Ryan Dancey -- Hasbro Cannot Deauthorize OGL

I reached out to the architect of the original Open Gaming License, former VP of Wizard of the Coast, Ryan Dancey, and asked his opinion about the current plan by WotC to 'deauthorize' the current OGL in favour of a new one.

He responded as follows:

Yeah my public opinion is that Hasbro does not have the power to deauthorize a version of the OGL. If that had been a power that we wanted to reserve for Hasbro, we would have enumerated it in the license. I am on record numerous places in email and blogs and interviews saying that the license could never be revoked.

Ryan also maintains the Open Gaming Foundation.

As has been noted previously, even WotC in its own OGL FAQ did not believe at the time that the licence could be revoked.

7. Can't Wizards of the Coast change the License in a way that I wouldn't like?

Yes, it could. However, the License already defines what will happen to content that has been previously distributed using an earlier version, in Section 9. As a result, even if Wizards made a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an earlier, acceptable version at your option. In other words, there's no reason for Wizards to ever make a change that the community of people using the Open Gaming License would object to, because the community would just ignore the change anyway.

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[SAVeira]

Crap. Now I have a lot of downloading to do.

There is tool on DriveThruRPG, install it and you can get it to download your library. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/library_client.php

I have used it to back up my library. Took a while as I have thousands of items.

 

[éxypnos]

I just wish the word "irrevocable" appeared in the OGL v1.0!

LMAO! It says PERPETUAL.

 

[mamba]

LMAO! It says PERPETUAL.

not the same word, not the same meaning

 

[Alzrius]

LMAO! It says PERPETUAL.

I'll refer you to my post near the bottom of the first page of this thread:

Yeah, but there's an assertion being made (if I understand things correctly) that there's a difference between being perpetual (i.e. having no built-in expiration date) and being revocable (i.e. the issuer can say the license is no longer valid). I have no idea if that's necessarily true, and I suspect that it'd take a court ruling to conclusively affirm or deny, but it seems to be the current line of thinking on WotC's part as of now.

 

[éxypnos]

I'll refer you to my post near the bottom of the first page of this thread:

Already checked with my international IP firm. The license is perpetual. Cannot be cancelled. This was well covered after the OGL was first released

 

[Alzrius]

Already checked with my international IP firm. The license is perpetual. Cannot be cancelled. This was well covered after the OGL was first released

And I hope they're correct, I truly do. But WotC seems to have someone telling them otherwise, and they have the resources necessary to fight a legal battle over it (which, even if they wouldn't win, isn't something most other people or third-party companies could do). Hence why there's still a lot of nervousness and uncertainty over this.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Already checked with my international IP firm. The license is perpetual. Cannot be cancelled. This was well covered after the OGL was first released

And I hope they're correct, I truly do. But WotC seems to have someone telling them otherwise, and they have the resources necessary to fight a legal battle over it (which, even if they wouldn't win, isn't something most other people or third-party companies could do). Hence why there's still a lot of nervousness and uncertainty over this.

again everything is booming out fast and I didn't save a link, but someone said the computer licensees that the OGL is based on all got an update around 2007 (I think if I remember they said that was v3.0) to include non revokable in it. If this is true the OGL is based on outdated wording.

 

[Cadence]

And I hope they're correct, I truly do. But WotC seems to have someone telling them otherwise, and they have the resources necessary to fight a legal battle over it (which, even if they wouldn't win, isn't something most other people or third-party companies could do). Hence why there's still a lot of nervousness and uncertainty over this.

RE: Affording a Legal Battle

I bought a lot of my gaming stuff expressly because it was under the OGL 1.0A and the representations that it was eternal. I wonder how big of a class of people that is and what the late night lawyer commercial to recruit peole to the suit would look like.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

again everything is booming out fast and I didn't save a link, but someone said the computer licensees that the OGL is based on all got an update around 2007 (I think if I remember they said that was v3.0) to include non revokable in it. If this is true the OGL is based on outdated wording.

My understanding was that the OGL wording was problematic/outdated even when 1.0a was created, but I would be unsurprised if it got even further behind in 2007. And of course the WotC of 2007 would have had no incentive to update it, because even 7 years later they must have been planning 4E and the GSL.

 

[Alzrius]

I wonder how big of a class of people that is and what the late night lawyer commercial to recruit peole to the suit would look like.

Probably something like this: