The analogy would be more complete if within that licensing agreement you as the initial licensee provided them said the owner licenses the friends to be in the house. That’s how it would mirror the OGL 1.0a.
Let X be the owner. Let L be the initial licensee. Let F be the friends. How do you envisage X directly issuing a licence to F, whom X has never met and doens't even know exists?
I'm not saying there is no answer to this. But you aren't providing one.
There are two mechanisms I can think of, whereby F gets a licence to be on X's property. One is for F to make L an agent. The other is for F to give L a power to sub-license. The OGL doesn't say anything about appointing agents. (Except in section 9.) But it does confer an entitlement to use, which expressly encompasses a power to licence. So to me it seems pretty clear.
WOTC also affixed the section 2 notice. Not just the section 8 notice.
Section 8 has no application when WotC offers to licenses (parts of) the SRD. Section 8 is a licence term that imposes an obligation on parties who distribute OGC. There is, perhaps, an argument that it is engaged when they distribute OGC in which they own the copyright, and which is not, when published, a distribution of anyone else's OGC (because not derivative of anyone else's OGC). But that obligation is in practical terms irrelevant, because in that circumstance section 2 does all the work. The actual purpose of section 8 is to ensure that downstream parties clearly identify, as OGC, that OGC in which upstream parties have an interest.
When WotC offers to license (parts of) the SRD in terms of the OGL, it is section 2 which is apposite, because section 2 is where WotC sets out a crucial term of its offer, namely, that "This License applies to [the] Open Game Content that contains a notice indicating that the Open Game Content may only be Used under and in terms of this License." Section 2 also states obligations that are incurred by parties who take up WotC's offer.
Maybe a question. When does something become OGC? When it’s designated as such? When it’s distributed as such? When a licensee accepts it as such?
My view would be when it’s designated as OGC and includes the necessary notices. What is yours?
By "designation" I take you to mean
WotC specifying what parts of its SRD it is prepared to license as OGC in the terms set out in the OGL. This is a statement of an offer. It is a specification of what content WotC is prepared to licence, and the OGL sets out the terms of the offer. A piece of copyrighted text actually becomes OGC when it is governed by contractual obligations that deploy the concept of OGC. The concept of
Open Game Content has no meaning outside such a contractual context. And no contract comes into being until an offer is accepted.
I understand that’s your interpretation. It’s not mine. Restating our positions ad infinitum will get us nowhere.
The difference is that I am actually setting out interpretations that are explained using the standard common law concepts of contract law, property law and contractual interpretation. You are not using any clear legal notions. You say stuff that makes no clear legal sense. I do my best to conjure some genuine legal meaning out of it (eg that you think the OGL is a pooling agreement; that you think the OGL makes downstream licensees agents of upstream licensors; that you are supposing an offer in itself to have the legal force and effect of a contract) and then explain why that is not the case. And all you do is reiterate your assertion without actually engaging with the legal reasoning.
I understand why you don't engage with the legal reasoning - you lack the expertise to do so. What I don't understand is why you continue to confidently assert your view. What do you think you are adding to peoples' understanding of their rights and obligations under the OGL?
