Quote from: S'mon on January 27, 2023, 06:05:04 PM
This is almost* total victory - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qGTO9fld1gqkWF3I8dPI5uY0933OxnOr/view

That's the entire 5e SRD there with a far more open licence than the OGL. No more 'Product Identity' shenanigans!

*The only way it could be better is releasing the 3e SRDs to CC too, giving a lot of descriptive text missing from the 5e SRD.

Daddy Warpig also wants the 3.5 SRD, why not take the 5.1 and retrofit it into a totally not 3.5? You'd need to use your own words but it's feasible.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on January 27, 2023, 06:23:55 PM
I think they would rather keep people on the reservation "free of charge" then off of it for a fee.

Exactly, the D&DOne cancellatiosn, PF2 selling their 8 month stock of hardcovers in two weeks, Black Flag and Cubicle7's upcoming system are a very real threat the idiots in the C suit didn't saw coming.

This is pretty much a total victory.  There are still things that would be nice- for instance, an OGL 1.0b that is explicitly irrevocable (this would make all concerns of Hasbro trying another grab back in a few years even harder), as that would cover all the older OGL stuff.  Or they could put everything that they have ever OGLed into creative commons.

But honestly, the 5.1 SRD being under creative commons is huge.  Every complaint from anyone in OSR is either solved completely or almost completely by this, as there was concern Hasbro might try to target people for using terms like "Magic Missile" (they explicitly stated this as an example of something that they believed was copyrighted), or "Armor Class", or "Hit Points", or six attribute scores.  Did they have the right to do this?  Absolutely not, they would lose in any fair court.  How much does a fair court cost in this country?  Or whatever country they might try to choose to push the envelope first?  Now, with everything under creative commons, there's absolutely no grounds for a lawsuit.  Again, they could always try it, but they have firmly tied their hands on everything here.

What remains as a concern, that Hasbro might go after you for referencing the feat Power Attack, which they would first have to claim to have "deauthorized" the OGL and then use the fact that the 3.5 SRD is now (according to them) a big deal to refer to?  I think that there's basically no chance of that.

  This is a good start! All I need now is public seppuku of those C-level suits and whoever else made this happen, and a 50-state USA stockade tour of the rest of the legal dept. and middle management -- with Hasbro/WotC footing the bill for the rotten vegetables to throw at them! 

So close guys, you're almost on the road to forgiveness! 

Now I'm considering the limitations of CC-BY-4.0, before using it.

---
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
In the 4.0 license suite, licensees are required to indicate if they made modifications to the licensed material. This obligation applies whether or not the modifications produced adapted material. As with all other attribution and marking requirements, this may be done in a manner reasonable to the means, medium, and context. For example, "This section is an excerpt of the original." For trivial modifications, such as correcting spelling errors, it may be reasonable to omit the notice.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
---

How does that work if I'm publishing a derivative work in DTRPG using part of the text? Think "adventures in middle earth" - would they have to indicate all the changes from the original text? "This section is an excerpt of the original." in every page?

Would they be prohibited from using, say, watermarks?

Does the lack of ShareAlike clauses prohibits me from releasing it in such a manner?

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 27, 2023, 07:46:23 PM
How does that work if I'm publishing a derivative work in DTRPG using part of the text? Think "adventures in middle earth" - would they have to indicate all the changes from the original text? "This section is an excerpt of the original." in every page?

Would they be prohibited from using, say, watermarks?

Does the lack of ShareAlike clauses prohibits me from releasing it in such a manner?

See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

You basically have to attribute the work, you'd likely want to use the verbiage WoTC has suggested. Your new work can be an exact copy or have changes in it. If it has changes in it you have to state your work is different than the original work:

In the 4.0 license suite, licensees are required to indicate if they made modifications to the licensed material. This obligation applies whether or not the modifications produced adapted material. As with all other attribution and marking requirements, this may be done in a manner reasonable to the means, medium, and context. For example, "This section is an excerpt of the original." For trivial modifications, such as correcting spelling errors, it may be reasonable to omit the notice.

