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IANAL but seems like the only addition is preventing you from selling a game engine based on it. So you can sell a game, but not an engine. I wonder where a gam

IANAL but seems like the only addition is preventing you from selling a game engine based on it. So you can sell a game, but not an engine. I wonder where a game with built-in editor ranks. Seems fair, but sadly not OSS. I wonder why they think it's necessary?

auggierose 1y ago
Because they don't want somebody else to sell their game engine? It's pretty clear, isn't it?
- rowls66 1y ago
  Why would anyone buy their game engine when it is available for free? Seems like a solution for a problem that doesn't/won't exist.
  - Wowfunhappy 1y ago
    This was my question to. I suspect they're worried about someone making a paid version with extra features which aren't contributed back to the community. For a moment, I was thinking Defold ought to dual-license their engine under both the current non-OSS modified Apache and the GPL. That way, you'd have the option to either: 1. Commercialise software created using modified versions of Defold, without releasing the source of your modified version, as long as you don't commercialize your modified version of Defold itself. 2. Commercialise a modified version of Defold, but you must make the source available under the GPL. (Which would mean that source could be used by the upstream project as well.) But while typing this up, I noticed the flaw in this plan—the parenthetical isn't true! Because the upstream project would be dual licensed, they couldn't use GPL licensed code.
    - Zacru 1y ago
      >dual-license the engine under both their current non-OSS modified Apache and the GPL. Of course if they do, I hope they will say "either modified Apache or the GPL". My company's lawyers made a big stink about us using jQuery plugins that said "and" instead of "or".
  - neallindsay 1y ago
    If they didn't prevent selling derivative game engines, someone could fork it and add a valuable feature that was only available in the paid fork. This could split the community.
    - seba_dos1 1y ago
      Yeah, just look at how fractured the Godot community is. (it's not)
      - sarchertech 1y ago
        That’s because the user base isn’t big enough yet for Amazon to make a paid version. Or no one at Amazon has figured out a way to monetize a game engine yet. If they do, look out.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        seba_dos1 1y ago
        Godot's user base is already bigger than Amazon Lumberyard's (now O3DE). Unlike Defold, both Godot and O3DE are actually free.
        sarchertech 1y ago
        You can’t really look at overall user base, you have to look at the number of users making enough money off of Godot that they’re willing to pay for commercial features. That number is vastly smaller. If Godot games were making anywhere near the revenue that Untity games do, I’m willing to bet they’d there would be an Amazon fork.
        seba_dos1 1y ago
        It's you who brought user base size in. (and it's still bigger for Godot)
  - Karliss 1y ago
    The modified engine someone else is selling could have a potentially important extra features. For example a company might try to sell a version of engine which has been ported to a console which original engine doesn't support. Game porting companies are very common and if it's their main business then they will usually have inhouse libraries or modified engine versions which significantly simplify the porting process. That's exactly what's happening with open source game engines like Godot. Their documentation lists almost a dozen companies providing porting service for godot games. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's up to author of game engine whether they want to allow others to profit from their work in such way. Seems like currently Defold supported platforms cover most of the popular consoles, it was probably not the case during early development of engine when license was chosen or in a few years when next generation of consoles come out. Someone might also be selling a better console support than what defold provides out of the box. Beside the consoles there is also stuff like integration with various PC stores like GOG,Epic and others. Its not necessarily a huge work, but plenty of smaller devs want to focus only on the gameplay aspects. So once a game is finished (and you are tired from development process), buying anything which significantly reduces porting/integration effort can be an easy choice. One more example of major feature which can require tight engine integration and motivate buying a modified version of "free engine" is multiplayer support. Good multiplayer support can be quite tricky with some game genres being harder than others. There have been many attempts at providing magic multiplayer solutions which under the hood automatically synchronizes all game entities without developer thinking about it. Such approach isn't necessarily going to be as good playing experience as designing the game with multiplayer support in mind from day 0, carefully thinking how