The Open Gaming License "removal" is just a bunch of mostly junk-filled rumors that Wizards of the Coast has explicitly said are not true. Yes, the OGL may be modified or tweaked, but no way is it going to be completely removed. The sky is not falling just yet guys.
Source?
The OGL cannot be revoked. Furthermore, even if the OGL is modified or tweaked publishers can use any version of it for any content released under the OGL. So everyone would ignore an updated OGL unless it was substantially better than the existing one.
The source is the OGL itself.
Anyone claiming that the OGL can be revoked or that WotC can modify it and ruin it has never read the license itself.
(Then, unfortunately, fans who haven't had a need to read the license itself hear these YouTubers acting like experts on it and believe them. So I don't presume the average fan should understand the OGL, but these YouTubers and some gaming "news" sites are being irresponsible with pushing wild speculation based on false understandings of the OGL to their audiences.)
The Open Gaming License "removal" is just a bunch of mostly junk-filled rumors that Wizards of the Coast has explicitly said are not true. Yes, the OGL may be modified or tweaked, but no way is it going to be completely removed. The sky is not falling just yet guys.
Source?
The OGL cannot be revoked. Furthermore, even if the OGL is modified or tweaked publishers can use any version of it for any content released under the OGL. So everyone would ignore an updated OGL unless it was substantially better than the existing one.
The source is the OGL itself.
Anyone claiming that the OGL can be revoked or that WotC can modify it and ruin it has never read the license itself.
(Then, unfortunately, fans who haven't had a need to read the license itself hear these YouTubers acting like experts on it and believe them. So I don't presume the average fan should understand the OGL, but these YouTubers and some gaming "news" sites are being irresponsible with pushing wild speculation based on false understandings of the OGL to their audiences.)
So OneDnD is automatically under all previous OGLs and therefore can be used no matter what WotC does.
The Open Gaming License "removal" is just a bunch of mostly junk-filled rumors that Wizards of the Coast has explicitly said are not true. Yes, the OGL may be modified or tweaked, but no way is it going to be completely removed. The sky is not falling just yet guys.
Source?
The OGL cannot be revoked. Furthermore, even if the OGL is modified or tweaked publishers can use any version of it for any content released under the OGL. So everyone would ignore an updated OGL unless it was substantially better than the existing one.
The source is the OGL itself.
Anyone claiming that the OGL can be revoked or that WotC can modify it and ruin it has never read the license itself.
(Then, unfortunately, fans who haven't had a need to read the license itself hear these YouTubers acting like experts on it and believe them. So I don't presume the average fan should understand the OGL, but these YouTubers and some gaming "news" sites are being irresponsible with pushing wild speculation based on false understandings of the OGL to their audiences.)
So OneDnD is automatically under all previous OGLs and therefore can be used no matter what WotC does.
That's not what I was saying. At least one YouTuber got lots of attention (and plenty of views) claiming that WotC was going to revoke the OGL and prevent third party publishers from publishing anything for D&D ever again. That is utterly false and cannot happen.
Now can WotC simply not release an SRD for OneD&D? Sure. Does that mean third party publishers cannot publish anything for OneD&D? Not necessarily. It depends on how much they are planning on changing it, but considering what the playtest changes have been, so far publishers can easily support OneD&D using nothing but the existing 5e SRD. Heck, publishers were supporting 5e using nothing but the 3.5 SRD a year or two before the 5e SRD. Even a few supported 4e! (and 1e and 2e, in fact!)
So unless the OneD&D rules suddenly veer off into an entirely different direction that is an even larger change than any other edition change in the history of the game, the publishers have enough right now with the SRDs to support OneD&D even without a new 5.5 SRD. That's why the publishers have not been freaking out over this. Just people who need to generate drama and get YouTube views are the ones claiming it's all falling apart. Personally, I'd trust the opinions of those whose livelihoods actually rely on the OGL over those whose livelihoods depend on getting YouTube views.
So, basically, no matter what WotC does, yes, publishers can very likely support OneD&D.
