Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD

Re:Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong a... by Macha on Friday January 06, 2023 @12:48PM (#34278189)

I mean, I think they were probably genuinely thinking about their own origin and not closing that off for others. Or it could be just that it's good PR to appear as much. So they kept with the license that'd let them mix with the existing OGL ecosystem where it made sense.

In retrospect if that was their goal, it would have made sense to use a different copyleft license for the open content that did not include a clause that paints Wizards as the body to update the license, especially given the mechanics of using PF 1E content in 2E requires subjective decision making compared to the relatively automatic 3.5 -> PF1E or PF1E -> SF compatibility.

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Re:Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong a... by trynewideas on Friday January 06, 2023 @01:54PM (#34279142)

Making breaking changes to the OGL-covered system defeats the purpose of making the succeeding content OGL-compatible. If PF2E content required conversion anyway, and they were writing an entirely new core rulebook for those new rules, there was no reason to retain the OGL.

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Re:Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong a... by Macha on Friday January 06, 2023 @02:34PM (#34279718)

I think the concern was if someone had released the fluff for a adventure or class or something under the OGL, then if you went and did a conversion of that for 2E and wanted to release it you'd have to do it under the OGL, but presumably you'd also want to use content from the PF 2E rulebook which would require you to use its open license, which would be a problem if that wasn't OGL. It's basically like the problem with GPL-incompatible open source licenses.

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