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Anyone give a comparison between Defold and Godot [1]? [1] https://godotengine.org https://godotengine.org

by chris_st 6y ago

josephcsible 6y ago
One point to consider: Godot is FOSS, but Defold is only visible-source.
- didibus 6y ago
  Seems more nuanced then that. You can use Defold to make commercial games for free. You can even extend and modify Defold and use your modified version to make commercial games for free too from what I understand. And you can also change and modify Defold and distribute your changes and modifications to others, but you can't do so commercially. That said, I think others could still use your modified Defold to make commercial games, just you can't take any money for it. So it seems to be much more than just visible source. Basically the only thing it doesn't allow is for you to commercialize the Defold engine or some derivative engine based on it. Everything else seems allowed. Caveat: I am not a lawyer.
  - josephcsible 6y ago
    I feel like saying "more nuanced" is misleading. It doesn't change the answer to "is it FOSS?" from "no" to "maybe", but rather to "no, but...". Defold's license unambiguously does not comply with either the Free Software Definition or the Open Source Definition.
    - britzl 6y ago
      Completely true. Defold is not FOSS. And we do not claim that it is. We initially said that Defold was open source when we actually should have said source available. And we got an unbelievable amount of flak for it! I even received a very disturbing message sent to my private email from a FOSS "champion". And the president of the OSI got in touch as well. More here: https://defold.com/2020/05/20/Some-thoughts-on-the-open-source-discussion/ https://defold.com/2020/05/20/Some-thoughts-on-the-open-sour...
    - didibus 6y ago
      I was referring to the "visible source" comment. The Defold license allows much more than just seeing the source. And I do think the way I've seen people almost "warning" others that Defold isn't "open source" is misleading to most game developer. Unless you plan to sell a commercial game engine and editor and want it to be based of the Defold source code, then you've got access to all the same pros/cons of any other true (based on OSi) open source game engine and editor. At the end of the day that's what I care about if I'm picking a game engine for my game.
      - pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
        It's a little bit of a strawman on your end. What you imagine to be the intention/argument on the other end isn't the one intended, so a comment like this one ends up dismissing the real issues brought up by people pointing out it's not FOSS. There is no shortage of discussion these days about independent devs feeling suckered into doing free support for corporations by way of FOSS. At least in that situation those programmers get some form of equity out of the bargain, given the terms of the actually-FOSS licenses. In the case of Defold, they've taken the Apache license and changed it to diminish even that in a way that's directly meant to benefit Defold. There's also the matter of people just not wanting companies to be able to reap undue rewards out of association with FOSS if they're not actually doing FOSS. It's honestly not a reaction that should be considered surprising. Want to hawk your wares as FOSS? Okay, FOSS licenses exist. Want to take one of those licenses and then alter it in such a way that it's no longer FOSS? Okay, then don't call it FOSS. It's a pretty fair deal.
        britzl 6y ago