the game state is organized, what when and how is synchronized. But that requires planning ahead, technical expertise and suitable budget. Commercial multiplayer middleware for existing engines are also not uncommon. Whether something like that is considered an addon or modified engine version depends on exact licensing terms and the exact implementation details how game engine and addon code is organized. A slightly different example - game engine built on top of game engine is RPG maker. For a long time RPGMaker has been it's own game engine. But few years ago developers of RPGMaker made a version of RPGMaker which is built on top of Unity. Plenty of other genre specific engines (especially for fighting games) built on top of general purpose game engines. Again the line between modified engine, addon and game with builtin editor is tricky.
  - dahart 1y ago
    Why do you assume the problem won’t exist, when this exact thing happens all the time? Just to name a tiny handful of obvious examples: Oracle, Canonical, GitHub, RedHat, DataStax. Not only could someone add enhancements that justify the price, like several other comments have pointed out here, they could also simply offer support that Defold doesn’t offer, and they could do marketing that Defold doesn’t do. The number of paid products that are equivalent to and/or based on free products is innumerable. There’s no reason to assume that a paid fork would reduce the number of free Defold users; it can happen, but depends on what is built and offered, and sometimes paid forks are good for the ecosystem and increase the number of overall users.
    - mst 1y ago
      Paid extensions are allowed, which seems like a neat compromise. If you need to add an extra API or something to the core to make your paid extension work, you can't charge for that, which I think is designed to incentivise "improve the extension API, contribute that back to the core project, then go wild on your commercial extension and see if you can get people to pay for it." I have no clue whether this approach will turn out to work in the medium-to-long term, but it's a fascinating idea and seems at the very least like an experiment very much worth conducting.
- Zambyte 1y ago
  That doesn't answer the question of why.
  - sbarre 1y ago
    I feel like the answer to "why" is on the website if you read about the foundation's objectives: https://defold.com/foundation/ https://defold.com/foundation/
    - nazgulsenpai 1y ago
      ≥Support the open source community and the use of open licenses. Tbh I'm a little more confused after reading this
      - seba_dos1 1y ago
        They called Defold "open source" at the beginning and only changed the wording later when people started reacting, so this could be an artifact left from that.
      - britzl 1y ago
        The main repository (github.com/defold/defold) is the only one with the Defold License (ie the modified Apache license). There's also around 80 or so MIT licensed repositories with Defold engine plugins for things such as analytics, monetization, ads, attribution, game servers as well as tools such as Spine, Tiled, Rive etc.
    - Zambyte 1y ago
      > Prevent the Defold software from being commercialised by a third-party. Why?
      - dahart 1y ago
        It says why multiple times, right on the page parent linked to. They want Defold to be free to use, they are trying to guarantee it’s always available to developers free of charge, and that the source remains always available. Why do you ask?
riidom 1y ago
I don't know what they think, but I think it is not necessary. Let's draw a comparison to Blender here. Blender is GPL, and there is a long history of questionable projects that relabel Blender and try to sell it. There is the requirement to make the source code available (GPL), as far as I am informed, you can sort of get around this, by delivering the source code with the download, but then "don't advertise" it, as in hide it as much as possible without getting in legal trouble. (My information may be a bit outdated here) Afaik, the Blender Foundation doesn't even bother to shut these projects down (they do get frequently informed about it, when people discover it). And this even given the fact, that they would be easy to shut down. The reason for this, is used media in advertising. If you want to sell your 3D package, you need to show some impressive artwork which was created with said project. Problem is, the images/animations these projects show off on their websites are a) not created with said Blender reskin, but usually in Blender itself and b) they usually don't have permission from the artists. So even having this quite comfortable handle, BF usually don't care. Which tells a lot about the impact of such copycats. My takeaway from all this is, the situation would pan out pretty similar for Defold, and they should just dare it and monitor the landscape.
- palunon 1y ago
  Wouldn't the artists be the ones to have standing, instead of the Blender Foundation?
Tepix 1y ago
> Seems fair, but sadly not OSS. Which of their license changes makes you feel sad and why? Were you planning to sell their editor?
- rpdillon 1y ago
