1.0 is a contract as it exists with those who have entered into it for the content they entered into it with. And Wizards has committed to honoring those existing contracts. For future content, it is an offer still, and thus confers no legal rights to content not existing yet. As I said explicitly.
But I'll leave it at that--between Yeuri's post, Wizards' responsive posts, OGL 1.0, and my posts, it is clear that you might be reading, but reading alone is not conferring comprehension. In the spirit of this thread, I am just going to prove that, when the other side abjectly refuses to listen, the other person will disengage and just ignore them.
If Wizards could be taken at their word, maybe I'd agree with you. But their recent actions - and eggregious number of outright lies, misrepresentations, and misdirections in the statements you're relying on for your position - indicate they shouldn't be trusted at all.
Barring some sort of assurances - which their competitors, bizarrely, are willing to freely offer despite not having a history of lies and misrepresentations - they've destroyed any amount of trust that might be afforded them.
So I'm going to read between the lines of their statements, and derive my comprehension from the intent they've made apparent over the past few weeks.
Unless you want them to eat you. Then go ahead - ignore the rabid hyenas
You imply that the rabid hyenas have the power to "bite" WotC. Thew fact is, that all this outrage is at most a few hundred people on these forums, maybe a few thousand elsewhere. Even the petition to remove OGL only has like 65,000 signatures, and not everyone who signed is necessarily going to financially boycott the company. Were talking about a company that sells millions of copies of books including hundreds of thousands in the first month of publication usually, and has 12 million current members just on D&Dbeyond. Even if those 65,000 thousand signers all boycotted WotC it would make a small dent in their revenue. So a better way of phrasing it might be, "no one listens to rabid ants".
I am not in any way implying that we shouldn't do anything. But whipping everyone into a frenzy and telling people to take actions that harm themselves like stopping using D&Dbeyond despite having potentially hundreds of dollars of materials on the site and promising them that it will be worth it because it will harm WotC is destructive because it really won't. You don't want to continue playing D&D? Fine. You want to explore other systems? Great. You're telling everyone else that they should abandon their investments, both monetarily and in terms of time and potentially even campaigns, just because you don't like a decision that the company made and you think this will get them to repeal it? I cannot stand behind that. You do you but don't try to convince others to do the same, espicially not under false promises.
Unless you want them to eat you. Then go ahead - ignore the rabid hyenas
You imply that the rabid hyenas have the power to "bite" WotC. Thew fact is, that all this outrage is at most a few hundred people on these forums, maybe a few thousand elsewhere. Even the petition to remove OGL only has like 65,000 signatures, and not everyone who signed is necessarily going to financially boycott the company. Were talking about a company that sells millions of copies of books including hundreds of thousands in the first month of publication usually, and has 12 million current members just on D&Dbeyond. Even if those 65,000 thousand signers all boycotted WotC it would make a small dent in their revenue. So a better way of phrasing it might be, "no one listens to rabid ants".
I am not in any way implying that we shouldn't do anything. But whipping everyone into a frenzy and telling people to take actions that harm themselves like stopping using D&Dbeyond despite having potentially hundreds of dollars of materials on the site and promising them that it will be worth it because it will harm WotC is destructive because it really won't. You don't want to continue playing D&D? Fine. You want to explore other systems? Great. You're telling everyone else that they should abandon their investments, both monetarily and in terms of time and potentially even campaigns, just because you don't like a decision that the company made and you think this will get them to repeal it? I cannot stand behind that. You do you but don't try to convince others to do the same, espicially not under false promises.
I am not so sure that the damage that this matter is causing to WoTC can be accounted for in those 65,000 signatures.
In fact, i doubt that it can even be accounted for with dndbeyond subscription cancellations (although it is unreliable that they have).
The damage will be accounted for if a competitor actually comes out that offers the same experience that D&D offers, and third parties can safely create content for them. If that happens, like for example with ORC, and hardly anyone signs OGL 2.0 and therefore One D&D has almost no third party content; many players will migrate to that competitor. Especially if the adaptation of 5e is easy and fast.
Wrong. OGL only exists as a contract when it is entered into. Until it is entered into, it is an offer, and even a first year law student can tell you that "an offer may be revoked at any time by the person making the offer." They do not need terms saying that they can revoke OGL as an offer, because the law (and basic common sense) already makes that clear.
People already entered into 1.0a! Its a standing contract, already used to create products!
THAT is the issue. Its not an offer - its a contract that's been in use and in force for 20+ years.
