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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[overgeeked]

Hey look - this account still works!


<waves to all>

Thanks for 20+ years of the OGL. It's been fun.

 

[Charlaquin]

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being perpetual (i.e. having no built-in expiration date) and being revocable (i.e. the issuer can say the license is no longer valid).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.

And, to reiterate, they know it likely won’t matter what how court would rule, because no one is going to want to fight their lawyers over it anyway.

 

[Ondath]

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<waves to all>

Hello Mr Dancey! I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you did with the OGL - regardless of how the license turns out in the coming days. I've been running games since high school in 2010, and knowing that the OGL allowed 3rd-party creators and people passionate about the hobby to thrive and share their creations with everyone was always reassuring when I tinkered with rules on my own.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah I worked for many companies that had 1 intent then with a change of leadership that intent changed. I don't know ifa legal argument of "I know what it says, but what I meant was..." means much unless (and this comes from a lawyer on this form) it is already a not clear writing.

I would think his opinion would matter though because of his role in the OGL and because WOTC has asserted something about what the intent was (and that assertion runs counter to most peoples understanding of the intentions of the OGL).

 

[Konrad13]

This whole ordeal is just a big oof. Hopefully WotC drops this or cleans it up to be far less a toxic pill.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah I worked for many companies that had 1 intent then with a change of leadership that intent changed. I don't know ifa legal argument of "I know what it says, but what I meant was..." means much unless (and this comes from a lawyer on this form) it is already a not clear writing.

Isn’t the fact that no one seems to agree whether or not the license is revocable evidence that it isn’t clear?

 

[TheSword]

Thanks for 20+ years of the OGL. It's been fun.

Ditto!

I spent 12 happy years playing Pathfinder that never would have existed were it not for the OGL. Not to mention necromancer games, Kobald press and several others.

Kudos!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Isn’t the fact that no one seems to agree whether or not the license is revocable evidence that it isn’t clear?

maybe
I'm not sure that a lawyer arguing "This word means this and that word means that and this is the word they used and that isn't" gets contradicted by the other lawyer arguing "Yes, they used the word that means that, but they meant this and I have a former employee from that time to say what they meant" is going to mean much.

If that does work then it does, but I don't see it in my very limited experience. However also the Judge is the DM... he can rewrite the rules

 

[MwaO]

Isn’t the fact that no one seems to agree whether or not the license is revocable evidence that it isn’t clear?

Yeah, the basic problem is this:
WotC: "We declare the 1.0a license no longer authorized"
Small publisher about to sink $1000 into writing/arting/editing say a PF2 supplement: "uh..."
WotC: <glares legally>

 

[Sacrosanct]

Hey look - this account still works!


<waves to all>

You're like BeetleJuice; your name was called 3 times.

On a serious note, thanks for what you and Peter did 20+ years ago. He saved D&D, and you gave it to the rest of us.