  The current license makes it unclear whether it would be a violation to distribute a commercial game that has a built-in map editor.
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    For an unusual license, it is sort of impressive that this is the only issue folks can come up with in this thread. It does seem like a bit of problem, but it also seems like a very specific thing that could be… cleared up, and then it would be all sorted.
    - sarchertech 1y ago
      It’s not an actual problem. Games don’t ship with the editing tools from the engine because engine editing tools aren’t suitable for that purpose. That would be like shipping photoshop with your game to allow people to customize their character’s hair color.
      - Philpax 1y ago
        Plenty of games have, with the most famous example being Valve's games, which (eventually) ship the same tools Valve uses for game creation.
        sarchertech 1y ago
        Shipping the custom tools the developer built to make content for their game is relatively common. Shipping 3rd party engine tooling is not. At all. The equivalent to what valve did would be if Defold released some games made with Defold and then released the Defold engine, which is basically what happened. There’s also nothing stopping from releasing your game, linking to Defold and saying use Defold to mod this game.
echelon 1y ago
There are a lot of reasons to go "source available", such as preventing hyperscalers or enterprises from lifting your product. Here's some commentary I made in another thread on this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43728095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43728095
- Zambyte 1y ago
  What product? They aren't selling anything. Like at all.
  - echelon 1y ago
    This looks similar to the classic "enterprise support" and "distribution" lifestyle business play, which is incredibly sustainable and benefits both the software community as well as the maintainers. From their website: Support [1] page: > Please contact us at business@defold.se for more information on how we can help you publish great games made with Defold. About [2] page: > Product development, marketing, support and sales - Refold AB is owned by members of the Defold team and is contracted to perform most of the day to day work on the Defold product. Open [3] page: > Q: Is there still going to be a roadmap for Defold? > A: The Defold Foundation has decided to no longer share a public roadmap at the beginning of each year. Status [4] page: > Defold will never change into a subscription model, request royalty payments, introduce licensing fees or in other ways charge for access to the main (emphasis added) product. FAQ [5] page: > Q: What kind of user tracking are you doing? > A: We log anonymous usage data from our websites and the Defold editor in order to improve our services and product. They're using a lot of SaaS typical for startup/business growth. Their forums are Discourse [6], they're running a bunch of analytics, SendInBlue for campaigns, etc. That in and of itself doesn't imply anything, but they do seem to be very mindful of their community's health and growth. There are some very dedicated people at the wheel. It looks like they've carved out enough leeway for commercial and support offerings to sustain themselves and keep others from stealing it like Amazon and others have done to other open source projects in the past, all the while building a cool community-powered open game engine. [1] https://defold.com/support/ https://defold.com/support/ [2] https://defold.com/about/ https://defold.com/about/ [3] https://defold.com/open/ https://defold.com/open/ [4] https://defold.com/status/ https://defold.com/status/ [5] https://defold.com/faq/faq/ https://defold.com/faq/faq/ [6] https://forum.defold.com/ https://forum.defold.com/ ; Discourse is $100/mo or more for custom domains
chucklenorris 1y ago
I remember this was initially developed at king games (candycrush saga authors) before they got acquired. Probably that's the reason for the weird licensing model
- britzl 1y ago
  Yes, you are correct. An MIT license was preferred by the Defold team but the modified Apache license was what was decided upon in the end.
japhib 1y ago
> I wonder where a game with built-in editor ranks The website-summarized version of the license says: > You can not commercialise original or modified (derivative) versions of the Defold editor and/or engine It sounds like this would only be a problem if you're literally shipping a modified version of Defold. No game with any kind of financial incentive does this for a built-in map or mod editor, because it would make it incredibly easy for other people to then sell a modified version of their entire game. It's kind of like if Apple made the Xcode source available, and then said "hey you can't monetize a modified version of Xcode." No one is going to ship their app's entire Xcode project to players just so the players can make a custom map. The normal way for games to do this is to implement a brand-new map-editing UI inside Defold (or Xcode, Unity, Godot, etc.) that spits out custom maps in the exact data format that the game can parse.

