My thoughts on the new OGL v1.2 draft

[Aspirinsmurf]

If they legally had this gun pointed to everyone's head the whole time, why didn't they pull the trigger when Pathfinder 1st edition first appeared? Even if their specific method might have forced them to let the initial slate of releases live, they could have killed support for the product and left it dead in the water.

 

[overgeeked]

If they legally had this gun pointed to everyone's head the whole time, why didn't they pull the trigger when Pathfinder 1st edition first appeared? Even if their specific method might have forced them to let the initial slate of releases live, they could have killed support for the product and left it dead in the water.

Because either 1) it's not really something they can do, or; 2) no one thought of it before.

 

[Greg Benage]

If they legally had this gun pointed to everyone's head the whole time, why didn't they pull the trigger when Pathfinder 1st edition first appeared?

Maybe the executives in charge at that time agreed with Ryan that even Pathfinder was a net gain for D&D, or maybe the executives in charge at the time disliked Pathfinder but not enough to nuke the creative commons over it.

Someone should track down Greg Leeds and ask him.

 

[Jer]

If they legally had this gun pointed to everyone's head the whole time, why didn't they pull the trigger when Pathfinder 1st edition first appeared? Even if their specific method might have forced them to let the initial slate of releases live, they could have killed support for the product and left it dead in the water.

Because everyone believed back in 2008 that the license was irrevocable. Including everyone at Wizards.

This argument of "it says perpetual which doesn't mean irrevocable" is a shift in the legal language over the last 20 years that has opened up a loophole that they're going to squeeze through.

This is a problem when the folks who are licensing the thing in question aren't licensing it in good faith. The good faith around the OGL left the building before 4e came out. The 5e OGL licensing was a desperation move to try to win back the trust of a community they alienated, but not the actions of folks who really wanted to have an open license for its own benefits.

It's all about trust. The folks at Wizards who set this all up at the time could be trusted but the folks who are there now can't. And Dancey and the others thought they'd tied the bonds up tightly enough to leave no loopholes but language shifts over the decades means they were wrong.

 

[rogueattorney]

I don’t understand who WotC thinks OGL 1.2 is for.

Without going into the rest of it, the morality clause alone covers both publications and acts of the publisher, is decided solely under WotC’s discretion, makes you agree not to litigate, and has no definitions of the terms that WotC could declare a breach.

There’s no way anyone with enough commercial ambition to do the basic homework on publishing could invest significant time, effort and expense and then publish under these terms. Your sole reliance on the whims of a 3rd party who may view you as more competition than partner is no way to start a business.

Is this to protect the hobbyist who throws up a pdf of his home campaign notes on the Internet? That guy wouldn’t even think to license his stuff with WotC, nor would WotC likely to go through the trouble of trying to make him take it down.

So, to ask again, who does WotC think is signing on to OGL 1.2?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Morality Clause. I would like to hear from people not bothered by it, about a potential future where, say Tencent buys WotC, or a controlling share in Hasbro with pocket change, and starts enforcing their view of what is proper and moral.

I'm picking Tencent because I expect their background might raise eyebrows of those who are cool with Hasbro, not because I think they're somehow specifically worse. (In my eyes they're just bad in a slightly different way.)

the same remody I would have if WotC did something I didn't like... on a personal level evaluate how bad it is and respond... if it is weaponized I would LIKELY just stop supporting D&D.

Right now I still have a TORG suggestion for the next big game instead of D&D... or Rifts or Savage worlds

 

[jgbrowning]

2. The Morality Clause

Very nifty in theory. Very dangerous in practice. Particularly in their "Revoke the License at our discretion" with no legal recourse. I'm a bisexual transgender white woman, so the basic idea of WotC protecting my work and their own work from hateful and awful new works (like NuTSR's Star Frontiers boondoggle) is actually really joyous! But. It still gives them unilateral ability to decide what is and isn't hateful with no legal recourse or third party arbitration. Which could result in a tolerance of intolerance situation in which presenting bigots as bad guys is "Hateful Content" and my license gets pulled. I don't know if anyone is willing to risk that kind of nonsense.

Yep. This is where something like the old d20 System Trademark License could easily be used by transferring the right to use a Creator Content Badge to a 2nd license layered over the OGL 1.2 which would contain a morality clause. This way, those who are indicating the highest level of compatiblity with the brand are those that are willing to subject their works to what the brand controllers consider as moral, while those who are (IMO rightly) suspicious about it can continue publishing as they always have.

Since the solution to this issue has already happened before: the morality clause is just a pretext for ending 1.0a. Especially when one considers that opening the 58 pages or so into Creative Commons effectively allows a publisher to publish offensive compatible material while literally saying "Compatible with Dungeons and Dragons!" on the cover. (something that 1.0a prevented as you can't refer to trademarks while using it without permission.) The CC "solution" clearly indicates to me that the morality reason is a pretext for a behavior, as it's counter to the stated goal.

joe b

 

[tomBitonti]

Because either 1) it's not really something they can do, or; 2) no one thought of it before.

Perhaps what changed is that the $ on the line went from tens of millions to hundreds of millions.
TomB

 

[overgeeked]

Perhaps what changed is that the $ on the line went from tens of millions to hundreds of millions.
TomB

Possibly. But if it’s something they could have done they more than likely would have back when Pathfinder came out. At any point between the announcement of Pathfinder and Paizo overtaking WotC in sales they could and would have pulled that trigger if they thought they were able to.

 

[Argyle King]

Would the push to make changes to lore have anything to do with whether or not new lore (and IP) would be under 1.2 instead of the old OGL?

I could see a scenario in which all future releases are done in a way that there is a divide between old and new content.