5 ms·

They have gone with an interesting licensing solution here. I really appreciate that it is labeled as a source-available license instead of Open Source. https:

by evv 1y ago

They have gone with an interesting licensing solution here. I really appreciate that it is labeled as a source-available license instead of Open Source. https://defold.com/license/ https://defold.com/license/ You can make proprietary changes to the engine without releasing them (unlike GPL). You can freely monetize games built with the engine, and they make some assurances that there won't be a bait-and-switch. And finally, the reason why this is not Apache 2.0- you cannot monetize (forks of) the game engine itself. This seems fair and carefully considered. Kudos to the team!

selfselfgo 1y ago
[dead]
Tepix 1y ago
I agree that the license looks fair. Not everything has to be OSI-compliant open source. They even support WASM!
echelon 1y ago
This is an awesome license. More products should be source-available like this. This is what sustainable "equitable open source" looks like. It keeps the team that built the product able to monetize, but it does so without harming or killing the community. The community has full access to the code and can modify it, make money from products made with it, and can presumably take over if the originating organization dies. The company can choose which services to offer for free and which ones to charge a premium for. Cloud CI/builds and hosting seem like good monetization levers while leaving the engine and editor completely free of charge and open for development and modification. You can build a sustainable lifestyle business this way. Database vendors should use licenses like this to prevent Amazon from stealing their work and bleeding their cash flow. Redis and Elasticsearch should have done this before Amazon cloned their products, started making bank on managed versions, killed their monetization efforts, and turned their communities against them. Matt Mullenweg should have done this instead of throwing a fit.
- Shorel 1y ago
  People don't have such hindsight. And we can't ask them to have it, as it is impossible to predict the future with such accuracy. Without RMS swinging hard one way and without Amazon swinging hard the other way, we would not have this license. It is because all of these shenanigans that we now kind of have a license that solves these issues, and surely when the landscape changes again, a new license scheme will be needed.
- ilariel 1y ago
  At least they mention that it is source-available, but they still mix "open source" into the mix on their site. It is a really nice and fair source-available license and there should be more of this, but a license like theirs also restricts what kind of software you can make in a rather harsh way. Since you can't commercialise game engine products and they are defined in a broad way. You could land in legal issues. Game engine products are defined in the license as: “Game Engine Product” shall mean software used for video game development. This includes both the content authoring software and the software used to show the created content. IANAL, but map editors, modding tools and many other kind of tools that can be used for developing video games could be in violation of the license. Since meaning of "commercialise" isn't being defined or narrowed in the license small creators using Patreon or the like while asking donations could be classified as a violation too.
  - mst 1y ago
    They seem to be fairly explicit that _they_ believe that extensions aren't covered by those restrictions. Possibly the license text needs to be tweaked to make that more clear (IANAL too) but I read it as meaning that commercial extensions were fine, just not commercialising a patched version of the core code. Your concerns do seem entirely reasonable, but if, in practice, they become an issue, it seems like the codified-in-law goals of the foundation (see https://defold.com/foundation/ https://defold.com/foundation/) strongly suggest they _would_ tweak the license text as required. I dunno, I don't think the harsh restrictions you mention exist, and I'd hope that if any actual lawyers read them as existing then their employers will direct them to help get the license bugfixed. So colour me "cautiously optimistic" here.
agnishom 1y ago
[flagged]
- zahlman 1y ago
  No such claim appears to be made, so I don't understand what motivates the question.
  - agnishom 1y ago
    Fair enough. I guess what I am asking is: What is special about this license? Is it more permissive? Does it address a specific issue better than other licenses?
poulpy123 1y ago
I like the licence, and it is for me open source in spirit if not in letter, but there is a case that could cause problems : what if you sell services for a closed source version of defold ?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- frankvdwaal 1y ago
  You'd first have to make proprietary changes, which you are not allowed to release, and so there's nobody to sell those services to.
  - RandallBrown 1y ago
    > You are free to distribute original or modified (derivative) versions of Defold You just don't have to release the code if you do change it. Although I'm unsure if selling services on your modified game engine, that you released the source of, counts as commercialization.
- simonbw 1y ago
  It specifically says you are not allowed to commercialize the engine or a derivative, so that sounds like something that is not intended to be allowed, though I feel like it might take a lawyer to decide whether or not that is technically allowed by the license.
executesorder66 1y ago
> You can make proprietary changes to the engine without releasing them (unlike GPL). Why is that a good thing? >You can freely monetize games built with the engine, You'd also be able to do the same if it had a GPL license >and they make some assurances that there won't be a bait-and-switch. If it was licensed under a GPL license you wouldn't need to rely on "some assurances"
- Ethee 1y ago
  Consider the space we're in. For game development you're going to have a lot of developers with a lot of different ideas about how to make a game, all utilizing the same engine. If the engine doesn't come with a feature I need, I'll probably have to code it myself, but seeing as the whole purpose of me making this feature is for my game, then it makes sense that I should be able to keep my game's feature private/proprietary without the need to push that feature back to engine which might not even want my feature to begin with. This is why GPL is not a good choice for game engines.
  - Arelius 1y ago
    More importantly, a successful game is likely to need porting to proprietary platforms, with APIs behind restrictive NDAs. Honestly, not great, but that's the world we live in.
  - badsectoracula 1y ago
    GPL doesn't require you to push a feature/change/etc back to the engine devs, it only requires you to make it available to others. You can just keep your changes in a ZIP file alongside your game's data - which is what a bunch of games built on the GPL releases of id Tech already do.
- all2 1y ago
  >> You can make proprietary changes to the engine without releasing them (unlike GPL). > Why is that a good thing? Game dev at the top tiers is an arms race. Being able to do proprietary things is attractive to big players. >> and they make some assurances that there won't be a bait-and-switch. > If it was licensed under a GPL license you wouldn't need to rely on "some assurances" Multiple projects have gone closed-source from open source. Assurances are a nice thing to have (but certainly no guarantee).