And despite their apparent assurances that they aren't going to attempt to touch already printed material, they utterly failed to spell out what the conditions of that safe harbor are. Does it require accepting 2.0? If so, we're right back to 'there are no assurances or protections to prevent them from altering the deal further'.
Until they acknowledge they have no ability to actually de-authorize 1.0a, they haven't done anything.
1.0 is a contract as it exists with those who have entered into it for the content they entered into it with. And Wizards has committed to honoring those existing contracts. For future content, it is an offer still, and thus confers no legal rights to content not existing yet. As I said explicitly.
This is wrong on so many levels.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
I know pulse checkers for companies, trolling forums and such for customer feedbacks will filter out "useless" posts pretty quickly. If I am tasked with that job, anyone who says they are done and never returning gets added to my filter OUT list, so I don't have to read through their mindless and useless ranting as I do my research. If you're gone, you're gone and your opinion is of no value to me or my company, You state you are done and thus will not be feeding me cash, so why should I give a rat's ass what you have to say>
Those who are sitting and watching closely and saying the new agreement better be done right or they're leaving are the voices I want to track and log details from. These are the people whose business I may still be able to keep and as such, I will be carefully listening to what THEY want. Filtering out nerdragers is a good first step in getting some useful feedback. As a massive parent company, a lot of our customers understand and appreciate that we will, from time to time, fire a shot.....that hits our foot. Often we can backtrack and find out the person who aimed said shot was too detached from our goal, or simply overbearing and idiotic and then we need to start working on damage control AND a change of direction for said shot. Never fun, but a part of massive business that occurs (and will again in the future)
Too many folks have gotten their skivvies all tied into tight knots and can't get past the fact that Hasbro, from 50 miles away, shoved something down the pipe that was absolute shit. Horribly done, rushed, mishandled in pretty much every way it could be. It's something that now seems to have been handed to a much more in touch and sensible crew, who have no doubt been poring over the details, to try and make sure their collective asses are covered (listed as a main intent of changing the OGL) while not being some corporate ravager of creativity. When dealing with such an open IP as this, it can't be easy and I suspect, to do it RIGHT will require a MUCH longer document than what was leaked. Yes, cumbersome and boring as all hell to read through, but it would need to be so, to cover the proper bases and NOT step on the toes of everyone involved.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
The Open Gaming License is not a single contract hanging in the void that anyone can sign up for. It is a set of terms under which someone can create and enter into a contract with Wizards that is designed to be easy, painless, and most importantly mostly automatic. The Open Gaming License means a company does not need to specifically negotiate with Wizards every time they want to create a third-party D&D product; they can use the terms in the Open Gaming License to create a brand new contract for that product and Wizards will consider the contract valid. Each individual agreement created under the terms outlined by the OGL is, however, its own separate contract.
Those existing contracts are largely locked in place. I tend to agree with the view most people take that Wizards cannot retroactively mess with existing OGL contracts. As Caerwyn has stated, the courts do give weight to precedent, promise, and longstanding actions. Changing the terms of a deal that has existed for years without cause will not go well.
Whether Wizards can revoke the offer, state that new contracts cannot be formed under the strictures of the 1.0 version of the Open Gaming License, has yet to be determined. Some people think they can, some people think they can't, and some people think the OGL means literally anyone should be able to do literally anything with D&D as if they own the property without any consideration for anyone else working with the property for the rest of eternity. They're incorrect, but they will burn this game to the waterline before admitting that they are incorrect.
The Open Gaming License is not a single contract hanging in the void that anyone can sign up for. It is a set of terms under which someone can create and enter into a contract with Wizards that is designed to be easy, painless, and most importantly mostly automatic. The Open Gaming License means a company does not need to specifically negotiate with Wizards every time they want to create a third-party D&D product; they can use the terms in the Open Gaming License to create a brand new contract for that product and Wizards will consider the contract valid. Each individual agreement created under the terms outlined by the OGL is, however, its own separate contract.
Those existing contracts are largely locked in place. I tend to agree with the view most people take that Wizards cannot retroactively mess with existing OGL contracts. As Caerwyn has stated, the courts do give weight to precedent, promise, and longstanding actions. Changing the terms of a deal that has existed for years without cause will not go well.
Whether Wizards can revoke the offer, state that new contracts cannot be formed under the strictures of the 1.0 version of the Open Gaming License, has yet to be determined. Some people think they can, some people think they can't, and some people think the OGL means literally anyone should be able to do literally anything with D&D as if they own the property without any consideration for anyone else working with the property for the rest of eternity. They're incorrect, but they will burn this game to the waterline before admitting that they are incorrect.
Which sucks for the rest of us.
