributors grant You a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license with the exact terms of this License to Use, the Open Game Content."

Definition of "Use" in the primary license grant from section 1 (g): ' "Use", "Used" or "Using" means to use, Distribute, copy, edit, format, modify, translate and otherwise create Derivative Material of Open Game Content. ')

Where do you address the revoke issue we were talking about in that mess above?

Everything you just wrote looks like you doing "Look, a monkey!" You don't even attempt to talk about the topic we were discussing.

 

[Enrahim2]

Where do you address the revoke issue we were talking about in that mess above?

Everything you just wrote looks like you doing "Look, a monkey!" You don't even attempt to talk about the topic we were discussing.

(IANAL) Your quote, if it had been an actual full sentence in 1.0a, would indeed have granted weight to a conclusion that "no longer authorized" would imply revokation. I was under the impression that this was your argument for the intepretation that there was a revoke claim in the text? I tried to use the standard approach of refuting a premise in your argument.

But I can spell it out a bit more clearly: Wether the lisence is authorized or not clearly affects your rights under section 9. However it is not obvious that it would in any way affect the rights granted in section 4. Hence my interpretation is that the formulation is only atfecting the section 9 rights, and has no bearing on the section 4 rights. The lisence is hence "weakened", but still the most essential provisions survive. Hence calling it a "revocation" is false.

 

[jgbrowning]

I'm happy to be corrected, especially by @S'mon if he thinks I'm getting this wrong.

But here's my take.

Suppose I ask you to look after my house on the weekend while I'm away. You ask "Is it over if I have a few friends over on Saturday evening?" and I reply "Sure!"

Now I have licensed you to be on my land and in my house. And I have authorised you to license your friends - ie to create sub-licences.

Suppose my plans fall over: I get sick, and come back earlier than planned, on Saturday evening. I come in and say "Sorry everyone, I'm contagious and need to rest, you'll have to all go home." I've terminated your licence, and also the sub-licences. This also illustrates that the difference between a licence and a sub-licence is not their subject matter (for both you and your friends, the licence has the same subject matter - ie hanging out in my house) but their mode of creation - you dealt directly with me, whereas your friends didn't, they dealt only with you in circumstances where I had vested you with an appropriate legal power.

Relating this to the OGL v 1.0/1.0a:

The argument that WotC can revoke vis-a-vis Matt Finch is based on an analogy of the contractual licence that fails to specify its revocability, and the gratuitous licence in my story just above. If that argument is sound (I personally have doubts that it is, as I've posted many times in this thread), I don't see how it can apply to Matt but not his sub-licensees. Or to put it another way, I can't see how the licensor's rights to turf out all the visitors can be stronger against the one they directly transacted with, than against the ones who are only there at the invitation of the person being turfed out.

Turning to Section 13:

Section 13 is expressly concerned with termination for breach, and its clear purpose seems to be to ensure that links in the chain/network don't break because of one party breaching, provided those downstream of them cure any inherited breaches. That's one reason why it calls out sub-licensees. Another is this: if you lose your contractual rights due to breach, you have nevertheless agreed that the rights to your content that you sent downstream (to the sub-licensees) remain in place. But I don't see how section 13 gives sub-licensees any general claim to enjoy the benefits of the licence that are stronger than those to whom the the benefits were directly licensed.

Thanks for taking the time for that!

joe b.