The above would be intentionally vague as the intent is to be reasonable and not have this be a burden. 

You can add watermarks, write a novel based on it, create a movie or video game with it, use it as a blueprint for a new greater human society, whatever you want. Just add the attribution and indicate if there are changes from the original in a reasonable way.

A ShareAlike CC is more restrictive than this in that your work based on the material must also be shareable(copyleft). The SRD vanilla CC doesn't have that requirement.

Quote from: GamerforHire on January 27, 2023, 05:13:43 PMOk, excuse my ignorance, sincerely.

A) Welcome aboard!

B) There is no excuse for your sincere ignorance! Next up you'll be trying to excuse your insincere ignorance and that kind of shenanigans ain't accepted around here buster!

C) Today's big change appears to be the entire 5.1 SRD got tossed into the Creative Commons making it effectively public domain forever and evermore. Which is incredible news for all the 3PP kids.

I say appears because I have not personally looked into what exactly is in the document WotC claims to have placed into the CC.

I do not think it matter much....

Anyone creating a business now or already running one will have to think very hard about what is going on. For despite this reversal, they still tried to do what they did. So all those creators, companies and all their employees and families now now that at some point one day in the future some corporation could choose to make some kind of decision that adversely affect them. They might have walked this back now, but what will the next ceo do in 10 years? The only choice for creators is to step away completely from it, and I doubt this announcement will effect much concerning the publishers and big creators. They will still be moving to ORC or making their own licenses.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 27, 2023, 07:46:23 PM
Now I'm considering the limitations of CC-BY-4.0, before using it.

---
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
In the 4.0 license suite, licensees are required to indicate if they made modifications to the licensed material. This obligation applies whether or not the modifications produced adapted material. As with all other attribution and marking requirements, this may be done in a manner reasonable to the means, medium, and context. For example, "This section is an excerpt of the original." For trivial modifications, such as correcting spelling errors, it may be reasonable to omit the notice.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
---

How does that work if I'm publishing a derivative work in DTRPG using part of the text? Think "adventures in middle earth" - would they have to indicate all the changes from the original text? "This section is an excerpt of the original." in every page?

Would they be prohibited from using, say, watermarks?

Does the lack of ShareAlike clauses prohibits me from releasing it in such a manner?

The license says you must not restric others from doing what the license permits, if there's watermarks I can still type everything under the license. I can't copy paste but I can type it. I think this is for video games mostly, DRM and such.

You can't change the license of the original since you don't own the copyright, but you can publish your work under CC By SA with adecuate notes of the stuff you can't place under such license and under what license they are (Including none in the case of art you don't own the copyright to) and crediting the copyright owners of such stuff.

You can even publish your work OUTSIDE of the CC By, unlike with the CC By SA that doesn't allow that, as long as you specify WHAT parts are from their SRD and are therefore CC By.

For the OGL, yeah, that's probably dead for third party publishers at this point. But for 5E CC SRD, that can't be taken back and is probably less restrictive than what ORC will be. For one, CC has no product identity concept it in. So go to town now with beholders and mind flayers, because its in there. The other thing is that the CC SRD applies to all mediums, even those not invented yet. Will ORC?

Finally, this puts OSR in a great place as many names and terms have become truly open. Basic Fantasy was scrubbing chromatic and metallic dragons from their non-OGL version rules(among a lot of other things) because it was up in the air if Wizard's could claim ownership on them. All the classic stats, spell names, monsters, mechanical terms and so on are free and clear now. It's a big deal.

Quote from: Spinachcat on January 27, 2023, 08:25:00 PM

Quote from: GamerforHire on January 27, 2023, 05:13:43 PMOk, excuse my ignorance, sincerely.

A) Welcome aboard!

B) There is no excuse for your sincere ignorance! Next up you'll be trying to excuse your insincere ignorance and that kind of shenanigans ain't accepted around here buster!