WRONG! it is NOT a contract, never has been. It is a license. They are two distinct things under civil intellectual property law. Once a thing has been licensed under it, it remains licensed under it forever. SRD 5.1 is licensed under OGL 1.0a forever and ANYBODY can use it under that license at any time in the future. I cite as precedent XimpleWare v. Versata, Trilogy Development Group, Inc., Ameriprise Financial, Inc., Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc., Aurea Software, Inc., Case No. 3:13cv5160, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.
Stop giving out legal advice that has nothing at all to do with the law. This will be tested in court and those cases applicable to GPL 2 will be cited as precedent and I predict WotC will lose and lose badly because it is likely their ability to copyright most of what is in D&D will be revoked by the courts as game mechanics under copyright legal precedence.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
Someone described the whole thing very well yesterday in all the chaos. I forget who, but they described a "vibe shift" in the forums following the announcement.
Yurei remembered something I wrote: Achievement unlocked.
To the rest of your post. The conspiracy theorist part of me is thinking this is the new stratgey for WotC. Like another poster has been saying, give an angry mob long enough and it will turn on itself. Let the community fracture, and it will be easier to manipulate them in the future. Then you make a couple concessions and pat yourself on the back for being a good listener.
For example, if there were, I don't know 4-5 specific things people were upset about. But not everyone was upset about all the things. So, they back up on 1-2 of them, and that placates X number of people. Throw in the people who left and say they are never coming back. Then, they drop 2.0, and now it seems like only a small fraction of the players are upset. And, well, here's a statement about how they listened to our concerns, look, we changed things 1 and 2, but you can't please everyone, so they just go ahead with it. Then, let it simmer for a bit (the public has very short memories, and something else outrageous will distract us soon enough) and this will turn into an urban legend of that time Wizards was going to screw everyone over, but then, boy, we stopped them. Good thing they backed off, because I love this new VTT for 1D&D. I'm going to spend an extra $3 for a new color palette for my character.
The Open Gaming License is not a single contract hanging in the void that anyone can sign up for. It is a set of terms under which someone can create and enter into a contract with Wizards that is designed to be easy, painless, and most importantly mostly automatic. The Open Gaming License means a company does not need to specifically negotiate with Wizards every time they want to create a third-party D&D product; they can use the terms in the Open Gaming License to create a brand new contract for that product and Wizards will consider the contract valid. Each individual agreement created under the terms outlined by the OGL is, however, its own separate contract.
Those existing contracts are largely locked in place. I tend to agree with the view most people take that Wizards cannot retroactively mess with existing OGL contracts. As Caerwyn has stated, the courts do give weight to precedent, promise, and longstanding actions. Changing the terms of a deal that has existed for years without cause will not go well.
Whether Wizards can revoke the offer, state that new contracts cannot be formed under the strictures of the 1.0 version of the Open Gaming License, has yet to be determined. Some people think they can, some people think they can't, and some people think the OGL means literally anyone should be able to do literally anything with D&D as if they own the property without any consideration for anyone else working with the property for the rest of eternity. They're incorrect, but they will burn this game to the waterline before admitting that they are incorrect.
Which sucks for the rest of us.
WRONG! it is NOT a contract, never has been. It is a license. They are two distinct things under civil intellectual property law.
Stop giving out legal advice that has nothing at all to do with the law.
Um, what? Those are not mutually exclusive terms--you can form a contract to grant a license, which is (a) the most common way to grant a license and (b) exactly what happened here. Furthermore, OGL specifically spells out that it is a contract--it uses the terms "offer and acceptance" which are the legal terms utilized when formulating a contract and talks about "consideration" which is the contract law term for "thing that each side gives up in a contract."
So, perhaps you should take the advice of your own last sentence, since you clearly are not qualified to opine on the subject.
Can I just say I love how the original designers of the OGL have stated multiple times that WotC can NOT revoke the OGL and yet you still have people saying that oh yes they can, and I'm no lawyer but I'm going to believe the people who made they document since I would imagine they both know more about than me and I would imagine any judge would take their declaration of intent into consideration. But hey like I said I'm not a lawyer so what do I know. And before anyone starts claiming to be a lawyer let me just stop you right there because even if I believe you (which I don't, nothing personal I don't believe most people on the internet)), that doesn't mean your a good lawyer, for all I know your a shit lawyer that barely qualified.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
Nobody is saying anger won't have an effect. But all the posts that say they won't come back no matter what WotC does, and there are a ton of those here and elsewhere, are actually having the OPPOSITE effect.
Actually, those posts serve a very important purpose - pressure.
The longer WotC goes without an actually good response, the more permanent damage becomes apparent to their brand.
