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Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

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Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#51

Post by ivanstojic »

My TTRPG group has been playing together for several years - on and off. We'd been mostly playing D&D 5e, even though we had members clamoring for other systems. After the WotC fiasco started blowing up, we finally bought a couple of Pathfinder 2e books, ran a few trial characters and one-shots. We are now in process of starting a new campaign entirely based on Pathfinder that we expect could take a couple of months to play out.

It really only took us one session to figure out the major mechanical systems in the gameplay, and a few we are still learning about. The major component remains the role playing experience which is the same, no matter which dice you throw to decide outcomes of situations.

I think Hasbro will soon realize that while the social impact of the name D&D is deep, the stickiness of the system is much lower than they gambled on. It's unlikely that any of my member group will soon buy anything new from them.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#52

Post by Macha »

tptacek wrote: post #40

So this is a clean, complete win, right? Once the license controversy started, there was no reasonable ask beyond this outcome?

I'd say this is 99% of a win. The one thing it does still leave is the claim they can de-authorize 1.0a at will later. For active products this is not a problem, as CC BY is a strictly more permissive license and they just move to claiming they're using the CC license.

However, for second-order derivatives there is still one problem.

1. Third Party A uses OGL 1.0a content from Wizards, licenses its own work as OGL 1.0a as a result

2. Later Third Party A goes out of business

3. Third Party B reused Third Party A's content under OGL 1.0a.

4. There's no one left to relicense Third Party A's content under CC BY.

But "don't make second order derivatives of abandonware content" is a lot easier to work around than "don't make stuff compatible with the large existing ecosystem"

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#53

Post by jron »

dragonwriter wrote: post #47
jron wrote: post #20

WOTC (Hasbro) was trying to revoke a license the authors intended to be irrevocable. Everything else was a red herring. I'm guessing their legal team had more to do with this change of heart than consumer/publisher feedback.

> WOTC (Hasbro) was trying to revoke a license the authors intended to be irrevocable. WotC was the legal author, and gratuitous licenses are revocable at will, anyway.

The original author is on record stating that it was intended to be irrevocable. There was also a quote on the official WOTC website stating the license couldn't be revoked. IANAL but I wouldn't take that case to court.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#54

Post by dragonwriter »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #26
gpm wrote: post #12

CC-BY-4.0 for those wondering which creative commons license. That means attribution required, but no significant other limitations.

I expected SA "share alike" (aka "viral")

SA would be worse for WotC; as they move to OneD&D, they would rather have the 5.1 derived third party products to be separate silos that draw on the 5.1 base rather than cross-pollinating. So third parties not sharing-alike is what they want.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#55

Post by TillE »

pubby wrote: post #34
SeanAnderson wrote: post #6

The community WOTC built over decades shouldn't have to give feedback that 85%+ identify with in order to achieve results that are desirable. If community sentiment is so lopsided then what was the rationale to make the decision in the first place and how was the communities' desire not implicitly understood? There is no doubt in my mind that WOTC (let's be real, Hasbro) has enough self-awareness to have realized the…

> how was the communities' desire not implicitly understood? IMO it's common for people at the top of a hierarchy to be out of touch with those on the bottom. It takes dedication to stay in touch, but even with effort a bigwig can't experience the community exactly as a peon does. Usually, they have to do market research (like this poll) to find out what people really think. I'm not saying this as a defense or anythi…

Given the extremely fast and extremely comprehensive U-turn, it seems like a lot of people near the top did understand the community very well.

Somehow, one person or one small faction made a different decision, and the overwhelming feedback proved it was the wrong decision.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#56

Post by Macha »

dragonwriter wrote: post #47
jron wrote: post #20

WOTC (Hasbro) was trying to revoke a license the authors intended to be irrevocable. Everything else was a red herring. I'm guessing their legal team had more to do with this change of heart than consumer/publisher feedback.

> WOTC (Hasbro) was trying to revoke a license the authors intended to be irrevocable. WotC was the legal author, and gratuitous licenses are revocable at will, anyway.

