It's unclear to me why CC-BY isn't sufficient for SRD material. I'm glad that Paizo is throwing off the yoke of Hasbro altogether, but I don't have a good understanding for what a new license will do that CC doesn't.
This discussion is also happening in publisher circles. I think the argument is that the ORC (Paizo's proposed license) will differentiate between reserved IP and open content. I'm not certain, though.
Then remove IP you want to protect from the CC BY-licensed SRD, publish the books under normal copyright terms, and add the rules content to the SRD?
I still don't understand the value of the OGL spelling out reserved IP. That's already protected if the only open-licensed part is the rules text, which (not a lawyer) happens with a CC BY SRD and any other copyright license on the derived works.
Wizards leaving reserved IP in their official SRD was a bug, not a feature. Back when Paizo still self-hosted Pathfinder 1E's SRD, they solicited pointers to and removed protected terms that they accidentally left in it so it'd be more ergonomic for publishers.
To my understanding CC was a consultant on the earliest OGL 1.0 development cycles. There's a bunch of complex interplays of different IP protections in tabletop roleplaying and so CC recommended building something from scratch for the same reason CC tries to remind people that CC is not an open source code license and you should use open source code licenses for software code.
Some specific troubles:
- Most game mechanics cannot be copyrighted they can only be patented. I believe CC recommended the OGL contain a patent grant similar to the one in the (software license) Apache License 2.0, though one directly as such did not make the final OGL. (There is something of an implied grant, but no specific clause and definitely not as well spelled out as Apache License 2.0.)
- Many elements are more subject to trademark laws than copyright laws. Things like the names of spells or skills or things like that. A TTRPG has to explicitly define which "vocabulary" is subject to trademark enforcement in a way that doesn't turn the trademarks into generics that puts them at risk of loss in a court case.
- The very nature of splitting an SRD from other game materials is somewhat unique to this TTRPG model. A lot of the OGL is legally trying to explain what an SRD even is and how it differs from any other book in the "same" RPG (so that it can then limit the scope of most things back to "just the SRD is open").
That said, there's a unique community of CC licensed games on itch.io especially and it certainly seems to work well when the entire game is licensed that way. Most of those authors and companies don't have a lot of trademarks to defend.
I could still see a usefulness in that community for some sort of easy to apply patent-grant license, though. (I was debating the other day if a dual-license situation where you did something like CC-BY/Apache License 2.0 could work if you have some way to add the legal language equivalent of "where and as these systems/rules define algorithms, those algorithms are considered to be open source under the Apache License 2.0" to try to broadly apply a patent grant.) I'm curious to see what Paizo does with ORC as maybe that's something their lawyers might help them address in a reusable way even for small RPGs.
My guess is they want to keep the overall structure of the OGL while tearing out the parts that can make the license change at the whims of WotC. The ability to carve out portions of a product as trademark/non-reproducible while releasing he rest isn't something covered by creative commons. Without it I'd imagine many publishers would try to hack together similar language and you'd end up with a proliferation of different new licenses.
IANAL, but my understanding is that WotC is getting ready to revoke the old OGL on the basis that "perpetual" doesn't mean "irrevocable," and the main impetus for a new license is explicitly closing that loophole. The perpetual/irrevocable thing seems absurd to me as an outsider, but this article makes me worry that a court could disagree: https://gamerant.com/dungeons-dragons-wizards-of-the-coast-f...
>According to several lawyers who have weighed in on the situation, if a document does not specifically say it is “irrevocable,” it can be revoked. While the old OGL uses the term “perpetual,” it does not use the word “irrevocable” in writing, and Dancey’s use of the word in interviews and emails may not be sufficient for the courts.
Source: I own a tabletop RPG publisher.