Those posts are currently the minority. But the longer they wait - and this is what happened when they waited a week to back down even a little - the worse the permanent damage gets.
It is hardly shocking that someone who read “hey, we are going to fix all four of your points of contention” as not a “good response” also misread this thread.
The very point of this thread is that damage can be effective - irrevocable damage is not. Wizards cares about the person who damaged them but would come back; they don’t care about the “burn every bridge, I won’t come back” posts, because you don’t waste your time appeasing those who are already a lost cause. That’s all the post says - “cross the bridges and leave Wizard island if you want; just be sure not to burn them behind you or you are weakening negotiating power, not strengthening it.”
Wrong as usual. D&D is currently being controlled by by people in suits who have never played tge game. THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT OUR GAME. All they want is your money. The purpose of burning the bridge is to set everything else on fire. Eventually the game will be sold and for a decade, or maybe two, the game will be controlled by people who care about it as much as we do again. Trust me, I've been playing this game for 40 years. We've already seen how this works and the positive impact it has on the game. Nothing good will come from WotC anymore. Their product has already been going downhill steady. That's what's brought this about, Wizards being unable to produce the same quality product as third parties are capable of.
The Open Gaming License is not a single contract hanging in the void that anyone can sign up for. It is a set of terms under which someone can create and enter into a contract with Wizards that is designed to be easy, painless, and most importantly mostly automatic. The Open Gaming License means a company does not need to specifically negotiate with Wizards every time they want to create a third-party D&D product; they can use the terms in the Open Gaming License to create a brand new contract for that product and Wizards will consider the contract valid. Each individual agreement created under the terms outlined by the OGL is, however, its own separate contract.
Those existing contracts are largely locked in place. I tend to agree with the view most people take that Wizards cannot retroactively mess with existing OGL contracts. As Caerwyn has stated, the courts do give weight to precedent, promise, and longstanding actions. Changing the terms of a deal that has existed for years without cause will not go well.
Whether Wizards can revoke the offer, state that new contracts cannot be formed under the strictures of the 1.0 version of the Open Gaming License, has yet to be determined. Some people think they can, some people think they can't, and some people think the OGL means literally anyone should be able to do literally anything with D&D as if they own the property without any consideration for anyone else working with the property for the rest of eternity. They're incorrect, but they will burn this game to the waterline before admitting that they are incorrect.
Which sucks for the rest of us.
WRONG! it is NOT a contract, never has been. It is a license. They are two distinct things under civil intellectual property law.
Stop giving out legal advice that has nothing at all to do with the law.
Um, what? Those are not mutually exclusive terms--you can form a contract to grant a license, which is (a) the most common way to grant a license and (b) exactly what happened here. Furthermore, OGL specifically spells out that it is a contract--it uses the terms "offer and acceptance" which are the legal terms utilized when formulating a contract and talks about "consideration" which is the contract law term for "thing that each side gives up in a contract."
So, perhaps you should take the advice of your own last sentence, since you clearly are not qualified to opine on the subject.
Tell it to the judge. Read my edit to the post you cited. Licenses have a completely different meaning in a court than contracts and legal decisions regarding licenses are different from contracts. Licenses gain broader interpretations than contracts, for example.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
Can I just say I love how the original designers of the OGL have stated multiple times that WotC can NOT revoke the OGL and yet you still have people saying that oh yes they can, and I'm no lawyer but I'm going to believe the people who made they document since I would imagine they both know more about than me and I would imagine any judge would take their declaration of intent into consideration. But hey like I said I'm not a lawyer so what do I know. And before anyone starts claiming to be a lawyer let me just stop you right there because even if I believe you (which I don't, nothing personal I don't believe most people on the internet)), that doesn't mean your a good lawyer, for all I know your a shit lawyer that barely qualified.
Multiple articles have been written in the MSM explaining the legal wording. Maybe just try Google...
Can I just say I love how the original designers of the OGL have stated multiple times that WotC can NOT revoke the OGL and yet you still have people saying that oh yes they can, and I'm no lawyer but I'm going to believe the people who made they document since I would imagine they both know more about than me and I would imagine any judge would take their declaration of intent into consideration. But hey like I said I'm not a lawyer so what do I know. And before anyone starts claiming to be a lawyer let me just stop you right there because even if I believe you (which I don't, nothing personal I don't believe most people on the internet)), that doesn't mean your a good lawyer, for all I know your a shit lawyer that barely qualified.
Multiple articles have been written in the MSM explaining the legal wording. Maybe just try Google...
Did you miss the part where I said I'll take the world of the original authors, who have stated on record that they are willing to go to court over this.
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If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
I know pulse checkers for companies, trolling forums and such for customer feedbacks will filter out "useless" posts pretty quickly. If I am tasked with that job, anyone who says they are done and never returning gets added to my filter OUT list, so I don't have to read through their mindless and useless ranting as I do my research. If you're gone, you're gone and your opinion is of no value to me or my company, You state you are done and thus will not be feeding me cash, so why should I give a rat's ass what you have to say>
Those who are sitting and watching closely and saying the new agreement better be done right or they're leaving are the voices I want to track and log details from. These are the people whose business I may still be able to keep and as such, I will be carefully listening to what THEY want. Filtering out nerdragers is a good first step in getting some useful feedback. As a massive parent company, a lot of our customers understand and appreciate that we will, from time to time, fire a shot.....that hits our foot. Often we can backtrack and find out the person who aimed said shot was too detached from our goal, or simply overbearing and idiotic and then we need to start working on damage control AND a change of direction for said shot. Never fun, but a part of massive business that occurs (and will again in the future)
Too many folks have gotten their skivvies all tied into tight knots and can't get past the fact that Hasbro, from 50 miles away, shoved something down the pipe that was absolute shit. Horribly done, rushed, mishandled in pretty much every way it could be. It's something that now seems to have been handed to a much more in touch and sensible crew, who have no doubt been poring over the details, to try and make sure their collective asses are covered (listed as a main intent of changing the OGL) while not being some corporate ravager of creativity. When dealing with such an open IP as this, it can't be easy and I suspect, to do it RIGHT will require a MUCH longer document than what was leaked. Yes, cumbersome and boring as all hell to read through, but it would need to be so, to cover the proper bases and NOT step on the toes of everyone involved.
This right here. This is how this works at companies. Should be pinned to the front.
Furthermore, if you have ever had to work with a legal department regarding licensing, especially licensing of software that may or may not have implications to specific contracts with third party organizations, you will see what I mean. It is easy enough to seek an addendum to a contract or contracts with a specific company or companies than ty seek any sort of addendum to a licensee, especially an open source software license. These sorts of issues had a software company I worked for determining even getting those addendums to multiple contracts was too much to include any module that was released under GPL 2 for the product we were working on, giving us a requirement to do a code review to insure no developer had used any Open Source code in any module.
Saying a license is a contract is outright incorrect. Saying it is a specialized form of a contract requiring different interpretations and approaches to legal issues would be an acceptable way to describe it for a layperson.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
I know pulse checkers for companies, trolling forums and such for customer feedbacks will filter out "useless" posts pretty quickly. If I am tasked with that job, anyone who says they are done and never returning gets added to my filter OUT list, so I don't have to read through their mindless and useless ranting as I do my research. If you're gone, you're gone and your opinion is of no value to me or my company, You state you are done and thus will not be feeding me cash, so why should I give a rat's ass what you have to say>
Those who are sitting and watching closely and saying the new agreement better be done right or they're leaving are the voices I want to track and log details from. These are the people whose business I may still be able to keep and as such, I will be carefully listening to what THEY want. Filtering out nerdragers is a good first step in getting some useful feedback. As a massive parent company, a lot of our customers understand and appreciate that we will, from time to time, fire a shot.....that hits our foot. Often we can backtrack and find out the person who aimed said shot was too detached from our goal, or simply overbearing and idiotic and then we need to start working on damage control AND a change of direction for said shot. Never fun, but a part of massive business that occurs (and will again in the future)
Too many folks have gotten their skivvies all tied into tight knots and can't get past the fact that Hasbro, from 50 miles away, shoved something down the pipe that was absolute shit. Horribly done, rushed, mishandled in pretty much every way it could be. It's something that now seems to have been handed to a much more in touch and sensible crew, who have no doubt been poring over the details, to try and make sure their collective asses are covered (listed as a main intent of changing the OGL) while not being some corporate ravager of creativity. When dealing with such an open IP as this, it can't be easy and I suspect, to do it RIGHT will require a MUCH longer document than what was leaked. Yes, cumbersome and boring as all hell to read through, but it would need to be so, to cover the proper bases and NOT step on the toes of everyone involved.
This right here. This is how this works at companies. Should be pinned to the front.
There's a difference between customer retention and Reputational Damage Control.
If they're still in customer retention mode, this situation is going to go very badly for them indeed. We're way past the point where this situation is limited to a customer retention issue.
They need to be controlling the damage to their reputation, which is long term a much bigger deal.
I am not so sure that the damage that this matter is causing to WoTC can be accounted for in those 65,000 signatures.