        The Defold Foundation does not call Defold FOSS. PERIOD. Stop saying that we do. Next: The Defold Foundation is a foundation, not a corporation, and it is registered in Stockholm, Sweden. It has a different legal status than a corporation and while it is allowed to make a profit there are no stock holders or owners that can profit from the earnings. Also, as a foundation, it has a clear set of goals that cannot be altered: 1. Make the Defold software available to the public. 2. Make the Defold source code available free of charge to a third-party. 3. Manage the Defold software through updates, modifications, development and support. 4. Prevent the Defold software from being commercialised by a third-party. 5. Support the open source community and the use of open licenses. The reason we had to modify the Apache 2.0 license to add non-commercialization of the engine+editor was to fulfil goal #4. You might now think that it's pretty stupid to use a modified license since goal #5 says "support the use of open licenses". I agree. I would have preferred an unmodified OS license for the main repo. BUT the Defold Foundation also maintain ~60 other open source repositories, most of them with an MIT License. 32 of these are Defold game engine extensions to interface with things such as In-App Purchases, Analytics, Ads, Camera etc. Finally I want to say that we are not interested in "independent devs feeling suckered into doing free support". We obviously accept and appreciate contributions, but it is not our goal to make Defold into an engine which relies purely on community contributions to thrive. Defold depends on corporate sponsorships for long-term sustainability, not community contributions. And if we see prominent contributions coming from individuals we are very open to properly compensating said individuals from the funds of the foundation.
jay_kyburz 6y ago
Defold is a great commercial engine used to ship real games, but has its own license "derived" from Apache 2.0. You'll have to understand it before building on the engine. Godot is a hobby engine with a standard MIT license, but with some major issues that make it unusable for any serious work. I worked with it for 3 months at the end of last year, but had to abandon the project after logging a few serious bugs in the issue tracker.
- chris_st 6y ago
  Thanks! Can you give a bit of detail about the bugs you ran into?
  - jay_kyburz 6y ago
    If you save a reference to a game object in the scripting language, then if the object is removed from the scene by another system, the object pooling system will re-use the old object resulting in your script holding a reference to the wrong object! Will not be fixed to version 4. Example, I was building a tower defense game and each tower would hold a reference to the enemy they were shooting at. When the enemy took damaged and died it was removed from the scene. The towers reference to the enemy would sometimes point to some new random object in the scene. There are workarounds, but wtf. There is also some cyclic reference bug in the scripting language that is impossible to predict or work around. And then there are little things, like there is no selection outline around objects in the scene, makes it almost impassible to build a complex scene. Not a bug, but a weird choice.
  - Boxxed 6y ago
    This is a pretty maddening bug that I ran into: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/30215 https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/30215 To summarize, you basically can't use the built-in viewport scaling at all because it breaks mouse input.
- britzl 6y ago
  The Defold license: https://defold.com/license/ https://defold.com/license/ The only thing you can't do is sell Defold itself (ie the engine and editor). You can commercialise your games in any way you want and you can modify the engine and editor without having to share your modifications.

