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Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

I know about Pathfinder, but I don't understand this:

> It is my understanding, however, that Pathfinder Second Edition is pretty much a full rewrite and only includes the OGL as a way for third parties to build content around Pathfinder Second Edition.

Why did Paizo use a license not designed by them? And if they did a full rewrite, are they under any obligation at all to Wizards of the Coast? If they used the OGL to allow third-parties for Pathfinder, not D&D, what does this have to do with WotC? And cannot they simply switch to another license, if 2nd edition is truly a full rewrite?

There's something I'm definitely missing here.

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> And if they did a full rewrite, are they under any obligation at all to Wizards of the Coast?

The most reasonable opinion I have read on this is that Paizo themselves are not entirely convinced the second edition can be legally seen as an untainted full rewrite and use the OGL out of precaution.

They should be able to relicense but Hasbro might sue them arguing that actually the licensing situation isn’t that clear.

> Why did Paizo use a license not designed by them?

Lawyers cost money.

> And if they did a full rewrite, are they under any obligation at all to Wizards of the Coast?

The theory is that they are not.

> If they used the OGL to allow third-parties for Pathfinder, not D&D, what does this have to do with WotC?

People point out that the PF2 works have OGL licenses.

I'm sure we'll all find out in the coming weeks/months

> Why did Paizo use a license not designed by them?

Why would they when there's a well-known and (before recent events) fully trusted license already established within the community?

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.”

[0] source: https://gizmodo.com/dnd-wizards-of-the-coast-ogl-1-1-open-ga...

> 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.

And I'm 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.

> Why did Paizo use a license not designed by them?

Why do organizations other than the FSF use the GPL?

Edit because fuck this site's rate limits.

> the GPL doesn't put organizations that choose that license at the mercy of the FSF.

IMO the OGL doesn't either - this is really a radical interpretation WotC is testing and Dancey's statements alone - at the time and today - are going to be enough to get the ridiculousness dismissed. (IANAL TINLA, but I do have some ancient - like 2003-era - OGL-published stuff floating around.)

Conversely the idea that you might need to agree to a newer license to get ongoing access to new things - there's a close parallel with the FSF and the GFDL (where I disagreed) and the Tivo/patent clauses in GPL3 (where I agreed). But that has nothing to do with the license per se and everything to do with still wanting what the license holder-author is offering.

Well, the GPL doesn't put organizations that choose that license at the mercy of the FSF. The FSF isn't a business competing with the organizations that choose the GPL. The FSF also cannot change the rules of the license a posteriori.

The OGL doesn't look much like the GPL. Wizards of the Coast is a business in direct competition to others using the OGL. It's also crazy that something under the OGL falls in WotC's jurisdiction even if it uses no rules or settings from D&D -- I must have misunderstood this because this is simply too crazy to be true.

> The FSF also cannot change the rules of the license a posteriori.

GNU can and has changed the rules of one of their licenses. Specifically the GFDL 1.3 was released to allow all the wikis licensed under GFDL 1.1+/GFDL1.2+ to migrate to CC-BY-SA.

This is arguably a case of using the power for good, but fear of them using the power for bad is exactly why e.g. Linux is GPLv2-only rather than GPLv2-or-later

If I understand this correctly, your example isn't a case of retroactively modifying a license.

If you publish something under an X+ license, aren't you effectively saying "the conditions of this or a later revision apply"? You are willingly choosing to use this version or a later one. So if a later one changes one of the provisions of the prior version, this isn't a retroactive change but something you explicitly wanted when you used version X+. Version X isn't changed at all, it's just that you explicitly said you accepted version X+1 whenever it became available.

Is this the same situation with the OGL and Paizo? Is Pathfinder licensed under OGL version X+? Seems... unwise. Not like the GPL or whatever, because the GPL is not aimed at restricting your business success and is not designed by your direct business competitor!

> Is this the same situation with the OGL and Paizo? Is Pathfinder licensed under OGL version X+?

Yes.

There are two reasons for this, one is that the first edition of pathfinder had to be, because it used material from D&D 3.5, and then the second edition didn't want to break compatibility with the first edition's ecosystem, and the second is it would violate the copyright of the OGL itself to use a modified version without an "or later version" clause. The same would be true for the GPL, except the GPL expressly provides a mechanism to choose to use the or later clause or not.

Ah, I get it! So Pathfinder 1st Ed was based in a version of D&D (3.5) which already used version OGL+! That's the piece of the puzzle I was missing: the minute Paizo decided to fork D&D, they became locked into this unfortunate licensing choice, at the mercy of future license updates. I also understand you cannot decide to use a "pinned" version if the original you're licensing is already using a "plus" version.

In hindsight, it looks like a terrible decision for Pathfinder to have accepted those terms. Had I been then, I would have made an entirely new game "in the spirit" of 3.5 but starting from scratch. I guess they opted for the more appealing route of trying to more directly appeal to disgruntled fans or D&D, and now they are facing the downsides of that. It sucks, agreed.

I guess this is a lesson about the risks of trying to ride another company's success instead of making your own thing. And yes, it happens with software as well.

(I'm still not convinced this will affect companies/games using the OGL for things entirely unrelated to D&D. That'd be surreal!)

If you navigate to the comment you want to reply to, it doesn’t appear to be rate limited. Only when viewing the full thread

I’m referring to the actual rate limit because dang and I disagree about the average quality of my comments, not the idiosyncratic UI.

huh, I don't think I've ever actually triggered that and I've done some marathon posting sessions where I replied within <30 seconds. Is that a per user rate limiter?

