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Defold: cross-platform game engine

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Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#171

Post by sarchertech »

rpdillon wrote: post #167
sarchertech wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think there's a misunderstanding about the license. The license doesn't care at all about whether or not you're using the tools from Defold. They care about whether or not you're giving the ability to modify game content in a commercial product. > “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 con…

After reading the license more thoroughly this is actually even less of an issue. The key thing about the wording is that it says you may not sell it “as a game engine product”.

It’s not enough that your game could be used by someone for video game development, a reasonable person would have to believe you were selling it as video game development software.

There’s definitely some gray area here for something like Roblox which is a game, but also allows people to develop and sell video games. But the risk of Defold suing you and a court finding that the map editor you added to allow people to make free levels for your puzzle game constitutes selling your game as video game development software is so far down the list of things you need to think about at all that it’s not worth considering.

If you want to make something like Roblox that is essentially a game engine, I wouldn’t use Defold. Otherwise I wouldn’t worry even a little bit.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#172

Post by rpdillon »

sarchertech wrote: post #171
rpdillon wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a misunderstanding about the license. The license doesn't care at all about whether or not you're using the tools from Defold. They care about whether or not you're giving the ability to modify game content in a commercial product. > “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 con…

After reading the license more thoroughly this is actually even less of an issue. The key thing about the wording is that it says you may not sell it “ as a game engine product”. It’s not enough that your game could be used by someone for video game development, a reasonable person would have to believe you were selling it as video game development software. There’s definitely some gray area here for something like R…

I agree with your emphasis on 'as' in 'as a game engine product', and I think you're making a good point.

My worry is about 'otherwise commercialise', in cases where the ability to have fan made levels is an advertised feature, as is often the case.

But I agree that this is less of an issue than I first thought, and appreciate your explanation.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#173

Post by mst »

executesorder66 wrote: post #127
all2 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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-s…

> Game dev at the top tiers is an arms race. Being able to do proprietary things is attractive to big players. Yeah, so I don't see how helping out the big players and not everyone else is a good thing. >Multiple projects have gone closed-source from open source. Assurances are a nice thing to have (but certainly no guarantee). Yeah but the open source ones ARE guaranteed. Even if they later become closed source, the…

> Yeah but the open source ones ARE guaranteed. Even if they later become closed source, the code up till that point will remain open source forever.

The changes from the Apache 2.0 license are sufficiently minimal that you can _still_ fork it from that point, you just (a) won't be able to use the trademark (b) won't be able to sell it.

Given the clearly stated goals of the foundation and hence the project, that seems to be providing exactly the guarantees they intend to provide, and while your point about assurances is entirely fair, I think you're underestimating the level of legal guarantees that you do get here.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#174

Post by mst »

ilariel wrote: post #57
echelon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 di…

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. G…

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/) 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.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#175

Post by mst »

dahart wrote: post #59
rowls66 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 numb…

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.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#176

Post by mst »

rpdillon wrote: post #168
Tepix wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have have to write your own map editor if you want to sell it, yes.

The license doesn't indicate that you can get out of the terms by developing your own map editor. A map editor would qualify as a game engine product because it can edit game content and their license specifically prohibits you from redistributing a game engine product that's built with Defold.

If the map editor is an extension (and they have lots of example extensions on github, all of which I've checked are under normal open source licenses) rather than a set of patches to the core code itself, it isn't subject to the Defold License in the first place.

(so if the extension API is missing something, contribute the feature(s) you need back to core, then you can write your extension free of issues, so far as I can tell)

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#177

Post by Zambyte »

dahart wrote: post #165
Zambyte wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prevent the Defold software from being commercialised by a third-party. Why?

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?

I ask why because tons of other software achieve being free to use, free of charge, without preventing the software from being commercialised by a third-party. Why do they feel the need to prevent their software from being commercialized? The only reasonable answer seems to be jealousy.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#178

Post by mst »

noodletheworld wrote: post #33
jbverschoor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For small scripts. Lua is a huge minefield

That seems kind of unfair. There are things that aren't great about lua, and I'm not going to pretend they're not. buuuut... - It's really perfectly ok if you use competently. - There are large complex systems and games built using it (eg. factorio) that show that scaling it is both pragmatic and possible. - It has a big active community. When you compare it some other scripting solutions (boo, unityscript) that were…

I remember some years ago we got somebody joining irc.perl.org #perl to ask for help replacing perl with lua as a game scripting system.

Obviously, a few people were like "uh, why would -we- want to help you with that?"

As soon as I saw an example of this existing code, however, I told said people to STFU ... because for some arsef_cked reason I don't understand at all, they'd used EmbPerl of all things for the scripting, which is basically "PHP for mod_perl" and exactly as horrible as you might imagine even when used for its actual purpose rather than in this case for something completely unrelated.

Even if sensible perl would've been an acceptable approach (and speaking as a veteran perl programmer, I would still consider lua to be more suitable; I strongly consider an importand part of the Zen of Perl to be knowing when to use something else) the approach they had taken was an abomination unto Nuggan and very much deserved to die.

What they had was very definitely the sort of perl code that justifiably contributes to people hating perl, and I considered it a service to perl to help them rip it out in favour of lua code that actually made sense.

(I, personally, think perl works very well as a scripting layer for e.g. irssi, though you might come away disagreeing if you read the average irssi script rather than ones written with a little care and concern ... but for a game? Nah, lua all the frigging way)

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#179

Post by dahart »

Zambyte wrote: post #177
dahart wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I ask why because tons of other software achieve being free to use, free of charge, without preventing the software from being commercialised by a third-party. Why do they feel the need to prevent their software from being commercialized? The only reasonable answer seems to be jealousy.

It seems like you’re making assumptions. But who cares, what business is it of ours if they want to keep Defold free? Would you rather they charge for it? Proprietary and disallowing others to commercialize your software is the law’s default, and a perfectly valid choice. What does it matter why? Why are you feeling the need to judge?

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#180

Post by Tepix »

rpdillon wrote: post #168
Tepix wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have have to write your own map editor if you want to sell it, yes.

The license doesn't indicate that you can get out of the terms by developing your own map editor. A map editor would qualify as a game engine product because it can edit game content and their license specifically prohibits you from redistributing a game engine product that's built with Defold.

Here's what the license states:

    You do not sell or otherwise commercialise the Work or Derivative Works as a Game Engine Product.

    "Work" shall mean the work of authorship, whether in Source or Object form,
    made available under the License, as indicated by a copyright notice that is
    included in or attached to the work

    "Derivative Works" shall mean any work, whether in Source or Object form, that
    is based on (or derived from) the Work and for which the editorial revisions,
    annotations, elaborations, or other modifications represent, as a whole, an
    original work of authorship. For the purposes of this License, Derivative Works
    shall not include works that remain
    separable from, or merely link (or bind by name) to the interfaces of, the Work
    and Derivative Works thereof.
If you write your own map editor, it's neither Work nor a Derivative Works so this restriction doesn't apply.
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