the OSR is that portion of D&D's fanbase that looks from the outside like a bunch of very dry historian nerds, and then if you wander a step too close you suddenly discover how many of the "historians" have a very specific interest in collecting Nazi memorabilia. They had an amount of fleeting cultural cachet around the time of the 5e playtest, whch is how one literal open neo-Nazi and one abusive shitlord harasser ended up originally credited as consultants on 5e, and Mearls ended up doxxing people who told him "um that's an abusive shitlord harasser" to said shitlord harasser and sniggering about it on Twitter.
The OSR is also commercially irrelevant to Wizards Hasbro, because they're guaranteed to scream at anything the company does beause it's not what they played as 14yos in the 80s, and they won't spend any relevant amount of money on it to do so.
They are, however, in a bit of a weird position; because the OGL's Circle Of Protection from Vexatious Lawsuit (Pinky Swear) kinda-sorta extended backwards through its own catalogue, accidentally shielding games that were effectively tiny subsets of 3e's rules-lawyering behemoth, protecting OSR efforts to clone B/X D&D over and over and over and over and over and say they were "writing RPG systems".
(I was maliciously looking forward to WotC sticking to their guns and accidentally levelling the Nazi bar, not gonna lie.)
I am extremely cynical about all the 5e third parties that announced Their Own OGL, With Blackjack And Hookers, following through, but I am mildly interested to see how much of the OSR will take Hasbro's Lovecraftian indifference to heart and actually write their own systems; and lo, apparently timeworn grandpa of the form Labyrinth Lord was contemplaing a 2.0, put in on hold in a panic over the OGL stuff, and has now announced it'll be going forward as a (mildly) incompatible, non-OGL game.
Consequences spin out in strange directions.