The simple and unfortunate truth is that they don’t need to revoke the OGL, they just have to not update it to kill 3rd party support for the next edition of D&D. Things that are currently basic class features, like Fighting Styles will become feats in the next edition. Those feats are not currently supported by the SRD, only Grappler is. The classes that are currently covered under the SRD all have subclass features at various levels, but in the next edition all those levels are changing. Those new class level progressions aren’t covered under the current SRD. By simply not releasing an updated SRD, they will effectively have nullified the current one. Unless I misunderstand things, and if so, please correct me.
The simple and unfortunate truth is that they don’t need to revoke the OGL, they just have to not update it to kill 3rd party support for the next edition of D&D. Things that are currently basic class features, like Fighting Styles will become feats in the next edition. Those feats are not currently supported by the SRD, only Grappler is. The classes that are currently covered under the SRD all have subclass features at various levels, but in the next edition all those levels are changing. Those new class level progressions aren’t covered under the current SRD. By simply not releasing an updated SRD, they will effectively have nullified the current one. Unless I misunderstand things, and if so, please correct me.
Yes, you are misunderstanding.
Sure, that makes it a bit more challenging, but moving things to a different level or even shifting things from class feature to feat are not big enough changes that a publisher could no longer support it using the existing SRDs. For example, they might need to make new fighting style feats with somewhat different names, but that is allowable. Publishers were going so far as supporting 5e using only the 3e SRD, so there is very little to nothing in the playtests so far is not supportable. Heck, they even entirely rebuilt 1e, 2e, and BECMI using only the existing SRDs. So the 5.5 changes are extremely minor in comparison to all of those. Sure, it's a whole lot easier if there is an updated SRD, and I hope they do. But not releasing an updated SRD will not prevent publishers from supporting it.
(Only issue are things like the Ardlings which is a pretty unique name, that if it is not in the SRD, then 3pp can't mention the word "ardlings." Of course, they can have celestial animal-headed PCs all they want as long as they call them something else and change it up some.)
Legally if WoTC does not say that OGL applies to everything in OneD&D or 6e or what ever they end up calling it, then the OGL does not apply.
Its not revoked on the old stuff, just not applied to the new stuff.
Right. They could go the GSL route, apply that to 6e, then all of the updated spells and feats and character creation options and class structure/progression and rules updates fall under the GSL not the OGL. Pull support for 5e style character creation from this site for anyone who doesn't already own 5e product and you slowly choke off third party publishing. Will any of that happen? Nobody knows for sure yet as WotC has not published the license 6e will be under.
As Linklite said, Wizards of the Coast released a statement to companies such as Geekwire and Gamerant (as well as a few others) saying that they would continue supporting third-party content.
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As Linklite said, Wizards of the Coast released a statement to companies such as Geekwire and Gamerant (as well as a few others) saying that they would continue supporting third-party content.
But does not specify in what way they would be doing it.
They could update the OGL to include OneDnD, but nothing in those statements boxes them into that option. I don't know whether or how WotC is going to update it any more than you do, because they have not said as much. Both groups here are making assumptions based off of very little information. While I think the topic is interesting, I am certainly not claiming that I know definitively what WotC is going to do or not do.
Legally if WoTC does not say that OGL applies to everything in OneD&D or 6e or what ever they end up calling it, then the OGL does not apply.
Its not revoked on the old stuff, just not applied to the new stuff.
That is an over-simplification of the law and not entirely an accurate one--the OGL might not apply, but there are still plenty of things from OneD&D folks could lift without violating Wizards' IP rights. At its heart, the OGL is an acknowledgment that certain elements of D&D are not subject to copyright protection--you can have a copyright on a lot of the language involved in D&D, but you cannot have a copyright on the system itself and the method of operation that's just not something copyright law protects--Wizards would need a patent instead (which, if you do a patent search on the USPTO site, they do not have for D&D's system). The OGL exists in part because of the underlying limitations of copyright, with Wizards acknowledging that their own game is better off if they allow folks to use some specific, recognizable elements that can be copyrighted, rather than have homebrewers make content using D&D's systems that are expunged of recognizably D&D elements that might encourage folks to purchase official content.
This has been something Wizards has know about and acknowledged for decades, which is why there have been ways to utilize official content for over two decades now. Deciding where exactly that line falls, between what content Wizards wants to protect and what they are willing to make public due to the reality of limited IP protections, is something that has changed with each new edition of the game. Them saying "we do not know where those lines might fall yet since we have not even finished the edition" is just good business sense. Plus, if I were their lawyer, there is no way in heck I would let the PR folks say something that legal needs to go over, particularly before legal even finished looking at the new content.