In fact, i doubt that it can even be accounted for with dndbeyond subscription cancellations (although it is unreliable that they have).
The damage will be accounted for if a competitor actually comes out that offers the same experience that D&D offers, and third parties can safely create content for them. If that happens, like for example with ORC, and hardly anyone signs OGL 2.0 and therefore One D&D has almost no third party content; many players will migrate to that competitor. Especially if the adaptation of 5e is easy and fast.
I which case expressing your outrage on these forums and trying to get people to quit playing D&D is valuable, because it's not what will actually make a difference. Again, I am not telling you not to migrate to a better system. I myself am likely to go to another system where I can create homebrew content without the OGL 1.1. But Telling everyone "Cancel your subscriptions, boycott WotC, make them rue the day they got rid of OGL 1.0a", or worse "I'm abandoning this game forever screw you WotC" is in no way productive. You're just harming other people because you hate OGL 1.1, without actually making change.
Furthermore, if you have ever had to work with a legal department regarding licensing, especially licensing of software that may or may not have implications to specific contracts with third party organizations, you will see what I mean. It is easy enough to seek an addendum to a contract or contracts with a specific company or companies than ty seek any sort of addendum to a licensee, especially an open source software license. These sorts of issues had a software company I worked for determining even getting those addendums to multiple contracts was too much to include any module that was released under GPL 2 for the product we were working on, giving us a requirement to do a code review to insure no developer had used any Open Source code in any module.
Saying a license is a contract is outright incorrect. Saying it is a specialized form of a contract requiring different interpretations and approaches to legal issues would be an acceptable way to describe it for a layperson.
You'll have to pardon me if I trust my law license and years of experience with contracts and litigation over your hot take, which ignores the fact the OGL specifically and very clearly is a contract establishing licensing rights. But, hey, you do you--the fact that you want to ignore the OGL's explicit language which states "this is a contract for a licensing agreement, which you accept by using OGL content" doesn't change the reality of what the document is.
Can I just say I love how the original designers of the OGL have stated multiple times that WotC can NOT revoke the OGL and yet you still have people saying that oh yes they can, and I'm no lawyer but I'm going to believe the people who made they document since I would imagine they both know more about than me and I would imagine any judge would take their declaration of intent into consideration. But hey like I said I'm not a lawyer so what do I know.
Dancey's intent is indeed well-known - but Four Corners Doctrine may trump what he intended. If he wanted the original to truly be irrevocable, he should have said so while he was in charge and had the chance; at the end of the day, he has no one but himself to blame that it doesn't.
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If Wizards could be taken at their word, maybe I'd agree with you. But their recent actions - and eggregious number of outright lies, misrepresentations, and misdirections in the statements you're relying on for your position - indicate they shouldn't be trusted at all.
Barring some sort of assurances - which their competitors, bizarrely, are willing to freely offer despite not having a history of lies and misrepresentations - they've destroyed any amount of trust that might be afforded them.
So I'm going to read between the lines of their statements, and derive my comprehension from the intent they've made apparent over the past few weeks.
You imply that the rabid hyenas have the power to "bite" WotC. Thew fact is, that all this outrage is at most a few hundred people on these forums, maybe a few thousand elsewhere. Even the petition to remove OGL only has like 65,000 signatures, and not everyone who signed is necessarily going to financially boycott the company. Were talking about a company that sells millions of copies of books including hundreds of thousands in the first month of publication usually, and has 12 million current members just on D&Dbeyond. Even if those 65,000 thousand signers all boycotted WotC it would make a small dent in their revenue. So a better way of phrasing it might be, "no one listens to rabid ants".
I am not in any way implying that we shouldn't do anything. But whipping everyone into a frenzy and telling people to take actions that harm themselves like stopping using D&Dbeyond despite having potentially hundreds of dollars of materials on the site and promising them that it will be worth it because it will harm WotC is destructive because it really won't. You don't want to continue playing D&D? Fine. You want to explore other systems? Great. You're telling everyone else that they should abandon their investments, both monetarily and in terms of time and potentially even campaigns, just because you don't like a decision that the company made and you think this will get them to repeal it? I cannot stand behind that. You do you but don't try to convince others to do the same, espicially not under false promises.
I am an average mathematics enjoyer.
>Extended Signature<
I am not so sure that the damage that this matter is causing to WoTC can be accounted for in those 65,000 signatures.
In fact, i doubt that it can even be accounted for with dndbeyond subscription cancellations (although it is unreliable that they have).