Anyone give a comparison between Defold and Godot [1]? [1] https://godotengine.org https://godotengine.org

josephcsible 6y ago

One point to consider: Godot is FOSS, but Defold is only visible-source.

didibus 6y ago
Seems more nuanced then that. You can use Defold to make commercial games for free. You can even extend and modify Defold and use your modified version to make commercial games for free too from what I understand. And you can also change and modify Defold and distribute your changes and modifications to others, but you can't do so commercially. That said, I think others could still use your modified Defold to make commercial games, just you can't take any money for it. So it seems to be much more than just visible source. Basically the only thing it doesn't allow is for you to commercialize the Defold engine or some derivative engine based on it. Everything else seems allowed. Caveat: I am not a lawyer.
- josephcsible 6y ago
  I feel like saying "more nuanced" is misleading. It doesn't change the answer to "is it FOSS?" from "no" to "maybe", but rather to "no, but...". Defold's license unambiguously does not comply with either the Free Software Definition or the Open Source Definition.
  - britzl 6y ago
    Completely true. Defold is not FOSS. And we do not claim that it is. We initially said that Defold was open source when we actually should have said source available. And we got an unbelievable amount of flak for it! I even received a very disturbing message sent to my private email from a FOSS "champion". And the president of the OSI got in touch as well. More here: https://defold.com/2020/05/20/Some-thoughts-on-the-open-source-discussion/ https://defold.com/2020/05/20/Some-thoughts-on-the-open-sour...
  - didibus 6y ago
    I was referring to the "visible source" comment. The Defold license allows much more than just seeing the source. And I do think the way I've seen people almost "warning" others that Defold isn't "open source" is misleading to most game developer. Unless you plan to sell a commercial game engine and editor and want it to be based of the Defold source code, then you've got access to all the same pros/cons of any other true (based on OSi) open source game engine and editor. At the end of the day that's what I care about if I'm picking a game engine for my game.
    - pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
      It's a little bit of a strawman on your end. What you imagine to be the intention/argument on the other end isn't the one intended, so a comment like this one ends up dismissing the real issues brought up by people pointing out it's not FOSS. There is no shortage of discussion these days about independent devs feeling suckered into doing free support for corporations by way of FOSS. At least in that situation those programmers get some form of equity out of the bargain, given the terms of the actually-FOSS licenses. In the case of Defold, they've taken the Apache license and changed it to diminish even that in a way that's directly meant to benefit Defold. There's also the matter of people just not wanting companies to be able to reap undue rewards out of association with FOSS if they're not actually doing FOSS. It's honestly not a reaction that should be considered surprising. Want to hawk your wares as FOSS? Okay, FOSS licenses exist. Want to take one of those licenses and then alter it in such a way that it's no longer FOSS? Okay, then don't call it FOSS. It's a pretty fair deal.
      - britzl 6y ago
        The Defold Foundation does not call Defold FOSS. PERIOD. Stop saying that we do. Next: The Defold Foundation is a foundation, not a corporation, and it is registered in Stockholm, Sweden. It has a different legal status than a corporation and while it is allowed to make a profit there are no stock holders or owners that can profit from the earnings. Also, as a foundation, it has a clear set of goals that cannot be altered: 1. Make the Defold software available to the public. 2. Make the Defold source code available free of charge to a third-party. 3. Manage the Defold software through updates, modifications, development and support. 4. Prevent the Defold software from being commercialised by a third-party. 5. Support the open source community and the use of open licenses. The reason we had to modify the Apache 2.0 license to add non-commercialization of the engine+editor was to fulfil goal #4. You might now think that it's pretty stupid to use a modified license since goal #5 says "support the use of open licenses". I agree. I would have preferred an unmodified OS license for the main repo. BUT the Defold Foundation also maintain ~60 other open source repositories, most of them with an MIT License. 32 of these are Defold game engine extensions to interface with things such as In-App Purchases, Analytics, Ads, Camera etc. Finally I want to say that we are not interested in "independent devs feeling suckered into doing free support". We obviously accept and appreciate contributions, but it is not our goal to make Defold into an engine which relies purely on community contributions to thrive. Defold depends on corporate sponsorships for long-term sustainability, not community contributions. And if we see prominent contributions coming from individuals we are very open to properly compensating said individuals from the funds of the foundation.

jay_kyburz 6y ago

Defold is a great commercial engine used to ship real games, but has its own license "derived" from Apache 2.0. You'll have to understand it before building on the engine. Godot is a hobby engine with a standard MIT license, but with some major issues that make it unusable for any serious work. I worked with it for 3 months at the end of last year, but had to abandon the project after logging a few serious bugs in the issue tracker.

chris_st 6y ago
Thanks! Can you give a bit of detail about the bugs you ran into?
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  If you save a reference to a game object in the scripting language, then if the object is removed from the scene by another system, the object pooling system will re-use the old object resulting in your script holding a reference to the wrong object! Will not be fixed to version 4. Example, I was building a tower defense game and each tower would hold a reference to the enemy they were shooting at. When the enemy took damaged and died it was removed from the scene. The towers reference to the enemy would sometimes point to some new random object in the scene. There are workarounds, but wtf. There is also some cyclic reference bug in the scripting language that is impossible to predict or work around. And then there are little things, like there is no selection outline around objects in the scene, makes it almost impassible to build a complex scene. Not a bug, but a weird choice.
- Boxxed 6y ago
  This is a pretty maddening bug that I ran into: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/30215 https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/30215 To summarize, you basically can't use the built-in viewport scaling at all because it breaks mouse input.
britzl 6y ago
The Defold license: https://defold.com/license/ https://defold.com/license/ The only thing you can't do is sell Defold itself (ie the engine and editor). You can commercialise your games in any way you want and you can modify the engine and editor without having to share your modifications.