3 ms·

>But it's crazy, right? Using a license designed by a direct business competitor? Maybe, but a license is just an agreement between two parties on how they can

>But it's crazy, right? Using a license designed by a direct business competitor? Maybe, but a license is just an agreement between two parties on how they can use a copyrighted work. And in the original text, there was no means for WotC to revoke the license from other companies. It would be like if you released software using GPL2, then the GNU project released GPL3 which was much more restrictive, required you to pay rms for any software you release and tried to claim that anything licensed with GPL2 was now licensed with GPL3. You'd think that crazy, and nobody would be asking you why you released software with a license you didn't design.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> It would be like if you released software using GPL2, then the GNU project released GPL3 which was much more restrictive, required you to pay rms for any software you release and tried to claim that anything licensed with GPL2 was now licensed with GPL3. Yes, but that's not so hard to imagine, it's basically: Imagine the GPL is issued by a for-profit company not an ideological nonprofit, and imagine the “X or any later versiom” clause is replaced by or “Any authorized version clause”, and imagine that the for-profit company decides that the use of the older versions are contrary to its existing interests? Heck, there is a reason that even as it is written, and even with the FSF being a nonprofit with a stable ideology, some people, when licensing their own work, usd GPLvWhatever without the or-any-later version clause.
- the_af 4y ago
  I think the fact the OGL was designed by a business, not a nonprofit, and that this business' goals compete with your own, makes this situation radically different. The FSF doesn't compete with your business and doesn't want a cut of your business. Moreover, if you are going to use a license designed by a competing business for your main line of products (e.g. Pathfinder) you better make sure your competitor is not the sole arbiter of that license! A consortium of businesses would make more sense.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> It would be like if you released software using GPL2, then the GNU project released GPL3 which was much more restrictive, required you to pay rms for any software you release and tried to claim that anything licensed with GPL2 was now licensed with GPL3. Yes, but that's not so hard to imagine, it's basically: Imagine the GPL is issued by a for-profit company not an ideological nonprofit, and imagine the “X or any later versiom” clause is replaced by or “Any authorized version clause”, and imagine that the for-profit company decides that the use of the older versions are contrary to its existing interests? Heck, there is a reason that even as it is written, and even with the FSF being a nonprofit with a stable ideology, some people, when licensing their own work, usd GPLvWhatever without the or-any-later version clause.

the_af 4y ago
I think the fact the OGL was designed by a business, not a nonprofit, and that this business' goals compete with your own, makes this situation radically different. The FSF doesn't compete with your business and doesn't want a cut of your business. Moreover, if you are going to use a license designed by a competing business for your main line of products (e.g. Pathfinder) you better make sure your competitor is not the sole arbiter of that license! A consortium of businesses would make more sense.