auggierose 1y ago

Because they don't want somebody else to sell their game engine? It's pretty clear, isn't it?

rowls66 1y ago
Why would anyone buy their game engine when it is available for free? Seems like a solution for a problem that doesn't/won't exist.
- Wowfunhappy 1y ago
  This was my question to. I suspect they're worried about someone making a paid version with extra features which aren't contributed back to the community. For a moment, I was thinking Defold ought to dual-license their engine under both the current non-OSS modified Apache and the GPL. That way, you'd have the option to either: 1. Commercialise software created using modified versions of Defold, without releasing the source of your modified version, as long as you don't commercialize your modified version of Defold itself. 2. Commercialise a modified version of Defold, but you must make the source available under the GPL. (Which would mean that source could be used by the upstream project as well.) But while typing this up, I noticed the flaw in this plan—the parenthetical isn't true! Because the upstream project would be dual licensed, they couldn't use GPL licensed code.
  - Zacru 1y ago
    >dual-license the engine under both their current non-OSS modified Apache and the GPL. Of course if they do, I hope they will say "either modified Apache or the GPL". My company's lawyers made a big stink about us using jQuery plugins that said "and" instead of "or".
- neallindsay 1y ago
  If they didn't prevent selling derivative game engines, someone could fork it and add a valuable feature that was only available in the paid fork. This could split the community.
  - seba_dos1 1y ago
    Yeah, just look at how fractured the Godot community is. (it's not)
    - sarchertech 1y ago
      That’s because the user base isn’t big enough yet for Amazon to make a paid version. Or no one at Amazon has figured out a way to monetize a game engine yet. If they do, look out.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - seba_dos1 1y ago
        Godot's user base is already bigger than Amazon Lumberyard's (now O3DE). Unlike Defold, both Godot and O3DE are actually free.
        sarchertech 1y ago
        You can’t really look at overall user base, you have to look at the number of users making enough money off of Godot that they’re willing to pay for commercial features. That number is vastly smaller. If Godot games were making anywhere near the revenue that Untity games do, I’m willing to bet they’d there would be an Amazon fork.
        seba_dos1 1y ago
        It's you who brought user base size in. (and it's still bigger for Godot)
- Karliss 1y ago
  The modified engine someone else is selling could have a potentially important extra features. For example a company might try to sell a version of engine which has been ported to a console which original engine doesn't support. Game porting companies are very common and if it's their main business then they will usually have inhouse libraries or modified engine versions which significantly simplify the porting process. That's exactly what's happening with open source game engines like Godot. Their documentation lists almost a dozen companies providing porting service for godot games. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's up to author of game engine whether they want to allow others to profit from their work in such way. Seems like currently Defold supported platforms cover most of the popular consoles, it was probably not the case during early development of engine when license was chosen or in a few years when next generation of consoles come out. Someone might also be selling a better console support than what defold provides out of the box. Beside the consoles there is also stuff like integration with various PC stores like GOG,Epic and others. Its not necessarily a huge work, but plenty of smaller devs want to focus only on the gameplay aspects. So once a game is finished (and you are tired from development process), buying anything which significantly reduces porting/integration effort can be