That's probably why they used the OGL, agreed. But it's crazy, right? Using a license designed by a direct business competitor? If you can do a major rules rewrite (and I understand Pathfinder is on the more complex/crunchy side of RPGs), surely you have the know-how to design your own license?
Even if all the actors in this dramedy are profit-driven businesses, I can't wrap my head around the OGL not being driven by a consortium. How on earth does WotC have final say?
In any case, they are probably regretting it now. I hope this sets a precedent.
> But it's crazy, right? Using a license designed by a direct business competitor?
Microsoft also publishes software under open-source licenses [0]. The license is short and well-understood, it's not like a large piece of software that might contain backdoors. Also, people trust(-ed) that license.
> If you can do a major rules rewrite [...], surely you have the know-how to design your own license?
Yes, but you'd just end up with a similarly worded license that people don't know. Why spend that money?
Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but I can easily see why they decided against that. Also, Paizo is probably sufficiently funded by now that suing them is a bit dangerous for WotC, as they risk a bad precedent.
[0] Which are not necessarily competitors, but might also not be friendly towards MS.
> [0] Which are not necessarily competitors, but might also not be friendly towards MS.
Until not that long ago, Microsoft considered open source licenses a "cancer". While they have changed their stance since then, I'm sure they did some major risk assessment and have safeguards in place of the kind a company like Paizo simply isn't capable of. More importantly, the core MS line of products isn't licensed with a license they don't control.
"Not necessarily competitors" makes all the difference here! This is not a minor detail, but a major one. Look at how Wizards of the Coast is framing the issue, and I quote them [0]:
> “the Open Game License was always intended to allow the community to help grow D&D and expand it creatively. It wasn’t intended to subsidize major competitors, especially now that PDF is by far the most common form of distribution.”
and
> “OGL wasn’t intended to fund major competitors and it wasn’t intended to allow people to make D&D apps, videos, or anything other than printed (or printable) materials for use while gaming. We are updating the OGL in part to make that very clear.”
> But it's crazy, right? Using a license designed by a direct business competitor?
Not necessarily. In software we have the MIT license. Anyone can freeze any version of the product and use/distribute it freely in perpetuity regardless of whatever relicensing may happen later to other versions.
It sounds like the OGL was written in that spirit. Whether its legal language will back that up in court, maybe we'll find out.
I don't think the MIT license or the GPL (mentioned by someone else) are good parallels.
When you release software under an open source license such as those, you are not using a license designed and solely controlled by your business competitor!
The OGL situation would be like Microsoft releasing Windows under a license designed and solely controlled by Apple.
So what? Unless it has a clause that allows licensees to use a newer version of the license at their will (like GPL optionally has), it doesn't matter who "controls" the license at all. It has no impact on you and your work. You used a specific set of rules as a license for your work and unless you explicitly allowed it, these rules don't change.
Well, at the very least it seems unwise. Your core business shouldn't be put at the mercy of a competitor.
I see the new management of Wizards of the Coast as now arguing that "the OGL was never meant to fund competitors [to D&D's owners]". It seems they are echoing my sentiments!
Whether what they are attempting is lawful is besides the issue: what matters is that Paizo and whoever wouldn't be at risk had they not chosen a license designed by -- and completely controlled by -- their business competition!
> Your core business shouldn't be put at the mercy of a competitor.
Of course, but that's not what happens when you use someone else's license at all. And no, whoever used OGL with their project is not at any risk at all - unless they used or made derivative works of existing WotC's content licensed under OGL, in which case they had no other choice than to use OGL anyway.
Hard to understand what all the ruckus is about then.
> Of course, but that's not what happens when you use someone else's license at all. And no, whoever used OGL with their project is not at any risk at all - unless they used or made derivative works of existing WotC's content licensed under OGL, in which case they had no other choice than to use OGL anyway.
Other people in this comments section are arguing otherwise! Whose interpretation should I trust? Yours? Theirs? Wizards'?
Are they? I've read several lengthy threads by now and haven't seen such stance being proposed.
The issue with Pathfinder is that it was a derivative work of D&D, and although it has been rewritten since it's not clear whether the rewrite still is or not. If it is, then it couldn't be licensed on anything else than OGL and may be affected by OGL 1.1; if it's not, then it's simply unaffected by OGL 1.1 (or at least not in a way that will cause any troubles), since it's not up to WotC to decide how is this work being licensed.
> Are they? I've read several lengthy threads by now and haven't seen such stance being proposed.
Yes, they are. Use CTRL+F to find out. People here are arguing this can be interpreted to impact even games that are unrelated to D&D mechanics or setting. People are freaking out in a sense that would seem disproportionate if this only affected Paizo.
