3 ms·

IANAL, but I would love the opinion of anyone more qualified on this: Suppose I am one of the "Expert Tier" companies and I'm making a lot of money off of using

IANAL, but I would love the opinion of anyone more qualified on this: Suppose I am one of the "Expert Tier" companies and I'm making a lot of money off of using OGL 1.0 licensed works in conjunction with my own. The OGL[0] says Wizards can authorize new versions of the license, but it doesn't define "authorized" and it doesn't say anywhere they can deauthorize old ones. It also says that the terms of the license are perpetual. If I saw WOTC was going to make a change like this, obviously I'd retain counsel, but why wouldn't I take a position something like: 1) We don't believe that Wizards can arbitrarily bind us to the terms of any new license just because they have "authorized" it. 2) We will only release content that uses OGL 1.0a licensed works and never anything using 1.1 or any other version. 3) If Wizards doesn't like it, they can sue us and try to enforce their license. It'll be on them to prove the license binds us, and they'll look like assholes in front of their community of players. When my option is "give up all my corporate secrets and also lose 25% of my money" or this, why shouldn't I do this? [0] https://opengamingfoundation.org/ogl.html https://opengamingfoundation.org/ogl.html Edit: Another source I found that seems to suggest this might be an option, to an extent - or that there might be other ways to challenge this decision: https://medium.com/@MyLawyerFriend/lets-take-a-minute-to-talk-about-d-d-s-open-gaming-license-ogl-581312d48e2f https://medium.com/@MyLawyerFriend/lets-take-a-minute-to-tal...

lifeisstillgood 4y ago
I would assume (IANAL!) that it would work similarly to software license upgrades. The IP created and licensed under version 1.0 would still be under version 1.0, and only IP created after 1.1 is released is affected, and then there must be some action on part of the small games company to agree to it. I suspect it depends of course on the exact terms of license and what users of version 1.0 agreed to in terms of future binding. Might be an interesting case with more than a little relevance for (US) software licenses
- ivraatiems 4y ago
  Wizards seems to think this will explicitly not be the case, and they can effectively force everyone to abide by the terms of a new license just by making one. Which maybe they can! But it seems like the right move might be to force them to try it.
  - lifeisstillgood 4y ago
    Yes. Unless you are the plaintiff ... :-(
NikolaNovak 4y ago
There was a good thread recently where a lawyer helps distinguish "perpetual" and "irrevocable", which us laypeople tend to confuse. Basically the license is perpetual in that there's no default expiry; but it is NOT irrevocable. Consequences of license being revoked would then depend on details, jurisdiction, law,precedent,court, potentially past vs future work, and whether you're feeling lucky, punk :-/
- ivraatiems 4y ago
  Very interesting distinction, thank you.
- Buttons840 4y ago
  The next question of interest to HN then, is whether or not the MIT license is revocable? (The MIT license never says the word "irrevocable".)
- Perseids 4y ago
  > There was a good thread recently where a lawyer helps distinguish "perpetual" and "irrevocable", which us laypeople tend to confuse. Gosh, why does it have to be this way? It's even harder for non-native speakers to read legal documents "correctly", i.e. the way courts would interpret them. I understand that contracts and laws need precise language, but, in contrast to, say, mathematics, reading legal documents is such an important activity that we cannot ignore the needs of laypeople – they have to follow contracts and laws, too, after all. And I don't think it's plausible that clashes between general use of words and legalese are unavoidable, especially as contracts don't seem to be optimized for brevity. And in general, us laypeople should vehemently demand contracts and laws to be optimized for easy reading. Imagine what good a precedent could do, where a complete EULAs was judged void, because they were to hard to read/understand/interpret.
  - ivraatiems 4y ago
    The issue is that law, especially contract law, very often turns on the minutiae of what specifically was intended by a given statement in text. That's why contracts have pages and pages of definitions that seem obvious, and why courts assign special meanings to terms like "irrevocable". That is to say, at some point in the past, some court case probably turned on proving that "irrevocable" was supposed to mean something different than "perpetual," and so now the standard is to assume that's what it means, unless the contract explicitly says something different. What if I want a contract that I can't choose to take back, but which doesn't last forever? It's a problem of trying to force precision on a language that is inherently imprecise, topped off with concepts that are actually hard to understand.
naniwaduni 4y ago
The risk that if Wizards moves forward with undertaking #3, that they can remain big and assholey for longer than you can remain solvent. (Giving up 25% of your revenue is obviously an enormous blow, but seems possible to be in a position where you think you can just about squeeze by long enough to pivot if you suck it up and take their terms as you try to move away from doing any new 1.1-related works.)
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > The risk that if Wizards moves forward with undertaking #3, that they can remain big and assholey for longer than you can remain solvent. To be fair, Hasbro seems to pull this every other major D&D version since introducing the OGL with 3rd edition, so we should expect Two D&D to be a return to more open licensing after the inevitable debacle of One D&D. Sucks to be one of the companies that exists solely around the ecosystem of the 5e wave of “Hasbro is trying to encourage third party support rather than squeezing producers”, or one of the ones that survived the 4e squeeze because Hasbro didn’t try to squeeze pure legacy use.
chefandy 4y ago
I wonder what constitutes a new game for purposes of the contract. Could I release "Circvmventia: Qvest of the Changeling" and then when you hit 600k modify the game art and character names and release "Circvmventia: Changeling Reborne," etc. I imagine they'd just modify the license again to get more control but it could buy time.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

I would assume (IANAL!) that it would work similarly to software license upgrades. The IP created and licensed under version 1.0 would still be under version 1.0, and only IP created after 1.1 is released is affected, and then there must be some action on part of the small games company to agree to it. I suspect it depends of course on the exact terms of license and what users of version 1.0 agreed to in terms of future binding. Might be an interesting case with more than a little relevance for (US) software licenses

ivraatiems 4y ago
Wizards seems to think this will explicitly not be the case, and they can effectively force everyone to abide by the terms of a new license just by making one. Which maybe they can! But it seems like the right move might be to force them to try it.
- lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  Yes. Unless you are the plaintiff ... :-(

NikolaNovak 4y ago

There was a good thread recently where a lawyer helps distinguish "perpetual" and "irrevocable", which us laypeople tend to confuse. Basically the license is perpetual in that there's no default expiry; but it is NOT irrevocable. Consequences of license being revoked would then depend on details, jurisdiction, law,precedent,court, potentially past vs future work, and whether you're feeling lucky, punk :-/

ivraatiems 4y ago
Very interesting distinction, thank you.
Buttons840 4y ago
The next question of interest to HN then, is whether or not the MIT license is revocable? (The MIT license never says the word "irrevocable".)
Perseids 4y ago
> There was a good thread recently where a lawyer helps distinguish "perpetual" and "irrevocable", which us laypeople tend to confuse. Gosh, why does it have to be this way? It's even harder for non-native speakers to read legal documents "correctly", i.e. the way courts would interpret them. I understand that contracts and laws need precise language, but, in contrast to, say, mathematics, reading legal documents is such an important activity that we cannot ignore the needs of laypeople – they have to follow contracts and laws, too, after all. And I don't think it's plausible that clashes between general use of words and legalese are unavoidable, especially as contracts don't seem to be optimized for brevity. And in general, us laypeople should vehemently demand contracts and laws to be optimized for easy reading. Imagine what good a precedent could do, where a complete EULAs was judged void, because they were to hard to read/understand/interpret.
- ivraatiems 4y ago
  The issue is that law, especially contract law, very often turns on the minutiae of what specifically was intended by a given statement in text. That's why contracts have pages and pages of definitions that seem obvious, and why courts assign special meanings to terms like "irrevocable". That is to say, at some point in the past, some court case probably turned on proving that "irrevocable" was supposed to mean something different than "perpetual," and so now the standard is to assume that's what it means, unless the contract explicitly says something different. What if I want a contract that I can't choose to take back, but which doesn't last forever? It's a problem of trying to force precision on a language that is inherently imprecise, topped off with concepts that are actually hard to understand.

naniwaduni 4y ago

The risk that if Wizards moves forward with undertaking #3, that they can remain big and assholey for longer than you can remain solvent. (Giving up 25% of your revenue is obviously an enormous blow, but seems possible to be in a position where you think you can just about squeeze by long enough to pivot if you suck it up and take their terms as you try to move away from doing any new 1.1-related works.)

dragonwriter 4y ago
> The risk that if Wizards moves forward with undertaking #3, that they can remain big and assholey for longer than you can remain solvent. To be fair, Hasbro seems to pull this every other major D&D version since introducing the OGL with 3rd edition, so we should expect Two D&D to be a return to more open licensing after the inevitable debacle of One D&D. Sucks to be one of the companies that exists solely around the ecosystem of the 5e wave of “Hasbro is trying to encourage third party support rather than squeezing producers”, or one of the ones that survived the 4e squeeze because Hasbro didn’t try to squeeze pure legacy use.

chefandy 4y ago

I wonder what constitutes a new game for purposes of the contract. Could I release "Circvmventia: Qvest of the Changeling" and then when you hit 600k modify the game art and character names and release "Circvmventia: Changeling Reborne," etc. I imagine they'd just modify the license again to get more control but it could buy time.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]