an easy choice. One more example of major feature which can require tight engine integration and motivate buying a modified version of "free engine" is multiplayer support. Good multiplayer support can be quite tricky with some game genres being harder than others. There have been many attempts at providing magic multiplayer solutions which under the hood automatically synchronizes all game entities without developer thinking about it. Such approach isn't necessarily going to be as good playing experience as designing the game with multiplayer support in mind from day 0, carefully thinking how the game state is organized, what when and how is synchronized. But that requires planning ahead, technical expertise and suitable budget. Commercial multiplayer middleware for existing engines are also not uncommon. Whether something like that is considered an addon or modified engine version depends on exact licensing terms and the exact implementation details how game engine and addon code is organized. A slightly different example - game engine built on top of game engine is RPG maker. For a long time RPGMaker has been it's own game engine. But few years ago developers of RPGMaker made a version of RPGMaker which is built on top of Unity. Plenty of other genre specific engines (especially for fighting games) built on top of general purpose game engines. Again the line between modified engine, addon and game with builtin editor is tricky.
- dahart 1y ago
  Why do you assume the problem won’t exist, when this exact thing happens all the time? Just to name a tiny handful of obvious examples: Oracle, Canonical, GitHub, RedHat, DataStax. Not only could someone add enhancements that justify the price, like several other comments have pointed out here, they could also simply offer support that Defold doesn’t offer, and they could do marketing that Defold doesn’t do. The number of paid products that are equivalent to and/or based on free products is innumerable. There’s no reason to assume that a paid fork would reduce the number of free Defold users; it can happen, but depends on what is built and offered, and sometimes paid forks are good for the ecosystem and increase the number of overall users.
  - mst 1y ago
    Paid extensions are allowed, which seems like a neat compromise. If you need to add an extra API or something to the core to make your paid extension work, you can't charge for that, which I think is designed to incentivise "improve the extension API, contribute that back to the core project, then go wild on your commercial extension and see if you can get people to pay for it." I have no clue whether this approach will turn out to work in the medium-to-long term, but it's a fascinating idea and seems at the very least like an experiment very much worth conducting.
Zambyte 1y ago
That doesn't answer the question of why.
- sbarre 1y ago
  I feel like the answer to "why" is on the website if you read about the foundation's objectives: https://defold.com/foundation/ https://defold.com/foundation/
  - nazgulsenpai 1y ago
    ≥Support the open source community and the use of open licenses. Tbh I'm a little more confused after reading this
    - seba_dos1 1y ago
      They called Defold "open source" at the beginning and only changed the wording later when people started reacting, so this could be an artifact left from that.
    - britzl 1y ago
      The main repository (github.com/defold/defold) is the only one with the Defold License (ie the modified Apache license). There's also around 80 or so MIT licensed repositories with Defold engine plugins for things such as analytics, monetization, ads, attribution, game servers as well as tools such as Spine, Tiled, Rive etc.
  - Zambyte 1y ago
    > Prevent the Defold software from being commercialised by a third-party. Why?
    - dahart 1y ago
      It says why multiple times, right on the page parent linked to. They want Defold to be free to use, they are trying to guarantee it’s always available to developers free of charge, and that the source remains always available. Why do you ask?

