AFAICS yes, you can certainly contract with A, promising that in future you will offer to contract with B. And B could be 'everyone'. You could revoke your offer to contract with B, but then you'd be in breach of your contract with A.
Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD. Clearing up confusion.
AFAICS yes, you can certainly contract with A, promising that in future you will offer to contract with B. And B could be 'everyone'. You could revoke your offer to contract with B, but then you'd be in breach of your contract with A.
Yes it is certainly hell, but I understand (as a software developer, not a lawyer!) accepting this complexity to ensure a product you have produced is Open and STAYS Open.. If I have written a (say) GPL implementation of X, I DON'T want Google to be able to fork X, improve it, and license their improved derivative in a closed fashion.
You can separate it by clearly indicating which portions of the text are SA and which are not. I understand that is an inconvienence for publishers, but this OGL-inspired split of game mecahnics and product identity seem to be fuzzy in a way that is not favorable to people looking to build upon open work.. this may be where my lack of legal understanding takes over, but to me splitting those two concepts seems somewhat subjective, and therefore worse for clear Open licensing than explicit licenses.
I think the -SA part of the argument really pulled into focus the true issue at hand.. what was couched by the creator community as "WOTC wants to take away your freedom!" was actually "WOTC Wants to take away third-party commercial partners abilities to use WOTC IP under the old terms and replace them with terms more favorable to WOTC"
Which like, that may be naughty word for those 3pp but I'm not going to cancel my DNDB subscription over it, just like I didn't sell my iPhone when
Apple and Epic got into their spat.
FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
That was my perspective as well.
For me the final piece of that puzzle is - since this would simply be breach of contract the following would be true if i understand correctly:
1. Only parties to that contract could take legal action regarding the breach. B would have no legal standing.
2. The likely outcome of the suit for breach would be termination of the contract instead of forced compliance to the license terms.
On 2nd thought, presumably the automatic nature of the future offer to B precludes me from being able to breach the contract that way?
And this won't do for the CC, I don't think. It wants the offer to actually occur automatically, not just be the subject-matter of a contractual promise.
The original offer is an offer to the world that the offeror can withdraw at any time, just as the CC FAQ explains.
But the automatic offer is not an offer to the world, nor even (as per S'mon's post) something that the licensor has promised to do which it would be a breach of contract not to do. It is meant to be an actual thing that actually occurs, each time a party receives the licensed material.
I don't think that's what this is. WotC has not promised each licensee to make an offer, every time that licensee distributes the material, to the material's recipient. It has created a machinery of "automatic offer" that are outside its control, even if it changes its mind.
In the case of the OGL I can see how this works, because there is a permission to sub-licence as part of the licence terms, which can't be unilaterally revoked. Whereas this is a bit more opaque to me.
I already had a look through the list of materials earlier today. It didn't seem to have a lot of on-point material.In regards to the CC licenses, there might be some illuminating decisions that touch on the subject. I haven't read them all.
CC Legal Database
This database contains case law and legal scholarship about CC licenses and the issues that relate to their enforceability and interpretation.legaldb.creativecommons.org
I don't have a DNDB subscription to cancel - as I've mentioned in this or another thread, the last WotC product I recall purchasing was Into the Unknown about 10 years ago.. But I do agree with your first para. This is why I've characterised this as a commercial licensing dispute.
FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
Only if it's separatable and the rest of your work isn't an adaptation/derivative. For alot of content it would be a clear adaption/derivative and under SA you must license those with a SA.
I don't. The whole backlash was from WOTC trying to pull the rug out from under everyone. You can whitewash that by calling it 'favorable terms' if you want, but it was far more than that.
Your second thought is why I don't think the "automatic offer" is intended to simply impose a contractual obligation on the licensor to make the offer. The intention of the drafting seems to be to take the licensor out of it all together, but not by way of conferring a power to sub-license on the licensee.
Forgive my non-lawyerness, But does this speak to the difference in revocation and 'authorization' (as the OGL seemed to couch 'current offer' for lack of better lawyer words) .. as in, it seems the OGL to me did not assert or oblgiate WOTC to offer it as-is forever, only that once a work decided to use it, the terms would apply in perpetuity?
It seems the layperson DND community drew the conclusion that 'revocation' was related to 'offered' instead of governing existing agreements, and that no clear language seemed to exist around precisely the terms of the offering of the OGL..
And it seems like the CC-BY gets around that by basically saying "if anyone has a copy that has the CC-BY on it, its still CC-BY" essentially.
Sorry if my understanding or vernacular is elementary! I am but a humble software developer.
FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
I get your reservations - it's a fairly unique clause.
I would separate it into 2 parts.
1. Can you contractually agree to make an offer in the future. - we all agree this is possible i think
2. Can you contractually agree an offer in the future will be automatic. -i think this is really what is giving you pause?
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