The new OGL 1.2, What is Victory?

[doctorbadwolf]

On the other hand... this document explicitly states that 1.0a remains in force for works already published under it. Which, if I'm reading it correctly (would welcome correction by a lawyer), would seem to mean the sublicensing provision also remains in force and anyone can safely sublicense from, say, d20srd.org.

Yep.

 

[Aspirinsmurf]

Yep.

From the preamble? Not a lawyer, but that's not... really true. It's just nonsense gobbledygook:

NOTICE OF DEAUTHORIZATION OF OGL 1.0a. The Open Game License 1.0a is no longer an authorized license. This means that you may not use that version of the OGL, or any prior version, to publish SRD content after (effective date). It does not mean that any content previously published under that version needs to update to this license. Any previously published content remains licensed under whichever version of the OGL was in effect when you published that content.

What is any of that even supposed to mean?

I think it's telling that it's not actually part of the new license, but I'm far from convinced that WoTC actually intend for this to mean what you think it means. And since it's not a part of the proposed new license, that actually makes it even worse (since it could be construed as having some sort of effect even if you don't accept the terms of the new license).

 

[mamba]

Access to legacy stuff and being able to create derivative works from said legacy stuff. It's 20+ years of accumulated OGC under that license, some of it straight up abandoned.

With 1.2 being an OGL and 1.0a allowing the use of any authorized OGL, can you not simply use it?

 

[Aspirinsmurf]

With 1.2 being an OGL and 1.0a allowing the use of any authorized OGL, can you not simply use it?

I don't accept the new terms. I don't have to either. There's no mechanism to "deauthorize" any previous version.

It's the other way around, see: FAQ: Open Game License

 

[mamba]

They yanked an anti-captialist work as hateful, while adding terrible racist baggage to the Hadozee in their own work. I don't trust who's in charge NOW with morality policing, let alone 20 years from now.

They had the anti-capitalist work change the cover, they fixed their own Hadozee…

 

[mamba]

I am pretty sure wizards could change nothing, and just give away their entire IP, and people would still be upset.

I’d take that bet…

I think at this point, your average player is going to lose interest in this fight, wizards walked back everything except for a small portion that few people really care about, except for the vocal minority of creators.

just because you never cared doesn’t mean you should extrapolate to the rest of us. Had we listened to the likes of you from the start, we’d still have 1.1

 

[Branduil]

For me, victory is for simple. I want WotC to place all previous SRDs into ORC, so that they will always be freely available, and out of WotC's hands. I do not care at this point what they do with their own license, I'm moving on. I do think the morality clause is awful and abusable, but if people want to make a deal with the sword of Damocles hanging above them, that's their choice.

 

[mamba]

I don't accept the new terms. I don't have to either. There's no mechanism to "deauthorize" any previous version.

that is your prerogative. I am kind of waiting to get the best 1.2 we can, only for WotC to fail at revoking 1.0a At that point the best part of 1.2 would be whatever ends up in CC, if they succeed I might still have an acceptable (to me) 1.2

It's the other way around, see: FAQ: Open Game License

yeah, I used this symmetrical… so is the answer ‘no’ then or a ‘we have no idea’? Does anyone actually know for sure?

 

[Wasteland Knight]

I am pretty sure wizards could change nothing, and just give away their entire IP, and people would still be upset.

I think at this point, your average player is going to lose interest in this fight, wizards walked back everything except for a small portion that few people really care about, except for the vocal minority of creators.

Just because the average player lacks principles doesn’t mean @estar should give up on his.

 

[Matt Thomason]

With 1.2 being an OGL and 1.0a allowing the use of any authorized OGL, can you not simply use it?

I'm not sure how we can use 1.2 for including works by 3PPs released under 1.0a.

For one, it's a grant direct from WotC to us, with no viral component that sublicenses the content to the next reader.
Secondly, there's no equivalent to Section 15 where we list the other works we're using. It's written without any concept of content other than a) the licensed content from WotC, b) our own content, c) things we're using under other licenses (which are then not included in this license, but in a seperate license page we'd have to add.

While it calls itself "OGL 1.2", it's an OGL in name only. The very functionality required for it to serve as a 1.0a replacement is missing (section 15, the identification of what is Open Game Content/Product Identity, the ongoing grant from us to the reader, etc.). The only way to do that is to include a separate 1.0a license page that can cover those things, specifically for the non-WotC stuff. But then we potentially open ourselves to WotC telling us 1.0a is not authorized, and how dare we print it alongside 1.2. Despite me being confident they can't actually stop us doing that, legally, it's likely going to stop most of us from trying.

I'm willing to be corrected on this, if someone can explain what my licensing section at the end of a book will look like in order to satisfy both WotCs and the 3PPs licensing requirements. Right now, there appears to be no way that does not end up violating either our agreement with WotC (at least in their eyes), or our agreement with the 3PP.

Taking to Twitter just now, there's 3PPs now convinced that 1.0a content is lost forever and locked off eternally unless the original creators relicense it under a different license. Plans appear to be a mix of:

• Forget 1.2, and keep using 1.0a anyway.
• Use the ORC for the SRD plus 1.0a for 3PP content thus having no WotC license to worry about.
• Abandon all previous content under 1.0a as "lost"