Legally if WoTC does not say that OGL applies to everything in OneD&D or 6e or what ever they end up calling it, then the OGL does not apply.
Its not revoked on the old stuff, just not applied to the new stuff.
Right. They could go the GSL route, apply that to 6e, then all of the updated spells and feats and character creation options and class structure/progression and rules updates fall under the GSL not the OGL. Pull support for 5e style character creation from this site for anyone who doesn't already own 5e product and you slowly choke off third party publishing. Will any of that happen? Nobody knows for sure yet as WotC has not published the license 6e will be under.
Thing is - the GSL didn't even choke off third party publishers who didn't use the GSL. Publishers do not need WotC to release it under the OGL to still be able to support it. They've done it before and they can do it again. I've been freelancing in this industry since the OGL was first released 20 years ago. An updated SRD for OneD&D would be great and make things much easier for publishers and fans (and I really, really hope they do it), but not releasing it will not prevent publishers from supporting it. There are plenty of ways to do that still.
Bigger threats are tools like DDB if they didn't allow homebrew and a closed off VTT. Pushing gamers to their digital tools but preventing them from using 3pp stuff is a much bigger problem than a lack of an updated SRD.
Also, knowing this industry, WotC likely isn't talking about the OGL publicly because it's orders of magnitude too small to bother with until they have to. The 3pp market is ridiculously smaller than WotC's and I can guarantee that their business plans for OneD&D are not in the least being driven by thoughts of the OGL good or bad. After Ryan Dancey left, there hasn't been a die hard champion for the OGL to boost it on principle alone, and 5e OGL 3pp's are so small compared to WotC that it's not even enough for them to bother spending time trying to choke them off. Even their official DMs Guild is a tiny part of one person's busy schedule at WotC to support. If they can't be bothered to spend much time on DMs Guild where they actually make money, they certainly aren't going to care much about the OGL either good or bad. It's item #27 on some overworked person's To Do list.
The thing to remember about the SRD and OGL is: they don't exist because Wizards is generous. They exist because Wizards believed they were beneficial for their product. They could have changed their minds, but we have no evidence for it.
The primary purpose of the SRD is as a hook: people see it and are motivated to buy further. It's particularly important for getting previous edition players to migrate. These uses remain valid, so I would not expect the SRD to be going anywhere.
The purpose of the OGL is less clear. To some degree it's a recognition that fan products will exist whether or not Wizards officially permits them, and providing a reasonable pressure release may cut down on the outright piracy. To some degree it's about having third parties produce things Wizards doesn't want to make, or didn't think of, or take risks Wizards doesn't want to deal with. To some degree it's just about market dominance. That stuff is less certain -- they may think that the DMs Guild model works better -- but I'm sure they'll have some method of allowing third party products.
If you are talking about the motivations for the OGL originally, this is all spot on. For some elaboration, consider that the OGL was created when WotC bought TSR and that D&D came extremely close to dying with that company. One of the major factors in TSR's failure was trying to do too much at once and have all sorts of competing campaign settings and product lines, many of which were never profitable. WotC focused on the core rules and supplements as the most profitable. Ironically compared to how 5e developed, but back in 2000 adventures were the least profitable D&D products (and campaign settings close to that as well), especially since fans' interests varied so much, it naturally led to smaller audiences for each. So WotC hoped smaller companies would focus on filling those niches more and WotC could focus on the more profitable core rulebooks and splat books.
Secondly, with 3.0, things were being standardized to the d20 mechanic we still have now (remember this is coming out of 2e with "roll high to hit, roll low to save, roll 1d100 for skills" and so on). Their goal at that point was to have d20 become a standardized mechanic across many games - D&D, D20 Star Wars which they had the license to at the time, D20 Modern, D20 Future, D20 Supers (which was scrapped), as well as hopefully many independant games. This would make it easier for players to move between them all if the mechanics were similar. A very common phrase from Ryan Dancey was "A rising tide lifts all boats." So the idea was even if competing games were growing, it was growing the pool of customers who played RPGs overall, and there would be crossover. D&D doing well led some new customers to Mutants & Masterminds or d20 Call of Cthulhu and so on, which in turn as those grew led some new customers to D&D.
