SRD 5.1

 WotC announced yesterday the company placed all of the core D&D mechanics under the Creative Commons license, meaning anyone can use them to create material, either for or not for profit. Ergo companies can create materials under the OGL or D&D specific materials under the Creative Commons license.

OGL 1.2

 Here is a link to a draft of WotC's proposed OGL 1.2  This version moved the core D&D mechanics into a Creative Commons licence, allows creators using the D&D mechanics to retain ownership of products produced, as well as revenue streams  generated from them., which were major criticisms of the first draft.

There are still some potential problems with the new draft. If, for example, you use Licensed Content or material from the SRD 5.1  which was published back in 2016, you automatically agree to the terms of the OGL1.2

How Ryan Dancy Saved D&D

 Well not quite. Here is the blog post on how he and his team created the original OGL for D&D 3.0. For those not familiar with the concept, the Open Gaming License was created by WotC/ Hasbro and released along with the third edition of D&D. It allowed, as long as the rules in the license were followed, publishers to create materials and expansions for D&D without paying a licensing fee to WotC as long as they put the OGL statement in the book someplace and stated that the materials were created under the OGL Castles and Crusades and Pathfinder were both created under the OGL, hence their use of many D&D rules.

What the OGL allowed WotC to do was create many supplements without having to invest anything in them while continuing to sell the core products needed to use these new materials. Many companies such as Goodman Games, Mongoose Publishing, Necromancer Games and Paizo got their start publising mateiral under the OGL before developing their own games and systems. Of course, dozens of companies also produced a lot of bad material (take a look through our used D&D  section for examples) and went bankrupt within a few years.