OGC Heredity

[CRGreathouse]

Don't know where it's specified, but I believe that anything produced that uses the rules in the SRD must designate a certain % of the book as open content.

Could be wrong.

This is correct (5%, if I recall correctly) if the product is produced under the d20 system license. If released only under the OGL, there's no limit.


Companies that publish original (nonderivative) material under the OGL can release it again without the OGL. For example, the revised PH uses much of the material in the original SRD, but it's still not OGC. WotC owns the original material so they can do whatever they want with it.

In the same way, if I published something without using any existing OGC (like the SRD) and released it under the OGL, I could license that content to someone else without using the OGL. Of course anyone could use it under the terms of the OGL, but if they didn't want to use that I could license it differently because I own the original material.

For most OGC content, this isn't the case -- since the work is based on the SRD, it can't be released again without permission from everyone who owns the material, which will include WotC. So realistically, material under the OGL stays under the OGL because licensing it in other ways is difficult.