Lastly, another aspect of TSR they wanted to distance themselves from was their legal past. They had difficult lawsuits with companies like Mayfair that were producing unauthorized Role Aids books claiming compatibility with AD&D. Also, it was the early days of the internet, so fans were shifting from making their own little homebrew just for their owm game to pooling together to make "Netbooks" - larger compilations of homebrew that, although still simple RTF files, still rivaled, or often surpassed, TSR's products in size and depth. TSR unfortunately often reacted very poorly to these fan projects and WotC did not want to make that same mistake.
So with the OGL, they could get companies doing things similar to Mayfair but in a way that was legally clear for both parties, as well as provide an avenue for fans who wanted to create more elaborate homebrew compilations and publish it or share widely. Taking it even further, they also established the "Official [old campaign setting] Fan Sites" to further help clarify and focus fan efforts in a particular way where all sides accepted what was allowed and not so that no one had to bother with it and could operate in peace.
There was also a vision of other publishers trying out new and radical ideas, and the ones that caught on could be rolled back into D&D but that obviously never materialized. But it at least was in the list of possible benefits Dancey used to sell the idea of the OGL.
Not as outright stated, if I recall, but definitely present of "baseball farm league" approach to having talent build their skills (not just at RPGs in general, but D&D in particular) at smaller 3PP before working for WotC, and there really was a lot of reasons why it benefited WotC, at least at that time, to create the OGL. (And it's not a strong business case, but as fans of the game, seeing D&D did get very close to no longer existing at all, there was an element of "doing this prevents D&D from ever dying due to the bad decisions of a single business.")
The OGL cannot be revoked. Furthermore, even if the OGL is modified or tweaked publishers can use any version of it for any content released under the OGL. So everyone would ignore an updated OGL unless it was substantially better than the existing one.
The source is the OGL itself.
Anyone claiming that the OGL can be revoked or that WotC can modify it and ruin it has never read the license itself.
(Then, unfortunately, fans who haven't had a need to read the license itself hear these YouTubers acting like experts on it and believe them. So I don't presume the average fan should understand the OGL, but these YouTubers and some gaming "news" sites are being irresponsible with pushing wild speculation based on false understandings of the OGL to their audiences.)
So OneDnD is automatically under all previous OGLs and therefore can be used no matter what WotC does.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Why would the OGL apply to the OneD&D being published?
That's not what I was saying. At least one YouTuber got lots of attention (and plenty of views) claiming that WotC was going to revoke the OGL and prevent third party publishers from publishing anything for D&D ever again. That is utterly false and cannot happen.
Now can WotC simply not release an SRD for OneD&D? Sure. Does that mean third party publishers cannot publish anything for OneD&D? Not necessarily. It depends on how much they are planning on changing it, but considering what the playtest changes have been, so far publishers can easily support OneD&D using nothing but the existing 5e SRD. Heck, publishers were supporting 5e using nothing but the 3.5 SRD a year or two before the 5e SRD. Even a few supported 4e! (and 1e and 2e, in fact!)
So unless the OneD&D rules suddenly veer off into an entirely different direction that is an even larger change than any other edition change in the history of the game, the publishers have enough right now with the SRDs to support OneD&D even without a new 5.5 SRD. That's why the publishers have not been freaking out over this. Just people who need to generate drama and get YouTube views are the ones claiming it's all falling apart. Personally, I'd trust the opinions of those whose livelihoods actually rely on the OGL over those whose livelihoods depend on getting YouTube views.
So, basically, no matter what WotC does, yes, publishers can very likely support OneD&D.
The simple and unfortunate truth is that they don’t need to revoke the OGL, they just have to not update it to kill 3rd party support for the next edition of D&D. Things that are currently basic class features, like Fighting Styles will become feats in the next edition. Those feats are not currently supported by the SRD, only Grappler is. The classes that are currently covered under the SRD all have subclass features at various levels, but in the next edition all those levels are changing. Those new class level progressions aren’t covered under the current SRD. By simply not releasing an updated SRD, they will effectively have nullified the current one. Unless I misunderstand things, and if so, please correct me.
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Yes, you are misunderstanding.
