A Manifesto of Sorts, which is a Plan as well

[rudgar]

I'm not sure that that's a great idea, and I don't know that the pretend changes Hasbro have made are going to make it any safer, the decision is Solo's but personally I'd be surprised if he changed his mind

If they put it in writing that 1.0a can never be revoked, and that only new material cannot be published under 1.0a, then that definitely makes it unambiguous legally.

I'm not saying we can't update the material we have, but I would like to not lose the originals as well.

Also, some authors may not want to use creative commons. I wouldn't want to use it. So it is better to get their consent first.

(For compilations, like the adventure anthologies, I think there's no choice, but for standalone products, I think it's better to get consent).

[Boggo]

I'm not sure that that's a great idea, and I don't know that the pretend changes Hasbro have made are going to make it any safer, the decision is Solo's but personally I'd be surprised if he changed his mind

If they put it in writing that 1.0a can never be revoked, and that only new material cannot be published under 1.0a, then that definitely makes it unambiguous legally.

I'm not saying we can't update the material we have, but I would like to not lose the originals as well.

Also, some authors may not want to use creative commons. I wouldn't want to use it. So it is better to get their consent first.

(For compilations, like the adventure anthologies, I think there's no choice, but for standalone products, I think it's better to get consent).

except they have explicitly put in the latest one that they CAN revoke it (legally they probably can't) but I suspect Solo doesn't want to have to deal with it anymore, thats pretty much what he said in the first post of this thread, and I can't blame him and think it's very much the only sensible choice

[Boggo]

Also, some authors may not want to use creative commons. I wouldn't want to use it. So it is better to get their consent first.

(For compilations, like the adventure anthologies, I think there's no choice, but for standalone products, I think it's better to get consent).

consent is being sought for all contributors, any that can't be reached, or who decline the license change will have their contributions removed from the downloads I believe. the plan is BFRPG and the Basicfantasy.org site will be Creative Commons licensed

But I am not Solo this is only my understanding of his position so I could be wrong.

[rudgar]

except they have explicitly put in the latest one that they CAN revoke it (legally they probably can't)

To be clear, I am not suggesting using 1.2. and I am not suggesting using 1.0a for new products.

Please correct me if you think I'm wrong.

• The leaked 1.1 claimed to de-authorized 1.0a. Thus began the community outrage.

• Version 1.2 (still a draft) explicitly says what de-authorization means (according to them), and that content licensed under 1.0a would not need to be updated

Whether this de-authorization is legal is debatable, and it's certainly not what the community wanted, but the statement (if made official) would perpetually protect old products licensed under 1.0a, and clears up the only ambiguity in the license. No new products, new adventures, new supplements, and probably not even updates to old products.

Anyways, we both made our points (handshake). Version 1.2 is still a draft and might change, so it may be worth waiting for the official before making any decisions.

[rudgar]

consent is being sought for all contributors, any that can't be reached, or who decline the license change will have their contributions removed from the downloads I believe.

Solo already said otherwise:

The alternative is to assume that they agreed to release their materials under a license I chose, and that they tacitly gave their approval for me to relicense them. Legally this is pretty iffy

I'm just saying that if that part of 1.2 remains unchanged, it would actually provide legal protection going forward, and it would provide an acceptable (imo) third option.

[Demetrius]

I understand the position, but I hope that we can at least keep the old stuff on the download page. (Especially thinking about supplements where maybe the author has left).

I think that should probably depend more on the Paizo's lawsuit against WotC than on what WotC says.

This quote would seem to protect such products in perpetuity:
It does not mean that any content previously published under that version needs to update to this license. Any previously published content remains licensed under whichever version of the OGL was in effect when you published that content.

Except the fact it doesn't clarify what publishing is.

Is publishing in the internet an one-off action (you uploaded the file, it's an act of publishing) or continuous action (people make a request, the response contains the file, that's the act of publishing)?

This becomes even more difficult with print-on-demand. Does publishing happen when print-on-demand book is placed on Lulu, or when Lulu actually prints the book?

I don't know how the US law interpets this. But I can say that Belarusian and Russian law interprets this as a continuous action: you're not making something available in the Internet once, you're continuiously making it available. (And some some law changes to make your past posts in social media illegal, you need to delete them. If you don't, you're committing crime by keeping the posts available.)

Is the US law different on this? I don't know! But since WotC has zero trust right now, I'd assume the worse case. Just to be prepared.

Not saying that it should be used for new content going forward, just hoping that the old stuff isn't thrown out

It won't be thrown out. I've already saved all the books. I'm sure many more people have done the same.

If they're deleted, people are going to share them in private messages, in torrents, in Libgen, etc. It's not like it's going to become unreachable. It's going to become harder to get, sure, but I'm sure they will be available.

[rudgar]

Except the fact it doesn't clarify what publishing is.

It's an interesting point, however they thankfully use the text "any content previously published under that version....remains licensed"

Whereas authorization is in fact an ambiguous term that Wotc seemed to have made up, terms like "previously published" and "remains licensed" should be clear.

However, you're right, we should demand it be as clear as possible. They should add the phrase "can continue to publish" before we can fully trust them.

(They are seeking feedback, although I think most of the feedback is being targeted at other parts of the draft).

I haven't backed them up, my internet speed is pretty slow.

Of course, glad you did

[Solomoriah]

I said this before, but it's been overlooked.

As long as they don't say I have to pull the OGL 1.0a materials down, they stay up. Since D&D Beyond isn't the official account of Wizards, they really haven't said anything yet.

[Boggo]

I said this before, but it's been overlooked.

As long as they don't say I have to pull the OGL 1.0a materials down, they stay up. Since D&D Beyond isn't the official account of Wizards, they really haven't said anything yet.

that does raise a question about legacy versions after 4e versions of them go up, are the older OGL supplements staying live after the CC ones are finished and uploaded? (since I suspect the company in question and their legal team seem to be slower at this than the BFRPG team is )

[rudgar]

I said this before, but it's been overlooked.

As long as they don't say I have to pull the OGL 1.0a materials down, they stay up. Since D&D Beyond isn't the official account of Wizards, they really haven't said anything yet.

Good to hear!

bfrpg is my "go to"