C) Today's big change appears to be the entire 5.1 SRD got tossed into the Creative Commons making it effectively public domain forever and evermore. Which is incredible news for all the 3PP kids.

I say appears because I have not personally looked into what exactly is in the document WotC claims to have placed into the CC.

I downloaded it, First page says the entire document IS under CC By, and it has the exact same page count as the one that doesn't say that.

Now, did they remove anything or carved some exception inside the document? Don't know! (Read that last part in The Critical Drinker's voice).

CC By is very different from CC0 (Public Domain) for starters you have to give credit, something you don't have to do with Public Domain (although most do).

And that boys and girls is why they released the SRD to CC By, to try and stop the bleed of 3pp and games that have shit to do with their IP but that put the OGL there like White Star, it has (as far as I know) ZERO Wotzi's SRD in it, and yet there's the OGL at the end.

That's brand recognition, it makes them seem like the best and bigest game.

Besides stoping the subscriber bleed from D&DBegone!

Masterful stroke of PR, put CC By something you're not gonna use for much longer (Bet D&DOne is a very different game) makes you look good while costing you shit.

Well, that's a victory for everyone, although it's too bad as I would've liked WOTC/Hasbro to continue down this path.

The CC-BY release empowers a lot of people, myself included. The OGL 1.0a authorization put some business plans in jeopardy. Even if they backed off, the villainous nature of WOTC created a real stench around the OGL. Now that SRD content is released under CC-BY, all of the potential threat is erased.

Still curious to see if WOTC will attempt to impose restrictions on VTTs. I suspect that is ultimately what this was about.

Quote from: Zelen on January 27, 2023, 09:06:25 PM
Well, that's a victory for everyone, although it's too bad as I would've liked WOTC/Hasbro to continue down this path.

A selfish part of me would've liked to see that as well, but it's best for a lot of companies that they now have 5E they can fork and move on with.

Quote from: Zelen on January 27, 2023, 09:06:25 PM
Still curious to see if WOTC will attempt to impose restrictions on VTTs. I suspect that is ultimately what this was about.

They can't for 5E content now, but that wasn't their goal. I'd bet good money that One DnD will have VTT restrictions on it in a new license for that. And frankly, they have enough money to make One DnD/VTT successful no matter how bad it is(see Diablo Immortal). But I mostly just care about the current community being able to part ways with Hasbro and play with our clones and older versions. An amicable divorce.

One thing to pay attention to, IMHO, is to see if heads will roll at WotC/Hasbro - and which ones. If the fiasco is real (and PF selling out eight months of books in two weeks, to the point that the next reprint will arrive in April, is quite a real slap) someone will pay. Maybe it will be the actual culprits or maybe some scapegoat.

I don't think that what happened will remain without consequences. Nothing right now assures that the D&D brand hasn't been permanently damaged. People can, from now, see PF as a safety net (again).

Anyway, to paraphrase "Blackhawk Down", isn't funny how when the first menace to the wallet whistled near the community's head, all the woke values went out of the window? 

Quote from: Summon666 on January 27, 2023, 08:27:40 PM
I do not think it matter much....

Anyone creating a business now or already running one will have to think very hard about what is going on. For despite this reversal, they still tried to do what they did. So all those creators, companies and all their employees and families now now that at some point one day in the future some corporation could choose to make some kind of decision that adversely affect them. They might have walked this back now, but what will the next ceo do in 10 years? The only choice for creators is to step away completely from it, and I doubt this announcement will effect much concerning the publishers and big creators. They will still be moving to ORC or making their own licenses.

I'm not sure. SRD is now 'basically' in the public domain and you don't need the OGL to use it. There is no connection to WotC anymore so if you are building 3pp products you do so safe of any future WotC interference. If you use the old OGL you have some risk they may cancel or change or whatever, I wouldn't trust that unless I had a product under it already in which case you have more time to scrub SRD 3.5 content if you don't trust them.