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

[mamba]

But doesn't section 4 do exactly that? If not as a pool, at least individually? Doesn't each Contributor implicitly agree to, at future point in time, to an as of yet unknown new User, to grant them a license?

no, the contributors are offering a license to the new user, and that user is free to accept its terms or not, neither of which has an impact on the contributors

 

[tomBitonti]

no, the contributors are offering a license to the new user, and that user is free to accept its terms or not, neither of which has an impact on the contributors

I was responding to this:

You are trying to argue that a party can enter into a private law agreement, at time zero, with another entity that doesn't even exist at that time. But you can't point to any legal principle that explains how that would work.

Isn't the grant of a license a private law agreement?

TomB

 

[Maxperson]

Isn't the grant of a license a private law agreement?

TomB

No. It takes two(or more) to agree. It's just a unilateral offer until someone comes along later and takes you up on it.

 

[tomBitonti]

No. It takes two(or more) to agree. It's just a unilateral offer until someone comes along later and takes you up on it.

Ah. Ok, I think my problem was that I was missing the "at time zero":

You are trying to argue that a party can enter into a private law agreement, at time zero, with another entity that doesn't even exist at that time.

Bold added by me.

More precisely then, each Contributor agrees at time zero (when they accepted the license) that they will -- in the future and to currently unknown parties -- grant a license to their contributed content to the unknown parties. That is, the terms of the license (as a contract) bind them to their future offer of a license.

I'll have to read back to see how this impacts the discussion.

TomB

 

[mamba]

Isn't the grant of a license a private law agreement?

the offer to license, no, someone taking you up on that offer, yes

 

[Steel_Wind]

What would be the point. You control the company, so any terms that you could put into a contract you can do without a contract. Further, what would you do if you breached such a contract? Sue the company for the damages that you caused to yourself by not following your own contract?

This is called a personal services contract. There are often very good reasons for doing so and usually relate to tax advantages, but may otherwise form the basis of extending a General Security Agreement, or trying to create a stock option, etc.. The reasons for doing so are numerous and each turns upon the specifics of the circumstances.

Usually, however, in the end, it's principally tax driven. It happens often for this purpose in jurisdictions that permit it. Many do not for that very reason.

 

[Staffan]

Whose offer? Which contributors? When WotC published its SRD with the notice affixed (i) identifying the OGC in the document and (ii) offering to license that OGC in terms of the OGL v 1.0a, there were no offers from any contributors.

Does it change anything that Wizards published Unearthed Arcana under the OGL, and included material from 3PP (Swords of our Fathers from The Game Mechanics and Mutants & Masterminds from Green Ronin)? This was not released as an SRD, but as a genuinely OGL book release.

 

[FrogReaver]

This is a good point. I was thinking that you had to be a part of the contract to initiate legal actions related to the contract.

In that case I agree trying to grasp at some weird legal edge case to bootstrap a robust content pool is not making sense. It seem like such a content pool interpretation would just lead to a lot of legal confusion, without acheiving anything practically beyond artificially trying to prevent the first contributor from becoming the single point of failure.

I checked CC and GNU, and they appear to acheive what they want while not being open to any interpretation related to such weird collective pool concepts to try to anchor the availability to a larger body of people than what is "needed" for the individual licensing. As the OGL was designed based on similar ideas as these, it seem unlikely that it try to do anything drastically different and conteoversial than these.

As for the FAQ 22, that spawned this line of thinking, I still haven't grasped what they try to say with it. It might be that it is a bit clunsily formulated, and what they meant to say was that if someone published original material alongside existing OGC (hence having to be under OGL), then you are a licensee. I guess we can never know for sure.

The comparison to CC and GNL is interesting. So are the differences, especially with CC which is the most similar to the OGL 1.0a.

 

[FrogReaver]

The word “Use” (of OGC) is being used (by some) in the sense of being sufficient for the OGL (taken as a contract which, when accepted issues a license) to be accepted and a license issued. Section 2 specifies a condition which is a requirement of the agreement. I take that to mean that even though WotC “Uses” OGC per 1g, they don’t satisfy section 2, which means they haven’t accepted the OGC and the terms of the OGL (taken as a contract) don’t apply to them.

Unless they have actually satisfied section 2. The prevailing view says isn't the case.

TomB

Okay, now I’m Curious what you or anyone thinks they don’t satisfy from section 2?

 

[Maxperson]

Okay, now I’m Curious what you or anyone thinks they don’t satisfy from section 2?

WotC fails to satisfy the bolded portion of section 2.

2. The License: This License applies to any Open Game Content that contains a notice indicating that the Open Game Content may only be Used under and in terms of this License. You must affix such a notice to any Open Game Content that you Use. No terms may be added to or subtracted from this License except as described by the License itself. No other terms or conditions may be applied to any Open Game Content distributed using this License.

WotC does not post the notice that they must affix if they were using the OGL. Since section 2 is the license, they do not use the license when putting out content.