Another thing to remember about the #OGL is how I think it was shaped by two events of the '90s.
First was the start of Wizards of the Coast. The Primal Order, their first product, resulted in a lawsuit from Palladium Games because they included conversion appendixes for a variety of RPG systems. (TPO was a "capsystem" product meant to be added on your game of choice.) This is exactly the sort of thing that people are now claiming is obviously fair use. It was not so obvious, Wizards well knew!
The threat was so grave and existential that a new corporation, Garfield Games, was formed just to publish Magic: The Gathering, so that it could get investment that would not be threatened by the possibility of the whole company being destroyed by the Primal Order litigation.
After the TPO suit was settled out of court, Garfield Games was merged into Wizards of the Coast. The people who ran WotC in 2000, such as Peter Adkison, know personally how much water the "this is fair use!" argument
held in actual pragmatic fact for a publisher. All it took was one game company to decide they disagreed that it was fair and were willing to file suit over it.
The second event was the near bankruptcy of TSR. Again, key people (such as Ryan Dancey) involved in rescuing D&D from the implosion of TSR by facilitating its sale to WotC, had that experience to inform the creation of the OGL. It was not impossible to imagine D&D being owned by some corporate entity that did not care about it;
John Nephew
MichaelPhillips