Sure, that makes it a bit more challenging, but moving things to a different level or even shifting things from class feature to feat are not big enough changes that a publisher could no longer support it using the existing SRDs. For example, they might need to make new fighting style feats with somewhat different names, but that is allowable. Publishers were going so far as supporting 5e using only the 3e SRD, so there is very little to nothing in the playtests so far is not supportable. Heck, they even entirely rebuilt 1e, 2e, and BECMI using only the existing SRDs. So the 5.5 changes are extremely minor in comparison to all of those. Sure, it's a whole lot easier if there is an updated SRD, and I hope they do. But not releasing an updated SRD will not prevent publishers from supporting it.
(Only issue are things like the Ardlings which is a pretty unique name, that if it is not in the SRD, then 3pp can't mention the word "ardlings." Of course, they can have celestial animal-headed PCs all they want as long as they call them something else and change it up some.)
Legally if WoTC does not say that OGL applies to everything in OneD&D or 6e or what ever they end up calling it, then the OGL does not apply.
Its not revoked on the old stuff, just not applied to the new stuff.
Right. They could go the GSL route, apply that to 6e, then all of the updated spells and feats and character creation options and class structure/progression and rules updates fall under the GSL not the OGL. Pull support for 5e style character creation from this site for anyone who doesn't already own 5e product and you slowly choke off third party publishing. Will any of that happen? Nobody knows for sure yet as WotC has not published the license 6e will be under.
As Linklite said, Wizards of the Coast released a statement to companies such as Geekwire and Gamerant (as well as a few others) saying that they would continue supporting third-party content.
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HERE.But does not specify in what way they would be doing it.
They could update the OGL to include OneDnD, but nothing in those statements boxes them into that option. I don't know whether or how WotC is going to update it any more than you do, because they have not said as much. Both groups here are making assumptions based off of very little information. While I think the topic is interesting, I am certainly not claiming that I know definitively what WotC is going to do or not do.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
That is an over-simplification of the law and not entirely an accurate one--the OGL might not apply, but there are still plenty of things from OneD&D folks could lift without violating Wizards' IP rights. At its heart, the OGL is an acknowledgment that certain elements of D&D are not subject to copyright protection--you can have a copyright on a lot of the language involved in D&D, but you cannot have a copyright on the system itself and the method of operation that's just not something copyright law protects--Wizards would need a patent instead (which, if you do a patent search on the USPTO site, they do not have for D&D's system). The OGL exists in part because of the underlying limitations of copyright, with Wizards acknowledging that their own game is better off if they allow folks to use some specific, recognizable elements that can be copyrighted, rather than have homebrewers make content using D&D's systems that are expunged of recognizably D&D elements that might encourage folks to purchase official content.
This has been something Wizards has know about and acknowledged for decades, which is why there have been ways to utilize official content for over two decades now. Deciding where exactly that line falls, between what content Wizards wants to protect and what they are willing to make public due to the reality of limited IP protections, is something that has changed with each new edition of the game. Them saying "we do not know where those lines might fall yet since we have not even finished the edition" is just good business sense. Plus, if I were their lawyer, there is no way in heck I would let the PR folks say something that legal needs to go over, particularly before legal even finished looking at the new content.
Thing is - the GSL didn't even choke off third party publishers who didn't use the GSL. Publishers do not need WotC to release it under the OGL to still be able to support it. They've done it before and they can do it again. I've been freelancing in this industry since the OGL was first released 20 years ago. An updated SRD for OneD&D would be great and make things much easier for publishers and fans (and I really, really hope they do it), but not releasing it will not prevent publishers from supporting it. There are plenty of ways to do that still.
Bigger threats are tools like DDB if they didn't allow homebrew and a closed off VTT. Pushing gamers to their digital tools but preventing them from using 3pp stuff is a much bigger problem than a lack of an updated SRD.
Also, knowing this industry, WotC likely isn't talking about the OGL publicly because it's orders of magnitude too small to bother with until they have to. The 3pp market is ridiculously smaller than WotC's and I can guarantee that their business plans for OneD&D are not in the least being driven by thoughts of the OGL good or bad. After Ryan Dancey left, there hasn't been a die hard champion for the OGL to boost it on principle alone, and 5e OGL 3pp's are so small compared to WotC that it's not even enough for them to bother spending time trying to choke them off. Even their official DMs Guild is a tiny part of one person's busy schedule at WotC to support. If they can't be bothered to spend much time on DMs Guild where they actually make money, they certainly aren't going to care much about the OGL either good or bad. It's item #27 on some overworked person's To Do list.
