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Comment by johnday | Hacker News Reader

> Or can they really revoke that licensing on previously published content?

It depends entirely on your definition of "can".

If you mean, is this action supported by law, then no. If you mean, is this action supported by WotC's own historic interpretation of their own license, then no. If you mean, can they force the hand of smaller creators by threat of litigation, then certainly they can.

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> If you mean, is this action supported by law, then no.

IANAL, but isn't this a situation where smaller companies could band together and sue WoTC for Declaratory Relief [0], even if WoTC hasn't yet sued any of them for continuing to operate under the old license it's trying to revoke under questionable circumstances?

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/declaratory_relief

At least one company seems to have asked their lawyers to send a letter[0] to WoTC as discussed in this comment[1] on another HN thread here[2].

The wording giving them 10 days to respond to the questions seems to sound like it's heading towards something like what you suggested?

[0] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UgfQ8rydZ7D5LQXRJ6XDKa-_MRM...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34272424

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34271687

Had this question too, can you clarify, so say there is an existing biz that uses some of DnD content like perks or classes; their software is said at v1.0 now, but then they want to include another class from existing DnD 3.5, or some perk, which would bump their release. Are they now obligated to signup for this new license, or can they just reference the old system version and license, much like a software would??

Worse - the seeming intent of WotC is to effectively cancel the previous version, which mean anything that's already written including v1.0 could no longer be legally distributed or sold.

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