The damage will be accounted for if a competitor actually comes out that offers the same experience that D&D offers, and third parties can safely create content for them. If that happens, like for example with ORC, and hardly anyone signs OGL 2.0 and therefore One D&D has almost no third party content; many players will migrate to that competitor. Especially if the adaptation of 5e is easy and fast.
This is wrong on so many levels.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
I know pulse checkers for companies, trolling forums and such for customer feedbacks will filter out "useless" posts pretty quickly. If I am tasked with that job, anyone who says they are done and never returning gets added to my filter OUT list, so I don't have to read through their mindless and useless ranting as I do my research. If you're gone, you're gone and your opinion is of no value to me or my company, You state you are done and thus will not be feeding me cash, so why should I give a rat's ass what you have to say>
Those who are sitting and watching closely and saying the new agreement better be done right or they're leaving are the voices I want to track and log details from. These are the people whose business I may still be able to keep and as such, I will be carefully listening to what THEY want. Filtering out nerdragers is a good first step in getting some useful feedback. As a massive parent company, a lot of our customers understand and appreciate that we will, from time to time, fire a shot.....that hits our foot. Often we can backtrack and find out the person who aimed said shot was too detached from our goal, or simply overbearing and idiotic and then we need to start working on damage control AND a change of direction for said shot. Never fun, but a part of massive business that occurs (and will again in the future)
Too many folks have gotten their skivvies all tied into tight knots and can't get past the fact that Hasbro, from 50 miles away, shoved something down the pipe that was absolute shit. Horribly done, rushed, mishandled in pretty much every way it could be. It's something that now seems to have been handed to a much more in touch and sensible crew, who have no doubt been poring over the details, to try and make sure their collective asses are covered (listed as a main intent of changing the OGL) while not being some corporate ravager of creativity. When dealing with such an open IP as this, it can't be easy and I suspect, to do it RIGHT will require a MUCH longer document than what was leaked. Yes, cumbersome and boring as all hell to read through, but it would need to be so, to cover the proper bases and NOT step on the toes of everyone involved.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
No, Zot. Caerwyn is correct.
The Open Gaming License is not a single contract hanging in the void that anyone can sign up for. It is a set of terms under which someone can create and enter into a contract with Wizards that is designed to be easy, painless, and most importantly mostly automatic. The Open Gaming License means a company does not need to specifically negotiate with Wizards every time they want to create a third-party D&D product; they can use the terms in the Open Gaming License to create a brand new contract for that product and Wizards will consider the contract valid. Each individual agreement created under the terms outlined by the OGL is, however, its own separate contract.
Those existing contracts are largely locked in place. I tend to agree with the view most people take that Wizards cannot retroactively mess with existing OGL contracts. As Caerwyn has stated, the courts do give weight to precedent, promise, and longstanding actions. Changing the terms of a deal that has existed for years without cause will not go well.
Whether Wizards can revoke the offer, state that new contracts cannot be formed under the strictures of the 1.0 version of the Open Gaming License, has yet to be determined. Some people think they can, some people think they can't, and some people think the OGL means literally anyone should be able to do literally anything with D&D as if they own the property without any consideration for anyone else working with the property for the rest of eternity. They're incorrect, but they will burn this game to the waterline before admitting that they are incorrect.
Which sucks for the rest of us.
Please do not contact or message me.
WRONG! it is NOT a contract, never has been. It is a license. They are two distinct things under civil intellectual property law. Once a thing has been licensed under it, it remains licensed under it forever. SRD 5.1 is licensed under OGL 1.0a forever and ANYBODY can use it under that license at any time in the future. I cite as precedent XimpleWare v. Versata, Trilogy Development Group, Inc., Ameriprise Financial, Inc., Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc., Aurea Software, Inc., Case No. 3:13cv5160, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.
Stop giving out legal advice that has nothing at all to do with the law. This will be tested in court and those cases applicable to GPL 2 will be cited as precedent and I predict WotC will lose and lose badly because it is likely their ability to copyright most of what is in D&D will be revoked by the courts as game mechanics under copyright legal precedence.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
Yurei remembered something I wrote: Achievement unlocked.
To the rest of your post. The conspiracy theorist part of me is thinking this is the new stratgey for WotC. Like another poster has been saying, give an angry mob long enough and it will turn on itself. Let the community fracture, and it will be easier to manipulate them in the future. Then you make a couple concessions and pat yourself on the back for being a good listener.