Also, please read the open letter mentioned in the link.
Of course, feel free to argue with them (either the commenters here or with the authors of the letter) if you want, but please not with me: I'm the one asking questions, not offering explanations.
The only sin of the open letter is apparently to mention games as examples that aren't bound by OGL but were simply released under the terms of OGL; it makes sense otherwise (I'm not familiar with those games enough to know whether that's their actual status though). It's pretty obvious that if I make a fully custom game and release it under OGL 1.0a now, WotC has nothing to do with it. Because of OGL's wording, someone may be able to use my work under the terms of OGL 1.1, which may be undesired from my point of view, but this doesn't influence the fact that I'm still offering it under OGL 1.0a to anyone who wants to choose that version of the license.
To guard myself from such situation, I'd have to state that I'm licensing it under OGL 1.0a only, at a cost of potentially making it incompatible with content released on a future version of the license - just like some GPL projects do (most notably Linux, which is GPLv2-only).
> I'm the one asking questions, not offering explanations.
>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.
> 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.
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.
> But it's crazy, right? Using a license designed by a direct business competitor?
No? This kind of thing happens all the time with various kinds of contracts, e.g. in finance if one bank comes up with some kind of instrument most of their competitors will try to follow the same thing. It's like asking why would you use a file format designed by a direct business competitor.
But not really, right? Using a competitor's file format is a way of adding interoperability to your product. And a file format cannot dictate how you can legally use or sell the whole of your product; at worst you can be barred from using that particular format if your competitor sees it fit.
The bank analogy also doesn't match. A closer analogy would be if your bank must use their competitor's installations and infrastructure, and risk bankruptcy whenever the competitor thinks they don't want to lend them their installations anymore.
Using your direct competitor's license, fully under their control, is closer to handing them the keys to your company for no obvious benefit, right?
> The bank analogy also doesn't match. A closer analogy would be if your bank must use their competitor's installations and infrastructure, and risk bankruptcy whenever the competitor thinks they don't want to lend them their installations anymore.
No it isn't? The license is just the contractual agreement. Like, I'm not sure if the second bank to offer overnight repurchase agreements literally copied the first one's contract and just changed their name, but they certainly could've, and that's been normal practice with some newer financial products.
> Using your direct competitor's license, fully under their control, is closer to handing them the keys to your company for no obvious benefit, right?
No, not at all? How is it "under their control"? They can publish a new version of it but that has nothing to do with you unless you want it to.
But your bank analogy is still flawed, isn't it? This isn't a case of a bank following suit and copying another bank's offering, this is a case of a company using terms of another company and riding on their "infrastructure" (IP, licenses, etc). For a RPG company, these intangibles are infrastructure, not legalese. Remember, this runs on human brains, not on computers or ATMs.
> No, not at all? How is it "under their control"? They can publish a new version of it but that has nothing to do with you unless you want it to.
It is under their control because they are the only ones that can modify, add or remove provisions to the license. This is like a file format where only one company can determine the standard: it sucks for everyone else! At best you're playing catch-up, at worst the owner can bar you from using the format. A consortium would be less risky.
And apparently the current situation shows it was very risky indeed!
> This isn't a case of a bank following suit and copying another bank's offering, this is a case of a company using terms of another company and riding on their "infrastructure" (IP, licenses, etc). For a RPG company, these intangibles are infrastructure, not legalese.
Hold on, we're just talking about the license, aren't we? I thought the question was about why they were using the OGL, which is very much just the legalese/contract.
To be honest I think I managed to confuse myself. But that's because I think everyone is conflating everything in this case.
Some people seem to think the OGL is the "blood" of these third party companies, without which their business model doesn't exist. Surprisingly -- but I have trouble believing this -- some think OGL-licensed games are at risk even if they are unrelated to the D&D franchise and its gameplay mechanics (I hope this is just a misunderstanding!).
But let's say this is just legalese. Does it seem wise to let your core product be sold under contractual terms defined by your direct business competitor, which by their own admission has no interest in "funding the competition"? (they've been quoted saying this).
> But let's say this is just legalese. Does it seem wise to let your core product be sold under contractual terms defined by your direct business competitor, which by their own admission has no interest in "funding the competition"? (they've been quoted saying this).
I think it's probably fine. Like, if WotC is willing to sell their product on these terms, it's probably safe for me to sell my product on the same terms, especially if we're direct competitors. Obviously there's a risk, but there's a risk in not competing too. Compare price matching.
Even if all the actors in this dramedy are profit-driven businesses, I can't wrap my head around the OGL not being driven by a consortium. How on earth does WotC have final say?
In any case, they are probably regretting it now. I hope this sets a precedent.