riidom 1y ago

I don't know what they think, but I think it is not necessary. Let's draw a comparison to Blender here. Blender is GPL, and there is a long history of questionable projects that relabel Blender and try to sell it. There is the requirement to make the source code available (GPL), as far as I am informed, you can sort of get around this, by delivering the source code with the download, but then "don't advertise" it, as in hide it as much as possible without getting in legal trouble. (My information may be a bit outdated here) Afaik, the Blender Foundation doesn't even bother to shut these projects down (they do get frequently informed about it, when people discover it). And this even given the fact, that they would be easy to shut down. The reason for this, is used media in advertising. If you want to sell your 3D package, you need to show some impressive artwork which was created with said project. Problem is, the images/animations these projects show off on their websites are a) not created with said Blender reskin, but usually in Blender itself and b) they usually don't have permission from the artists. So even having this quite comfortable handle, BF usually don't care. Which tells a lot about the impact of such copycats. My takeaway from all this is, the situation would pan out pretty similar for Defold, and they should just dare it and monitor the landscape.

palunon 1y ago
Wouldn't the artists be the ones to have standing, instead of the Blender Foundation?

Tepix 1y ago

> Seems fair, but sadly not OSS. Which of their license changes makes you feel sad and why? Were you planning to sell their editor?

rpdillon 1y ago
The current license makes it unclear whether it would be a violation to distribute a commercial game that has a built-in map editor.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  For an unusual license, it is sort of impressive that this is the only issue folks can come up with in this thread. It does seem like a bit of problem, but it also seems like a very specific thing that could be… cleared up, and then it would be all sorted.
  - sarchertech 1y ago
    It’s not an actual problem. Games don’t ship with the editing tools from the engine because engine editing tools aren’t suitable for that purpose. That would be like shipping photoshop with your game to allow people to customize their character’s hair color.
    - Philpax 1y ago
      Plenty of games have, with the most famous example being Valve's games, which (eventually) ship the same tools Valve uses for game creation.
      - sarchertech 1y ago
        Shipping the custom tools the developer built to make content for their game is relatively common. Shipping 3rd party engine tooling is not. At all. The equivalent to what valve did would be if Defold released some games made with Defold and then released the Defold engine, which is basically what happened. There’s also nothing stopping from releasing your game, linking to Defold and saying use Defold to mod this game.

echelon 1y ago

There are a lot of reasons to go "source available", such as preventing hyperscalers or enterprises from lifting your product. Here's some commentary I made in another thread on this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43728095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43728095

Zambyte 1y ago
What product? They aren't selling anything. Like at all.
- echelon 1y ago
  This looks similar to the classic "enterprise support" and "distribution" lifestyle business play, which is incredibly sustainable and benefits both the software community as well as the maintainers. From their website: Support [1] page: > Please contact us at business@defold.se for more information on how we can help you publish great games made with Defold. About [2] page: > Product development, marketing, support and sales - Refold AB is owned by members of the Defold team and is contracted to perform most of the day to day work on the Defold product. Open [3] page: > Q: Is there still going to be a roadmap for Defold? > A: The Defold Foundation has decided to no longer share a public roadmap at the beginning of each year. Status [4] page: > Defold will never change into a subscription model, request royalty payments, introduce licensing fees or in other ways charge for access to the main (emphasis added) product. FAQ [5] page: > Q: What kind of user tracking are you doing? > A: We log anonymous usage data from our websites and the Defold editor in order to improve our services and product. They're using a lot of SaaS typical for startup/business growth. Their forums are Discourse [6], they're running a bunch of analytics, SendInBlue for campaigns, etc. That in and of itself doesn't imply anything, but they do seem to be very mindful of their community's health and growth. There are some very dedicated people at the wheel. It looks like they've carved out enough leeway for commercial and support offerings to sustain themselves and keep others from stealing it like Amazon and others have done to other open source projects in the past, all the while building a cool community-powered open game engine. [1] https://defold.com/support/ https://defold.com/support/ [2] https://defold.com/about/ https://defold.com/about/ [3] https://defold.com/open/ https://defold.com/open/ [4] https://defold.com/status/ https://defold.com/status/ [5] https://defold.com/faq/faq/ https://defold.com/faq/faq/ [6] https://forum.defold.com/ https://forum.defold.com/ ; Discourse is $100/mo or more for custom domains

chucklenorris 1y ago

I remember this was initially developed at king games (candycrush saga authors) before they got acquired. Probably that's the reason for the weird licensing model

britzl 1y ago
Yes, you are correct. An MIT license was preferred by the Defold team but the modified Apache license was what was decided upon in the end.

japhib 1y ago

> I wonder where a game with built-in editor ranks The website-summarized version of the license says: > You can not commercialise original or modified (derivative) versions of the Defold editor and/or engine It sounds like this would only be a problem if you're literally shipping a modified version of Defold. No game with any kind of financial incentive does this for a built-in map or mod editor, because it would make it incredibly easy for other people to then sell a modified version of their entire game. It's kind of like if Apple made the Xcode source available, and then said "hey you can't monetize a modified version of Xcode." No one is going to ship their app's entire Xcode project to players just so the players can make a custom map. The normal way for games to do this is to implement a brand-new map-editing UI inside Defold (or Xcode, Unity, Godot, etc.) that spits out custom maps in the exact data format that the game can parse.