For example, if there were, I don't know 4-5 specific things people were upset about. But not everyone was upset about all the things. So, they back up on 1-2 of them, and that placates X number of people. Throw in the people who left and say they are never coming back. Then, they drop 2.0, and now it seems like only a small fraction of the players are upset. And, well, here's a statement about how they listened to our concerns, look, we changed things 1 and 2, but you can't please everyone, so they just go ahead with it. Then, let it simmer for a bit (the public has very short memories, and something else outrageous will distract us soon enough) and this will turn into an urban legend of that time Wizards was going to screw everyone over, but then, boy, we stopped them. Good thing they backed off, because I love this new VTT for 1D&D. I'm going to spend an extra $3 for a new color palette for my character.
Um, what? Those are not mutually exclusive terms--you can form a contract to grant a license, which is (a) the most common way to grant a license and (b) exactly what happened here. Furthermore, OGL specifically spells out that it is a contract--it uses the terms "offer and acceptance" which are the legal terms utilized when formulating a contract and talks about "consideration" which is the contract law term for "thing that each side gives up in a contract."
So, perhaps you should take the advice of your own last sentence, since you clearly are not qualified to opine on the subject.
Can I just say I love how the original designers of the OGL have stated multiple times that WotC can NOT revoke the OGL and yet you still have people saying that oh yes they can, and I'm no lawyer but I'm going to believe the people who made they document since I would imagine they both know more about than me and I would imagine any judge would take their declaration of intent into consideration. But hey like I said I'm not a lawyer so what do I know. And before anyone starts claiming to be a lawyer let me just stop you right there because even if I believe you (which I don't, nothing personal I don't believe most people on the internet)), that doesn't mean your a good lawyer, for all I know your a shit lawyer that barely qualified.
If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
Wrong as usual. D&D is currently being controlled by by people in suits who have never played tge game. THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT OUR GAME. All they want is your money. The purpose of burning the bridge is to set everything else on fire. Eventually the game will be sold and for a decade, or maybe two, the game will be controlled by people who care about it as much as we do again. Trust me, I've been playing this game for 40 years. We've already seen how this works and the positive impact it has on the game. Nothing good will come from WotC anymore. Their product has already been going downhill steady. That's what's brought this about, Wizards being unable to produce the same quality product as third parties are capable of.
Tell it to the judge. Read my edit to the post you cited. Licenses have a completely different meaning in a court than contracts and legal decisions regarding licenses are different from contracts. Licenses gain broader interpretations than contracts, for example.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
Multiple articles have been written in the MSM explaining the legal wording. Maybe just try Google...
Did you miss the part where I said I'll take the world of the original authors, who have stated on record that they are willing to go to court over this.
If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
This right here. This is how this works at companies. Should be pinned to the front.
Furthermore, if you have ever had to work with a legal department regarding licensing, especially licensing of software that may or may not have implications to specific contracts with third party organizations, you will see what I mean. It is easy enough to seek an addendum to a contract or contracts with a specific company or companies than ty seek any sort of addendum to a licensee, especially an open source software license. These sorts of issues had a software company I worked for determining even getting those addendums to multiple contracts was too much to include any module that was released under GPL 2 for the product we were working on, giving us a requirement to do a code review to insure no developer had used any Open Source code in any module.
Saying a license is a contract is outright incorrect. Saying it is a specialized form of a contract requiring different interpretations and approaches to legal issues would be an acceptable way to describe it for a layperson.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
There's a difference between customer retention and Reputational Damage Control.
If they're still in customer retention mode, this situation is going to go very badly for them indeed. We're way past the point where this situation is limited to a customer retention issue.
They need to be controlling the damage to their reputation, which is long term a much bigger deal.
I which case expressing your outrage on these forums and trying to get people to quit playing D&D is valuable, because it's not what will actually make a difference. Again, I am not telling you not to migrate to a better system. I myself am likely to go to another system where I can create homebrew content without the OGL 1.1. But Telling everyone "Cancel your subscriptions, boycott WotC, make them rue the day they got rid of OGL 1.0a", or worse "I'm abandoning this game forever screw you WotC" is in no way productive. You're just harming other people because you hate OGL 1.1, without actually making change.
I am an average mathematics enjoyer.
>Extended Signature<
You'll have to pardon me if I trust my law license and years of experience with contracts and litigation over your hot take, which ignores the fact the OGL specifically and very clearly is a contract establishing licensing rights. But, hey, you do you--the fact that you want to ignore the OGL's explicit language which states "this is a contract for a licensing agreement, which you accept by using OGL content" doesn't change the reality of what the document is.
Dancey's intent is indeed well-known - but Four Corners Doctrine may trump what he intended. If he wanted the original to truly be irrevocable, he should have said so while he was in charge and had the chance; at the end of the day, he has no one but himself to blame that it doesn't.