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Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD. Clearing up confusion.
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<blockquote data-quote="Matt Thomason" data-source="post: 8889576" data-attributes="member: 6777331"><p>My guess here is that their lawyers have explained that they do not actually have a practical revocation mechanism for what is a viral license distributed far beyond reasonable ability to track properly, they can't simply announce it and hope people see the announcement, for example. </p><p></p><p>The license is also subject to regional interpretations - for example, in the EU it's a contract between the relevant parties, which may not be true in other territories where it simply defines permissions to do something. Therefore, they're likely having to deal with multiple legal definitions should they use the word "revoke" - one side cannot usually unilaterally revoke a contract without a defined mechanism to do so - that could potentially leave them wide open to breach of contract claims if they make comments that appear to revoke it even if you <em>don't actually</em> agree to the 1.1 license.</p><p></p><p>The word "authorized", however, is more solidly defined as a term within the 1.0 license, and is a lot easier to play with. If you agree to a 1.1 license you have agreed that "1.0 is no longer authorized", and that makes a material change to your reading of the 1.0 license. Meanwhile, they can likely also say what they like about the word "authorized" in comments outside of the license, including making claims it's happened even if you didn't agree to it (even if they can't do that), without the same fear of legal repercussions as they would with "revoke".</p><p></p><p>That's my layman's interpretation, anyway.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Matt Thomason, post: 8889576, member: 6777331"] My guess here is that their lawyers have explained that they do not actually have a practical revocation mechanism for what is a viral license distributed far beyond reasonable ability to track properly, they can't simply announce it and hope people see the announcement, for example. The license is also subject to regional interpretations - for example, in the EU it's a contract between the relevant parties, which may not be true in other territories where it simply defines permissions to do something. Therefore, they're likely having to deal with multiple legal definitions should they use the word "revoke" - one side cannot usually unilaterally revoke a contract without a defined mechanism to do so - that could potentially leave them wide open to breach of contract claims if they make comments that appear to revoke it even if you [I]don't actually[/I] agree to the 1.1 license. The word "authorized", however, is more solidly defined as a term within the 1.0 license, and is a lot easier to play with. If you agree to a 1.1 license you have agreed that "1.0 is no longer authorized", and that makes a material change to your reading of the 1.0 license. Meanwhile, they can likely also say what they like about the word "authorized" in comments outside of the license, including making claims it's happened even if you didn't agree to it (even if they can't do that), without the same fear of legal repercussions as they would with "revoke". That's my layman's interpretation, anyway. [/QUOTE]
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Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD. Clearing up confusion.
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