by evv 1y ago

selfselfgo 1y ago

[dead]

Tepix 1y ago

I agree that the license looks fair. Not everything has to be OSI-compliant open source. They even support WASM!

echelon 1y ago

This is an awesome license. More products should be source-available like this. This is what sustainable "equitable open source" looks like. It keeps the team that built the product able to monetize, but it does so without harming or killing the community. The community has full access to the code and can modify it, make money from products made with it, and can presumably take over if the originating organization dies. The company can choose which services to offer for free and which ones to charge a premium for. Cloud CI/builds and hosting seem like good monetization levers while leaving the engine and editor completely free of charge and open for development and modification. You can build a sustainable lifestyle business this way. Database vendors should use licenses like this to prevent Amazon from stealing their work and bleeding their cash flow. Redis and Elasticsearch should have done this before Amazon cloned their products, started making bank on managed versions, killed their monetization efforts, and turned their communities against them. Matt Mullenweg should have done this instead of throwing a fit.

Shorel 1y ago
People don't have such hindsight. And we can't ask them to have it, as it is impossible to predict the future with such accuracy. Without RMS swinging hard one way and without Amazon swinging hard the other way, we would not have this license. It is because all of these shenanigans that we now kind of have a license that solves these issues, and surely when the landscape changes again, a new license scheme will be needed.
ilariel 1y ago
At least they mention that it is source-available, but they still mix "open source" into the mix on their site. It is a really nice and fair source-available license and there should be more of this, but a license like theirs also restricts what kind of software you can make in a rather harsh way. Since you can't commercialise game engine products and they are defined in a broad way. You could land in legal issues. Game engine products are defined in the license as: “Game Engine Product” shall mean software used for video game development. This includes both the content authoring software and the software used to show the created content. IANAL, but map editors, modding tools and many other kind of tools that can be used for developing video games could be in violation of the license. Since meaning of "commercialise" isn't being defined or narrowed in the license small creators using Patreon or the like while asking donations could be classified as a violation too.
- mst 1y ago
  They seem to be fairly explicit that _they_ believe that extensions aren't covered by those restrictions. Possibly the license text needs to be tweaked to make that more clear (IANAL too) but I read it as meaning that commercial extensions were fine, just not commercialising a patched version of the core code. Your concerns do seem entirely reasonable, but if, in practice, they become an issue, it seems like the codified-in-law goals of the foundation (see https://defold.com/foundation/ https://defold.com/foundation/) strongly suggest they _would_ tweak the license text as required. I dunno, I don't think the harsh restrictions you mention exist, and I'd hope that if any actual lawyers read them as existing then their employers will direct them to help get the license bugfixed. So colour me "cautiously optimistic" here.

agnishom 1y ago

[flagged]

zahlman 1y ago
No such claim appears to be made, so I don't understand what motivates the question.
- agnishom 1y ago
  Fair enough. I guess what I am asking is: What is special about this license? Is it more permissive? Does it address a specific issue better than other licenses?

poulpy123 1y ago

I like the licence, and it is for me open source in spirit if not in letter, but there is a case that could cause problems : what if you sell services for a closed source version of defold ?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
frankvdwaal 1y ago
You'd first have to make proprietary changes, which you are not allowed to release, and so there's nobody to sell those services to.
- RandallBrown 1y ago
  > You are free to distribute original or modified (derivative) versions of Defold You just don't have to release the code if you do change it. Although I'm unsure if selling services on your modified game engine, that you released the source of, counts as commercialization.
simonbw 1y ago
It specifically says you are not allowed to commercialize the engine or a derivative, so that sounds like something that is not intended to be allowed, though I feel like it might take a lawyer to decide whether or not that is technically allowed by the license.

executesorder66 1y ago

> You can make proprietary changes to the engine without releasing them (unlike GPL). Why is that a good thing? >You can freely monetize games built with the engine, You'd also be able to do the same if it had a GPL license >and they make some assurances that there won't be a bait-and-switch. If it was licensed under a GPL license you wouldn't need to rely on "some assurances"

Ethee 1y ago
Consider the space we're in. For game development you're going to have a lot of developers with a lot of different ideas about how to make a game, all utilizing the same engine. If the engine doesn't come with a feature I need, I'll probably have to code it myself, but seeing as the whole purpose of me making this feature is for my game, then it makes sense that I should be able to keep my game's feature private/proprietary without the need to push that feature back to engine which might not even want my feature to begin with. This is why GPL is not a good choice for game engines.
- Arelius 1y ago
  More importantly, a successful game is likely to need porting to proprietary platforms, with APIs behind restrictive NDAs. Honestly, not great, but that's the world we live in.
- badsectoracula 1y ago
  GPL doesn't require you to push a feature/change/etc back to the engine devs, it only requires you to make it available to others. You can just keep your changes in a ZIP file alongside your game's data - which is what a bunch of games built on the GPL releases of id Tech already do.
all2 1y ago
>> You can make proprietary changes to the engine without releasing them (unlike GPL). > Why is that a good thing? Game dev at the top tiers is an arms race. Being able to do proprietary things is attractive to big players. >> and they make some assurances that there won't be a bait-and-switch. > If it was licensed under a GPL license you wouldn't need to rely on "some assurances" Multiple projects have gone closed-source from open source. Assurances are a nice thing to have (but certainly no guarantee).