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Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile

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Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile

#21

Post by prophesi »

SXX wrote: post #13
flohofwoe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

They are free to run their business and we are free to point out how they distort meaning of "open source". They can easily call it "source available" and no one will bother them. There is actually open source game engine called Godot that licensed under standard MIT License. We should not let companies like Defold Foundation to mislead anyone to think their software product license is equal in terms of freedoms prov…

Also should be noted that Godot can't be used for console development, except for the Steam Deck, due to open source licensing issues.

> To develop for consoles, one must be licensed as a company. As an open source project, Godot has no legal structure to provide console ports.

> Console SDKs are secret and covered by non-disclosure agreements. Even if we could get access to them, we could not publish the platform-specific code under an open source license.

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/co...

(And for my personal take on the issue, I think Godot is working on these issues and I'm rooting for them. I also get frustrated with the false equivalence of source-available and open-source)

Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile

#22

Post by stuckinhell »

raincole wrote: post #16
stuckinhell wrote: post #3

I've been seeing a ton of game engines on hackernews in the last couple days. I think many hobby game developers don't realize the astounding important of designer oriented tools. Even most game companies have coders create designer oriented gui tools for games to be more productive. Whatever open source engine cracks an easy 3d player controller, dialogue system, human retargeted animation system, and easy editor ex…

> 3d player controller, Unity has no this built-in. > dialogue system, Neither. > human retargeted animation system Unity has a built-on one but it's shitty.

Yea most indies buy these assets from the unity store.

If a new game engine emerged with these, they could take most of unity's market share without needing an asset store of their own.

Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile

#23

Post by SXX »

prophesi wrote: post #21
SXX wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are free to run their business and we are free to point out how they distort meaning of "open source". They can easily call it "source available" and no one will bother them. There is actually open source game engine called Godot that licensed under standard MIT License. We should not let companies like Defold Foundation to mislead anyone to think their software product license is equal in terms of freedoms prov…

Also should be noted that Godot can't be used for console development, except for the Steam Deck, due to open source licensing issues. > To develop for consoles, one must be licensed as a company. As an open source project, Godot has no legal structure to provide console ports. > Console SDKs are secret and covered by non-disclosure agreements. Even if we could get access to them, we could not publish the platform-sp…

> due to open source licensing issues.

It's have nothing to do with licensing. MIT License that Godot licensed under is perfectly fine for keeping console support closed-source or source-available.

Problem is that Godot didn't have legal entity that can directly work with platform owners. This is why some of Godot maintaiers founded W4 Games and they're actively working on building console suport for all modern consoles:

https://w4games.com/2023/08/06/w4-games-unveils-w4-consoles-...

Of course console support will be commercial and closed source feature, but this is how it works for all game engines and have nothing to do with Godot specifically.

Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile

#24

Post by [deleted] »

cxr wrote: post #6

Not actually open source. This is yet another instance of a project eager to reap the rewards of being associated with "open source" without committing to it (i.e. with a license that would make it so). Defold is source-available and some flavor of royalty-free with limitations. It's actually worse than that, though, because it goes out of its way to obscure the license terms; in this instance, they're going for asso…

[deleted]

Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile

#25

Post by cxr »

0xBA5ED wrote: post #20
cxr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything about this screams, "We know exactly what we're doing, but we're going about it in such a way that we can claim plausible deniability." (Feel free to address literally any of the pre-emptive points I made in my post, rather than responding as if I didn't already make them.)

Your objective points were addressed. Any response to your subjective point "Everything about this screams X" would itself be subjective and not conducive to productive conversation.

That the developers have already been caught with their hand in the cookie jar and called out on it and apologized once before (for, in their own words, "misrepresenting the license"), and they stated that they would/did remove the term "Open Source" from their site precisely in order to not confuse the issue...

... was, in fact, not addressed.

To the extent that my comment contains speculative claims, the charges are aligned with the developers' undisputed past behavior.

And given that it's blatantly obvious what's going on, even without their previous admission, no one has any obligation to pussyfoot around on things like giving the benefit of the doubt. There is no doubt here—no reasonable doubt, at least. Only willful mendacity.

Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile

#26

Post by pvg »

cxr wrote: post #6

Not actually open source. This is yet another instance of a project eager to reap the rewards of being associated with "open source" without committing to it (i.e. with a license that would make it so). Defold is source-available and some flavor of royalty-free with limitations. It's actually worse than that, though, because it goes out of its way to obscure the license terms; in this instance, they're going for asso…

I'm reading between the lines and overstating this, you can refer to the last time this came up.

"Open Source" was wrongly added to the title by the poster. It's not used on the site to describe the engine.

Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile

#27

Post by LanceH »

cxr wrote: post #15
imiric wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being too harsh. The main item on the landing page says "free to use" and "source available", while that "big fat nav item", that doesn't show up on mobile without clicking on the navigation, clearly states: > Defold is a source available game engine with a developer-friendly license derived from the popular Apache 2.0 License. And under "Open source": > A large selection of official and community deve…

> Everything about this screams, "We know exactly what we're doing, but we're going about it in such a way that we can claim plausible deniability." (Feel free to address literally any of the pre-emptive points I made in my post, rather than responding as if I didn't already make them.)

You could cut to the chase and point out what isn't open source. Also, if that source is available, you could point out which definition of open source you are going by.

Oh, and please don't say "the standard definition", because that is definitely contested, even after all these years.

Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile

#28

Post by SXX »

pvg wrote: post #26
cxr wrote: post #6

Not actually open source. This is yet another instance of a project eager to reap the rewards of being associated with "open source" without committing to it (i.e. with a license that would make it so). Defold is source-available and some flavor of royalty-free with limitations. It's actually worse than that, though, because it goes out of its way to obscure the license terms; in this instance, they're going for asso…

I'm reading between the lines and overstating this, you can refer to the last time this came up. "Open Source" was wrongly added to the title by the poster. It's not used on the site to describe the engine.

It is literally in top menu bar.

Leading to page that says that Defond is not actually open source.

Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile

#29

Post by stevekemp »

ingonealan3 wrote: post #7
hesdeadjim wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the problem with this whole Unity crisis. Every other engine out there is… small. I have a 50+ person team with a big open world game and I’m basically fucked into accepting whatever Unity wants. I can’t just switch engines with four years of tech and team experience. And Unity knows this. It’s so fucking slimy and malicious.

For someone who's completely out of the loop, what changes are the Unity peeps doing to their business model?

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/sep/12/unity-engine-f...

And later

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/sep/13/unity-seeks-to...

Covered on this site, but downtime makes linking to the threads hard - I'm 50/50 on whether this comment will be accepted!

Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile

#30

Post by pvg »

SXX wrote: post #28
pvg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reading between the lines and overstating this, you can refer to the last time this came up. "Open Source" was wrongly added to the title by the poster. It's not used on the site to describe the engine.

It is literally in top menu bar. Leading to page that says that Defond is not actually open source.

"has navigation that takes you to open source stuff" is not "claims it's open source". The title is just wrong and they have clearly fixed the thing people were complaining about last time. It's not reading between the lines, it's simply misreading.
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