Obligatory mention: if you are dissatisfied with Unity please consider the open source engine Godot http://godotengine.org
No relationship to Godot - just an impressed user.
No relationship to Godot - just an impressed user.
> A: The definition of the term Open Source is heavily debated. The Open Source Initiative has created a definition of the term Open Source where it must be possible to commercialise the source code. The Defold Foundation has made the decision to prevent commercialisation of the game engine and editor (the Game Engine Product). We want Defold to always be free to use! (You can of course still sell your games and plugins and you can modify the engine as much as you like).
Depending where your moral compass lies this is either even better than open source or worse.
No, the definition of the term isn't heavily debated; it just became a trendy term over years with enough positive connotations to make some people want to use it for marketing even when their projects don't actually match the definition.
When Defold made its source code public, they used the term "open source" across their marketing material and only stopped doing so after community backlash. Their license URL is still "/opensource/". They got a lot of media coverage from people who were mislead into believing that Defold went open source until this got corrected. You should read what they wrote with this context in your head. I find what you quoted to be borderline manipulative.
Also, I don't understand the purpose of non-commercial clauses on such projects. All they do is cause PITA. It makes your project non-free, so it cannot be included in distros that distribute FLOSS only or mixed with code on viral licenses. And nobody is going to buy something they can get for free unless you're adding some real value on your own with your fork. Furthermore, what exactly constitutes of "commercial usage" is often arguable. If you really care about your project staying free, use a viral FLOSS license, with a non-viral exception on the runtime part. Those technically don't prevent commercialization, but still require freedom, so everything stays free to use in practice. Stamping a non-commercial clause on a Apache-like license like Defold did is the worst of all worlds.