So the discussions from previous is that having consideration in return for a license makes it a contract rather than a gratuitous license. In this case the OGL specifies that licensing your work as OGL and including the OGL text in your work counts as consideration.

If you think the claim for that being consideration is too frail, the Artistic License from old Perl versions is a similarly permissive license, and Jacobsen vs Katzer held up that it counted as a contract with all that implies for revocability and (in particular for that case), whether failure to uphold your end is copyright infringement or breach of contract.

Some more context (and in particular how it applies to open source - if you use MIT licensed software, the idea that permissive licenses are gratuitous licenses is not a precedent you want set): https://lwn.net/Articles/747563/

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#57

Post by int_19h »

dragonwriter wrote: post #44
roblabla wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least the SRD5 is now irrevocably in the creative commons. So the situation now is somewhat better, they can't simply revoke the license anymore for that document.

> At least the SRD5 is now irrevocably in the creative commons. They changed the underlying law of licenses that makes gratuitous licenses revocable at will independent of the content of the license? How?

As applied to open source licenses, that is a legal theory, not settled law, and there are many people, including lawyers who professionally deal with F/OSS, who disagree with you.

https://lwn.net/Articles/747563/

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#58

Post by TigeriusKirk »

vaylian wrote: post #48

A bit more context: * Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years. * WoTC has been aggressively increasing prices on Magic the Gathering (MTG) and drastically increased the diversity of products. This overwhelmed even people who follow and produce MTG news. Wallet fatique is rampant and people are disgruntled. * WoTC releases the 30th aniver…

There's only so much water in the well, though, and they might well be close to that limit. It's not an infinitely growable market, it's a niche product. True, the niche has gotten quite large in recent years, but at this point it's at least as likely to shrink as to grow.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#59

Post by johannes1234321 »

tonfreed wrote: post #25
SeanAnderson wrote: post #6

The community WOTC built over decades shouldn't have to give feedback that 85%+ identify with in order to achieve results that are desirable. If community sentiment is so lopsided then what was the rationale to make the decision in the first place and how was the communities' desire not implicitly understood? There is no doubt in my mind that WOTC (let's be real, Hasbro) has enough self-awareness to have realized the…

I think they've completely misunderstood their product. The execs in charge of running the show come from video games, and watching what they're trying to do with DnD beyond makes it pretty obvious they're trying to introduce micro transaction hell and loot boxes into the product. Matt Colville whacked the nail on the head when he said D&D isn't really a game, it's a folk tradition and storytelling. Those are two ver…

Yes, that is a critical part. They want to make DnD Beyond the core of the product. The main channel, where "ideally" both, DMs and players, have to buy each little piece of content and an expensive subscription to create their own scenarios instead of books, which are expensive to produce, ship etc. and then are shared in a group (or kept for DM's eyes only) And they "have to" extract as much revenue from third parties like Paizo and get consumers of their platform.

If they get rid of story telling etc. they even can look at AI DMs leading a Dungeon Crawl to increase time of their consumers on their platform, even without fixed groups etc. Extract as much value as possible (and destroy the game)

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#60

Post by jbm »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #43
SeanAnderson wrote: post #6

The community WOTC built over decades shouldn't have to give feedback that 85%+ identify with in order to achieve results that are desirable. If community sentiment is so lopsided then what was the rationale to make the decision in the first place and how was the communities' desire not implicitly understood? There is no doubt in my mind that WOTC (let's be real, Hasbro) has enough self-awareness to have realized the…

> has enough self-awareness to have realized they were encroaching significantly on their core demographic. At least where I am in the US, the behavior of many corporations seems to indicate they... just don't give a shit. People will take what they can get, by and large, and as long as it makes the corporation money, they're willing to risk it. Who actually _likes_ not having a single register open at Wal Mart, Home…

A minor point, but I am grateful for the self checkout lanes — they have greatly speeded up my checkout, and w/ covid spiking I just want to leave asap.

I have never seen "no" registers open though.

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