[msoucy]

If I had a nickel for every time WotC tried to change the OGL and the community got pissed, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice!

(The first time is what gave us Pathfinder 1e in the first place, for those who don't know - they took D&D 3.5e, under the OGL 1.0, and made modifications and continued its spirit)

[Throw10987]

I thought I was the only one old enough to remember that we have been here before.

Back in the day I even had an email thread with Ryan Dancy about making software tooling based on the OGL, which was pretty non-committal and discouraged me from proceeding with any efforts.

[trynewideas]

My understanding of that discouragement in general was in how the exclusive nature of the OGL prevented it from being combined with software licenses. Implementing OGL-covered rules in or with code covered by a different license was fraught, which makes OGL software development difficult unless you get permission (aka, a commercial license) from the copyright holder (WotC/Hasbro).[1][2]

The existence of OGL-implementing tools is more a factor of WotC/Hasbro reserving attempts to enforce that on small fish in a small pond, but could be deployed against anything even marginally successful that wasn't tithing enough.

(One example of a discussion around that is re: Pathfinder Online, another Ryan Dancey project, which avoided the OGL question entirely by implementing a different ruleset. https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lhu1?One-is-the-Lo...)

1: https://archive.ph/yNaJT

> ... you have to give all the recipients the right to extract and use any Open Game Content you've included in your application, and you have to clearly identify what part of the software is Open Game Content.

> One way is to design your application so that all the Open Game Content resides in files that are human-readable (that is, in a format that can be opened and understood by a reasonable person). Another is to have all the data used by the program viewable somehow while the program runs.

> Distributing the source code not an acceptable method of compliance. First off, most programming languages are not easy to understand if the user hasn't studied the language. Second, the source code is a separate entity from the executable file. The user must have access to the actual Open Content used.

2: https://web.archive.org/web/20060913004016/http://www.wizard...

> NOTE: The biggest problem we've found with software and the OGL is that programmers aren't paying attention to Section 8 of the OGL. Section 8 states: "If you distribute Open Game Content You must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are Open Content." This doesn't mean you can say "all rules in my program are Open", the users need to be able to see all that Open Content. You can do this by putting Open Content in a format that is easy to understand. Popular solutions have been to place everything in text files that the program pulls info from, having everything in a viewable database within the software, using Java script on a webpage (viewing the source of the webpage will display the code and Java script is relatively easy for a user to interpret). The key is that the user has to see everything that is Open Content that the program uses and be able to understand it without too much effort. The whole point of the OGL is that once information is declared Open everyone has free access to it under the OGL. Compiling that information into a program denies the user that access and violates the spirit of the Open Gaming License.