The thing to remember about the SRD and OGL is: they don't exist because Wizards is generous. They exist because Wizards believed they were beneficial for their product. They could have changed their minds, but we have no evidence for it.
The primary purpose of the SRD is as a hook: people see it and are motivated to buy further. It's particularly important for getting previous edition players to migrate. These uses remain valid, so I would not expect the SRD to be going anywhere.
The purpose of the OGL is less clear. To some degree it's a recognition that fan products will exist whether or not Wizards officially permits them, and providing a reasonable pressure release may cut down on the outright piracy. To some degree it's about having third parties produce things Wizards doesn't want to make, or didn't think of, or take risks Wizards doesn't want to deal with. To some degree it's just about market dominance. That stuff is less certain -- they may think that the DMs Guild model works better -- but I'm sure they'll have some method of allowing third party products.
If you are talking about the motivations for the OGL originally, this is all spot on. For some elaboration, consider that the OGL was created when WotC bought TSR and that D&D came extremely close to dying with that company. One of the major factors in TSR's failure was trying to do too much at once and have all sorts of competing campaign settings and product lines, many of which were never profitable. WotC focused on the core rules and supplements as the most profitable. Ironically compared to how 5e developed, but back in 2000 adventures were the least profitable D&D products (and campaign settings close to that as well), especially since fans' interests varied so much, it naturally led to smaller audiences for each. So WotC hoped smaller companies would focus on filling those niches more and WotC could focus on the more profitable core rulebooks and splat books.
Secondly, with 3.0, things were being standardized to the d20 mechanic we still have now (remember this is coming out of 2e with "roll high to hit, roll low to save, roll 1d100 for skills" and so on). Their goal at that point was to have d20 become a standardized mechanic across many games - D&D, D20 Star Wars which they had the license to at the time, D20 Modern, D20 Future, D20 Supers (which was scrapped), as well as hopefully many independant games. This would make it easier for players to move between them all if the mechanics were similar. A very common phrase from Ryan Dancey was "A rising tide lifts all boats." So the idea was even if competing games were growing, it was growing the pool of customers who played RPGs overall, and there would be crossover. D&D doing well led some new customers to Mutants & Masterminds or d20 Call of Cthulhu and so on, which in turn as those grew led some new customers to D&D.
Lastly, another aspect of TSR they wanted to distance themselves from was their legal past. They had difficult lawsuits with companies like Mayfair that were producing unauthorized Role Aids books claiming compatibility with AD&D. Also, it was the early days of the internet, so fans were shifting from making their own little homebrew just for their owm game to pooling together to make "Netbooks" - larger compilations of homebrew that, although still simple RTF files, still rivaled, or often surpassed, TSR's products in size and depth. TSR unfortunately often reacted very poorly to these fan projects and WotC did not want to make that same mistake.
So with the OGL, they could get companies doing things similar to Mayfair but in a way that was legally clear for both parties, as well as provide an avenue for fans who wanted to create more elaborate homebrew compilations and publish it or share widely. Taking it even further, they also established the "Official [old campaign setting] Fan Sites" to further help clarify and focus fan efforts in a particular way where all sides accepted what was allowed and not so that no one had to bother with it and could operate in peace.
There was also a vision of other publishers trying out new and radical ideas, and the ones that caught on could be rolled back into D&D but that obviously never materialized. But it at least was in the list of possible benefits Dancey used to sell the idea of the OGL.
Not as outright stated, if I recall, but definitely present of "baseball farm league" approach to having talent build their skills (not just at RPGs in general, but D&D in particular) at smaller 3PP before working for WotC, and there really was a lot of reasons why it benefited WotC, at least at that time, to create the OGL. (And it's not a strong business case, but as fans of the game, seeing D&D did get very close to no longer existing at all, there was an element of "doing this prevents D&D from ever dying due to the bad decisions of a single business.")
Garbage website. I recommend you stop reading clickbait bullshit.
You don't quote any previous thread, so I'd be surprised if anybody (other than yourself) know to which website you are referring.
Oh boy. We'll see!