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What's All This About The OGL Going Away?
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<blockquote data-quote="see" data-source="post: 8878389" data-attributes="member: 10531"><p>Okay, from the OGL FAQ, as published on the WotC site <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20010429024325/http://www.wizards.com/D20/article.asp?x=dt20010417g" target="_blank">on February 9, 2001</a>:</p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p><strong>Q: Does this mean that someone could take Open Game Content I wrote and distributed for free, and then put it in a product and sell that product to someone else?</strong></p><p> </p><p>A: Yes.</p><p></p><p><strong>Q: To be clear: Does this mean that Wizards of the Coast could take Open Game Content I wrote and distributed for free, put it into a Dungeons & Dragons product and make money off it?</strong></p><p></p><p>A: Yes.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Q: And they wouldn't have to ask my permission or pay me a royalty?</strong></p><p> </p><p>A: No.</p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p>So, well, yes, WotC has always had the ability to take your OGC and use it themselves. They <em>explicitly</em> came out and said that more than two decades ago.</p><p></p><p>Heck, at one point Ryan Dancey himself actually compared the situation of the small OGC producers in such cases to that of black musicians in the 1950s who saw white artists' covers of their songs become major hits. (I don't know where to find that statement now, but I was <em>quite</em> struck by it at the time, because I knew that those black musicians generally had sold the rights to their songs to record labels for a flat fee, and so saw not a dime of the royalties on the cover versions.)</p><p></p><p>And while under normal circumstances WotC only could take your OGC and use it under the terms of the OGL 1.0a like everyone else, every draft and version of the OGL had a Section 9 equivalent, which allows WotC to write new terms and then use the OGC under those new terms WotC just wrote. Pretty much the very first thing people said when we saw the update provision in the original discussion draft "OGL 0.1" was "Of course, WotC could use this provision to take OGC and then use it any way they like."</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="see, post: 8878389, member: 10531"] Okay, from the OGL FAQ, as published on the WotC site [URL='http://web.archive.org/web/20010429024325/http://www.wizards.com/D20/article.asp?x=dt20010417g']on February 9, 2001[/URL]: [HR][/HR] [B]Q: Does this mean that someone could take Open Game Content I wrote and distributed for free, and then put it in a product and sell that product to someone else?[/B] A: Yes. [B]Q: To be clear: Does this mean that Wizards of the Coast could take Open Game Content I wrote and distributed for free, put it into a Dungeons & Dragons product and make money off it?[/B] A: Yes. [B]Q: And they wouldn't have to ask my permission or pay me a royalty?[/B] A: No. [HR][/HR] So, well, yes, WotC has always had the ability to take your OGC and use it themselves. They [I]explicitly[/I] came out and said that more than two decades ago. Heck, at one point Ryan Dancey himself actually compared the situation of the small OGC producers in such cases to that of black musicians in the 1950s who saw white artists' covers of their songs become major hits. (I don't know where to find that statement now, but I was [I]quite[/I] struck by it at the time, because I knew that those black musicians generally had sold the rights to their songs to record labels for a flat fee, and so saw not a dime of the royalties on the cover versions.) And while under normal circumstances WotC only could take your OGC and use it under the terms of the OGL 1.0a like everyone else, every draft and version of the OGL had a Section 9 equivalent, which allows WotC to write new terms and then use the OGC under those new terms WotC just wrote. Pretty much the very first thing people said when we saw the update provision in the original discussion draft "OGL 0.1" was "Of course, WotC could use this provision to take OGC and then use it any way they like." [/QUOTE]
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