IANAL. I am looking at a copy of OGL 1.0a and find this paragraph:

    9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License.

I believe that the crux of the matter is "authorized version of this License". I can see a few ways to argue that this phrase gives WotC the right to revoke any version of the license other than the most current one.

I don't read that as "we can revoke this retroactively on anything, even non-WoTC games" but I guess the lawyers will hash it out.

The OGL 1.1 license (according to the leaked draft/text) explicitly says that OGL 1.0a is no longer an authorized license.

The 1.1 license is clear that any content using SRD (System Reference Document) content will be in violation unless they update to the 1.1 license (and thus comply with either OGL 1.1 Commercial, OGL 1.1 Non-Commercial, or the Fan Content license).

The situation around non-SRD OGL content is murkier.

So not being a lawyer and not giving legal advice, to me this seems to say that as someone producing something with OGL1.0, "you MAY replace it with a newer, authorized version" means that if you don't, the old version stays, or goes away entirely ? I,e. you then may decide to use another new fresh license of your own choosing ? Or it becomes unlicensed ?

Because if there is a requirement that at anytime an authorized version were to be used, wouldn't the language needed be "you MUST replace it with a newer, authorized version" ?

Same question, I cannot wrap my head around this. If this is true, the OGL was a trap. But how did they not realize this, did they have no lawyers going over the license?

> How so, if they're not using WotC IP?

The concern is that changing that making OGL 1.0a unauthorized (has this already happened to 1.0?) has the effect banning further use of it with new works derived from works originally licensed under it or OGL 1.0 under the terms of ant OGL version (this relies on the any authorized version clause being seen as restrictive, not permissive.)

Its theoretically fixable for non-WotC dependent content, if everyone upstream relicenses under different terms starting from the root, but that's not going to help where creators are out of touch or license compatibility led to WotC content cross pollinating.