4 ms·

Probably be purchased by Unity soon to avoid competition.

ketzo 4y ago
Why would W4 Games agree to be purchased? That seems pretty antithetical to, like, their whole thing.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
Brand new venture started by the creator and lead dev of Godot to provide better console support for Godot just got millions in funding... I don't see why they would sell when they're just getting started.
- imtringued 4y ago
  I would sell my 8 million company for X million and then quit and start a x million company. Where X > 8. The question is, why would Unity buy a company like that?
giancarlostoro 4y ago
The codebase is MIT Licensed, so Unity would be buying a shell intended to fund the project, it would be kind of a wasted efford really. The entire codebase (even the IDE) is MIT licensed last I checked.
- brezelgoring 4y ago
  In this scenario, with Unity now being the owners of the author company, couldn't they change the license to another, or straight up make it closed source? I know the license says you have to be MIT - in perpetuity. That being said the author is the author and can do whatever, right? Especially if we're talking about Riccitello here, he has a past to consider.
  - stu2b50 4y ago
    You can’t retroactively delicense the codebase without the agreement of all other contributors, so basically you can’t. You can make any future work you write a different license. So in this hypothetical unity could basically continue with closed source fork.
    - danjoredd 4y ago
      Even if they could, a hard fork can be made. Thats the beauty of open source! If, by some mystery they were able to do so, someone would continue the work
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - squeaky-clean 4y ago
    Disclaimer that I'm no lawyer. For a project with a single copyright owner/entity (or a group in agreement), yeah. You can't change the license of existing released versions or prevent people from sharing it in accordance with MIT. But you can publish a new release and drop the MIT license or even go closed source. The MIT license is just a grant of permissions for people who are not the copyright holders. The owner doesn't have to agree to MIT in order to use their own software. Godot would be a weird example though where I hope a lawyer would chime in. The first part of the MIT license establishes the copyright holders. The Godot license says: Copyright (c) 2014-2022 Godot Engine contributors (cf. AUTHORS.md). And the AUTHORS.md file has like a hundred names in it. If some company could acquire the entire rights to Godot then they could update the license. But I don't know how possible that is here. It kind of reminds me of when id software had the reverse situation. They wanted to open-source Doom 3, but some shadow technique they were using was based on a Creative Labs patent. So they had to rewrite a small amount of code before publishing the source.
    - sfink 4y ago
      Apologies for being pedantic. > Copyright (c) 2014-2022 Godot Engine contributors (cf. AUTHORS.md). That doesn't strictly make sense. "cf" means "compare". It implies that Godot Engine contributors are different from what is listed in AUTHORS.md. I know that everyone mistakes "cf" for "see also", so I figured it out. But I really was confused at first.
      - squeaky-clean 4y ago
        License discussions are 100% the place to be pedantic.
      - pavlov 4y ago
        Well, the 'c' stands for "see", and the 'f' stands for the same thing as in "RTFM".
  - Buttons840 4y ago
    MIT allows relicensing / sublicensing doesn't it?

Why would W4 Games agree to be purchased? That seems pretty antithetical to, like, their whole thing.

Brand new venture started by the creator and lead dev of Godot to provide better console support for Godot just got millions in funding... I don't see why they would sell when they're just getting started.

imtringued 4y ago
I would sell my 8 million company for X million and then quit and start a x million company. Where X > 8. The question is, why would Unity buy a company like that?

giancarlostoro 4y ago

The codebase is MIT Licensed, so Unity would be buying a shell intended to fund the project, it would be kind of a wasted efford really. The entire codebase (even the IDE) is MIT licensed last I checked.

brezelgoring 4y ago
In this scenario, with Unity now being the owners of the author company, couldn't they change the license to another, or straight up make it closed source? I know the license says you have to be MIT - in perpetuity. That being said the author is the author and can do whatever, right? Especially if we're talking about Riccitello here, he has a past to consider.
- stu2b50 4y ago
  You can’t retroactively delicense the codebase without the agreement of all other contributors, so basically you can’t. You can make any future work you write a different license. So in this hypothetical unity could basically continue with closed source fork.
  - danjoredd 4y ago
    Even if they could, a hard fork can be made. Thats the beauty of open source! If, by some mystery they were able to do so, someone would continue the work
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  Disclaimer that I'm no lawyer. For a project with a single copyright owner/entity (or a group in agreement), yeah. You can't change the license of existing released versions or prevent people from sharing it in accordance with MIT. But you can publish a new release and drop the MIT license or even go closed source. The MIT license is just a grant of permissions for people who are not the copyright holders. The owner doesn't have to agree to MIT in order to use their own software. Godot would be a weird example though where I hope a lawyer would chime in. The first part of the MIT license establishes the copyright holders. The Godot license says: Copyright (c) 2014-2022 Godot Engine contributors (cf. AUTHORS.md). And the AUTHORS.md file has like a hundred names in it. If some company could acquire the entire rights to Godot then they could update the license. But I don't know how possible that is here. It kind of reminds me of when id software had the reverse situation. They wanted to open-source Doom 3, but some shadow technique they were using was based on a Creative Labs patent. So they had to rewrite a small amount of code before publishing the source.
  - sfink 4y ago
    Apologies for being pedantic. > Copyright (c) 2014-2022 Godot Engine contributors (cf. AUTHORS.md). That doesn't strictly make sense. "cf" means "compare". It implies that Godot Engine contributors are different from what is listed in AUTHORS.md. I know that everyone mistakes "cf" for "see also", so I figured it out. But I really was confused at first.
    - squeaky-clean 4y ago
      License discussions are 100% the place to be pedantic.
    - pavlov 4y ago
      Well, the 'c' stands for "see", and the 'f' stands for the same thing as in "RTFM".
- Buttons840 4y ago
  MIT allows relicensing / sublicensing doesn't it?