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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 8884235" data-attributes="member: 20741">This contractual approach misses the real teeth that the OGL 1.0a has always had, and that's if that if somebody uses the 1.0a licence to create something, others can then use THAT licensed OGL work as the premise for its further sublicensed derived work.  And because you can't take that valid sublicense right away under the OGL 1.0a under the termination clause - you can't take it away by a declaration or unilateral revocation, either.  WotC is stuck with those ongoing valid sublicensed works, moving forward through time.So WotC can modify (or terminate) the OGL going forward as to how it might apply to a work that was never released under the OGL or SRD. But that doesn't get them out of the ongoing rights of others to use what has already been released under the OGL 1.0a hitherto and declare its work as derived from that -- and those rights continue to spawn new sublicensing rights in the future. Those sublicense rights and may not be suspended or stopped.  The OGL is not static.Practically speaking, if a game system uses a D20 and there is any attempt at all at broad-brush compatibility with prior editions, it becomes functionally very difficult to escape the ongoing future reach of any OGL 1.0a product to be used to continue to publish compatible products into the future. If that makes the word "perpetual" sound a whole lot like "irrevocable", that's because that was always the intention behind it. Hasbro bought WotC in 1999. The OGL came out after that event, when those corporate officers in charge of D&D at WotC knew that later management teams at WotC would inevitably come to see the OGL as something they would at that future point in time want to escape.  The OGL was drafted in a manner so as to make that practically impossible.Remember, the OGL was a virus that WotC created in ~2000 at a time when its prior version of the game had COMMERCIALLY FAILED and the prior owner of the IP became insolvent. In order to focus the entire RPG business into embracing 3.0, WotC willingly infected itself with the OGL virus -- and then spread it to the entire industry. The incurability of that virus was not a bug -- it was a deliberately crafted "feature" and marketed on that basis. It worked.  Everyone knew that at some point, new management at WotC would try to undo it. When they moved from 3.xx to 4E, WotC did just that with the GSL in 2008. Commercially, it didn't work. WotC relented with the SRD in 2014, but now appear to be trying to go down that road again. None of this is a surprise, all of it was foreseen by the sub-license language in the OGL that it would inevitably occur at some future point in time.The OGL was drafted to make the virus incurable. It was marketed to the industry on that basis. The fact it is a incurable virus should not be seen as a contractual oddity, but as a commercial success.</blockquote>

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