If you explore a bank robbery or murder, people can get upset over you exploring it too, not just about you committing it.
Look, I'm not at all saying that people shouldn't have gotten angry. I think ultimately the leak and subsequent backlash was a net
good. Even if WotC had already decided to completely reverse course after meeting resistance from the TPP, it was good that they got very strident feedback from the fanbase, demonstrating conclusively to the Hasbro suits that OGL was not just some funky outdated license or just so the fans could make non-commercial stuff, but rather an aspirational ideal tremendously valued by the community.
What I'm arguing against is the narrative that WotC,
as a strategy, just callously and unilaterally tried to cancel the OGL, completely oblivious to the optics or wishes of the fans, and
only the backlash stopped them. I know that for many that is the full extent of the narrative. But that is not what happened.
- They floated the idea of royalties and limiting the OGL only to static media. No one cared.
- They tried to get TPPs onboard with their plans before releasing the new license (and if you want to be mad about the strong arm tactics, go ahead).
- When they didn't get buy-in from the TPPs, they didn't release it when they had planned to.
I don't know where they would have gone after that. Nobody does. OGL 2.0? We don't even know the provenance or date of that, and in any event, it was also
not released. We can speculate until the cows come home, but my point is only that WotC's strategy was to get TPP buy-in for the new license, they didn't get it, they paused to re-calibrate their strategy and then everything blew up in their face.
In my opinion, any discussion of WotC's strategy vis-a-vis the OGL has to deal with the hypothetical that WotC got buy-in from the TPPs. (I also think the possibility that, not getting buy-in from TPPs, WotC would have abandoned revoking the OGL
without the leaks happening should also be considered, but I'm aware that's almost certainly a bridge too far for most.)
Now, Alzrius doesn't want to discuss that hypothetical, and that's fine. But that's the only reason I noted that people were upset with what WotC explored doing, and not what they actually did. Because what they actually did was offer term sheets to TPPs, hold off on releasing "OGL" 1.1, write a smug apology, write a better one, release OGL 1.2 for feedback, and after receiving the feedback released 5e into the Creative Commons. And none of that, aside from the first thing, was part of a strategy, those were just reactions to events.
(And just to be clear, if anyone is mad with WotC for even
thinking about revoking OGL 1.0a, that's fine with me.)