CRGreathouse said:
No, not really. They can change the d20 license as often as they like, and companies have to comply or drop the logo. They can't force the use of a new OGL, though; even if they came out with a new verison, the old version would continue. Legal publishing under the OGL is eternal, so I'm not concerned about it from that angle.
They can't retroactively change the UA OGL license, but they can easily change it for future books. The d20 licensing is still subject to the rules of OGL. It just adds more rules on top in exchange for use of the logo.
In any case, I really think this is all chicken little. The simple fact of the matter is that people are already doing exactly what you are afraid of with other WotC books. I did this myself with d20 Modern and posted the link to this board over a year ago (
http://home.comcast.net/~kenji.baugham/ ). A friendly rep from Wizards kindly corrected a minor license discrepency, which I corrected immediately, and when I expressed that I wanted to make sure that everything was kosher, they assured me that it was not only fine to do what I did, but that this was exactly what the license was for! To be honest I don't think many people use the file I compiled, and when they do it's only as a supplement to the d20 Modern hardback - because they want to be able to cut and paste, search, and access on a computer. I'd bet that if anyone uses the file, they probably have the book too. People would much rather have the quality of books from WotC, my distribution channels aren't effective, and I have no motivation nor capital to push for better distribution since I get no benefit from people downloading. Other people have done it with other books too, including someone who did the d20 SRD, added extra features and support that I didn't, and now charges money for these premiums on rpgnow.
You know what? There is simply no indication that this has hurt WotC one bit. There is no indication that it will hurt them in the future. As I have said before, the market has spoken, and this really isn't an issue. What's even more interesting is that all of these examples are OGL rips of WotC's cash cow core books, which in the case of the d20 SRD books on rpgnow are much more important for WotC's cash flow than Unearthed Arcana is. If that didn't bother them or hurt their sales of the PHB, DMG, and MM, then why would they suddenly stop producing OGC just because the exact same thing happens with Unearthed Arcana?
This is no big deal. It will be great for people to have a PDF version of the OGC in Unearthed Arcana. It will save a lot of typing time for people who want to re-use content via the license or include it, fairly licensed, in their campaign bible handouts. This is a really good thing.