> Why did Paizo use a license not designed by them?

Let's imagine a scenario:

1. Paizo releases Pathfinder 1E. It's uses material from D&D 3.5 SRD which requires it to use the OGL.

2. A third party releases a campaign for pathfinder 1E. It uses material from pathfinder 1E which requires it to use the OGL

3. Paizo releases Pathfinder 2E. They change to CC BY-SA for their open components.

4. I now want to update that campaign to the 2E rules. But the original campaign publication insists I must use OGL, and Pathfinder 2E insists I use CC BY-SA and now I cannot.

I think a mix of (a) the scenario above, (b) legal CYA in case it was found Pathfinder 2E was too close to 3.5e material and (c) using what they're used to led to the decision to continue to use OGL for Pathfinder 2E.

I see.

All the "fun" of software licensing, only for pen and paper games. It's like we are already in hell.

I thought that Pathfinder 2e was much like software development: The latest commit in a branch which has OGL 1.0 at its root.

Does OGL 1.1 mean that /all/ branches are affected?

That is what Wotc is trying to do, yes. They are trying to post-facto invalidate 1.0a after 20+ years.

The software equivalent would be if the FSF found some sneaky legalese, and came out with a hostile GPL 5 and simultaneously invalidated all previous versions of the GPL. Thus rendering everyone pre-v5 unable to publish going forward, with the only recourse to “upgrade” to the new version.

It’s sick, and likely not legal, but in the D&D example Hasbro have a much bigger legal team than the people they are trying to bully. So the threat of a potentially expensive lawsuit to force small fish into a legally dubious license.

On top of what the other said about having a license that is well known, one of the rationale is not having to spend a lot of time and money being sure that nothing covered but the OGL in version 1 is used in version 2

> Why did Paizo use a license not designed by them?

I don't know their exact reasoning, but I always add licenses when publishing software I write, and they always are ones I didn't design (because I've never written a license myself). I don't think it's that crazy to use an established license that seems to be working well in a community you'd like to emulate when trying to launch you're own; I doubt Paizo had any more idea than the rest of us that WotC would pull something like this.

> And if they did a full rewrite, are they under any obligation at all to Wizards of the Coast? If they used the OGL to allow third-parties for Pathfinder, not D&D, what does this have to do with WotC? And cannot they simply switch to another license, if 2nd edition is truly a full rewrite?

My (admittedly primitive) understanding of licensing was that once something was released publicly with an indefinite license, it generally wouldn't be possible to retract that later. The copyright holder can change licenses as they see fit, but nobody will be bound by the new license unless they accept it or use a new version of the product that doesn't offer the old license. This leads me to theorize that one of a few things could be going on here:

1. The new version of the OGL (1.1) disallows you to continue using the old version (1.0) once you start using something with it. If this turns out to be the case, then people would be able to continue using the materials as-is at the last point where the OGL 1.0 was offered, but they wouldn't be able to use any future changes without accepting version 1.1 as a replacement for all of the preexisting content as well. WotC might have only intended this, but due to poor communications and/or wording in the license change, people got worried and then the narrative got out of control 2. The license works like I described in option 1 due to WotC knowing that they can't actually retroactively change the license for people already using it, but they intentionally obfuscated this to try to scare people into switching to using the new version even if they shouldn't technically have to * The license does actually a say that it's overriding the previous one, which is not actually something a license is supposed to be able to. WotC either doesn't realize this or is hoping that in a legal battle they either can either prolong it to starve their opponents of resources or manage to convince a judge to rule against the existing consensus and establish a new precedent.

I think that option 2 is the most likely by a slight margin, but I might be biased as someone who played PF1 and now plays PF2. Option 3 would be the scariest to me given that a prolonged legal battle seems like it would be the most insulated from public opinion, which I think is mostly against the new license right now.

> I don't know their exact reasoning, but I always add licenses when publishing software I write, and they always are ones I didn't design (because I've never written a license myself). I don't think it's that crazy to use an established license that seems to be working well in a community you'd like to emulate when trying to launch you're own; I doubt Paizo had any more idea than the rest of us that WotC would pull something like this.

I understand this, but you don't use licenses designed by your business competitors whose main product is in direct competition to your own. The analogy here would be Microsoft using a license designed by Apple for Windows and MS Office! Or whatever their major line of products is nowadays.

And yet Apple run iCloud on Linux servers on Microsoft Azure. Is it really that different? (EDIT: Google says they moved to GCP in 2018, but doesn't change the point)

I think it's different. In your example, what is the license Apple is using for its major product that was designed by Microsoft?

A software platform is not a license. But also, Apple moved to GCP, problem solved. This doesn't seem to be the same situation as Paizo's, is it?

If Paizo wholly owns the IP (PF1E: No, SF: Maybe, PF2E: Probably), then they can move to a competing license like CC-BY-SA. That would solve the "cannot distribute their own products" problem, but it would mean their entire ecosystem including third parties would need to propagate that change.

It also doesn't change the fact that Wizards could argue they have an OGL v1.0a+ license, and use OGL v1.1 to put pathfinder 1e srd on their new vtt without paying paizo for example

Yes, now I understand. Thanks for this and your other explanation.

If I were Paizo I would sever Pathfinder entirely from the OGL, especially if they rewrote their game from scratch, and ask modules writers to switch to the new licensing. But what do I know?

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