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WotC Backs Down: Original OGL To Be Left Untouched; Whole 5E Rules Released as Creative Commons
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<blockquote data-quote="see" data-source="post: 8930965" data-attributes="member: 10531"><p>This is getting well wide of the topic of this thread or even this entire website, but . . .</p><p></p><p>There are two situations here.</p><p></p><p>The first situation is one like the Linux kernel, where there have been no systematic copyright assignments. In this case, the trick is that pretty much every contribution to the kernel is a derivative work of a previous version of the kernel, and that work could only be legally produced by accepting the GPL 2. If, say, Linus Torvalds got hit by a bus and his heirs wanted to yank back his offer of license, pretty much everything he's done since the earliest versions has been in part derivative of other people's contributions, and thus would be a license agreement violation if withdrawn. Even if there's some surviving before-all-contributions Torvalds code still in the Linux kernel, that'd probably (not certainly, but probably) be little enough, of marginal-enough uniqueness, to fall under fair use (at least in the US). This makes an effective withdrawal of offer on the Linux kernel somewhere between impossible and very complicated for our theoretical Torvalds' heirs, and harder for any other contributor. (If I understand correctly, the model train software case that got to the Circuit Court of Appeals level in the US falls under this situation. This situation does <strong>not</strong> reflect WotC's relationship to the SRD.)</p><p></p><p>The second case is where the copyright of the work as released under the license agreement is held by one entity. For example, the Free Software Foundation requires contributions to GNU projects have their copyrights be assigned to the FSF. Under pemerton's understanding, there is accordingly at least an argument that the FSF could withdraw its offer to license that code under a given license agreement. In that case, the only guarantee new parties can use the work under the license agreement in the future is the assumption that the FSF will continue offering the software under it going forward. (This is <em>very much</em> WotC's relation to the SRD.)</p><p></p><p>So, in the second case, what are big companies doing assuming that the license agreement offer for the software is non-revocable?</p><p></p><p>Well, in part, if they take advantage of the offer of the current license agreement today, what's most relevant is that the software is offered under the license agreement today. The theory here that pemerton is dealing with isn't that the license agreement can be cancelled regarding actual parties to the agreement, but that the offer to <em>new parties</em> to enter into the agreement can be withdrawn. Once Google has taken advantage of Oracle's offer of a license agreement regarding some software, it's too late for Oracle to withdraw that offer to Google, but they might be able to withdraw the offer today so it isn't available to FoundedIn2024 Corporation.</p><p></p><p>In other part, the big companies <em>might</em> just be overconfident in beliefs that the courts might not uphold. I mean, we have recent evidence of that. If the recent views of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in <em>Google v. Oracle</em>, on the copyrightability of APIs, had been generally held back in 1978, AT&T might well have stopped Unix clones starting with Coherent, Digital Research might well have stopped the CP/M clones including QDOS (later known as MS-DOS), and Microsoft could have gone after Sun for WABI and later the WINE project for WINE. None of them did that because it was assumed for decades that a reimplimenting an API was legal -- and then, after decades of practice by major players assuming the law was one way, Oracle managed to get a ruling that the API itself was copyrightable.</p><p></p><p>That the US Supreme Court subsequently decided that Google's use was fair use, and did not decide on API copyrightability at all, doesn't particularly change my point. A Federal Circuit opinion that comes within two SC votes of being upheld is not a fringe interpretation. That hundreds of billions of dollars of business over decades have been undertaken on a specific belief of what the law is doesn't provide all that much assurance that the courts will agree that it is the law.</p><p></p><p>So in the current situation, unless and until an unmixed copyright holder withdrawing an offer to enter a license agreement actually results in case law, we don't know for sure what the courts will decide.</p><p></p><p>(I am not a lawyer, and I am not advising anyone on the specifics of their legal situation; I'm an amateur discussing his understanding of the situation.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="see, post: 8930965, member: 10531"] This is getting well wide of the topic of this thread or even this entire website, but . . . There are two situations here. The first situation is one like the Linux kernel, where there have been no systematic copyright assignments. In this case, the trick is that pretty much every contribution to the kernel is a derivative work of a previous version of the kernel, and that work could only be legally produced by accepting the GPL 2. If, say, Linus Torvalds got hit by a bus and his heirs wanted to yank back his offer of license, pretty much everything he's done since the earliest versions has been in part derivative of other people's contributions, and thus would be a license agreement violation if withdrawn. Even if there's some surviving before-all-contributions Torvalds code still in the Linux kernel, that'd probably (not certainly, but probably) be little enough, of marginal-enough uniqueness, to fall under fair use (at least in the US). This makes an effective withdrawal of offer on the Linux kernel somewhere between impossible and very complicated for our theoretical Torvalds' heirs, and harder for any other contributor. (If I understand correctly, the model train software case that got to the Circuit Court of Appeals level in the US falls under this situation. This situation does [B]not[/B] reflect WotC's relationship to the SRD.) The second case is where the copyright of the work as released under the license agreement is held by one entity. For example, the Free Software Foundation requires contributions to GNU projects have their copyrights be assigned to the FSF. Under pemerton's understanding, there is accordingly at least an argument that the FSF could withdraw its offer to license that code under a given license agreement. In that case, the only guarantee new parties can use the work under the license agreement in the future is the assumption that the FSF will continue offering the software under it going forward. (This is [I]very much[/I] WotC's relation to the SRD.) So, in the second case, what are big companies doing assuming that the license agreement offer for the software is non-revocable? Well, in part, if they take advantage of the offer of the current license agreement today, what's most relevant is that the software is offered under the license agreement today. The theory here that pemerton is dealing with isn't that the license agreement can be cancelled regarding actual parties to the agreement, but that the offer to [I]new parties[/I] to enter into the agreement can be withdrawn. Once Google has taken advantage of Oracle's offer of a license agreement regarding some software, it's too late for Oracle to withdraw that offer to Google, but they might be able to withdraw the offer today so it isn't available to FoundedIn2024 Corporation. In other part, the big companies [I]might[/I] just be overconfident in beliefs that the courts might not uphold. I mean, we have recent evidence of that. If the recent views of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in [I]Google v. Oracle[/I], on the copyrightability of APIs, had been generally held back in 1978, AT&T might well have stopped Unix clones starting with Coherent, Digital Research might well have stopped the CP/M clones including QDOS (later known as MS-DOS), and Microsoft could have gone after Sun for WABI and later the WINE project for WINE. None of them did that because it was assumed for decades that a reimplimenting an API was legal -- and then, after decades of practice by major players assuming the law was one way, Oracle managed to get a ruling that the API itself was copyrightable. That the US Supreme Court subsequently decided that Google's use was fair use, and did not decide on API copyrightability at all, doesn't particularly change my point. A Federal Circuit opinion that comes within two SC votes of being upheld is not a fringe interpretation. That hundreds of billions of dollars of business over decades have been undertaken on a specific belief of what the law is doesn't provide all that much assurance that the courts will agree that it is the law. So in the current situation, unless and until an unmixed copyright holder withdrawing an offer to enter a license agreement actually results in case law, we don't know for sure what the courts will decide. (I am not a lawyer, and I am not advising anyone on the specifics of their legal situation; I'm an amateur discussing his understanding of the situation.) [/QUOTE]
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