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Comment by progbits | Hacker News Reader

Major props to them for not only calling it "source available" (and not trying to misuse "open source" like so many do), but also for highlighting the additions to their Apache-based license: https://defold.com/license/

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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 game with built-in editor ranks.

Seems fair, but sadly not OSS. I wonder why they think it's necessary?

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

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.

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.

>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".

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.

Yeah, just look at how fractured the Godot community is.

(it's not)

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.

Godot's user base is already bigger than Amazon Lumberyard's (now O3DE).

Unlike Defold, both Godot and O3DE are actually free.

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.

It's you who brought user base size in.

(and it's still bigger for Godot)

And now I’m clarifying that I should have been more precise when I said user base. Amazon clearly doesn’t care about users that aren’t going to make them money.

It also doesn’t matter what the user base is today. It matters what it might be tomorrow. It’s not easy to change your license. If you wait until Amazon is coming for you, it’s too late to do anything to stop it.

It is a bit fractured - there is a Redot fork. But that was caused by governance issues, not anyone's desire to sell the engine.

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.

RPG in a Box[0] is the first example that sprang to mind when I read these comments. It transforms Godot into a more generalized "game maker" but could arguably be considered selling the engine.

[0]https://rpginabox.com/

Edit: clarity

(Action Game Maker)[https://store.steampowered.com/app/2987180/ACTION_GAME_MAKER...] seems like its the same thing - it's built on Godot and seems like it's trying to provide a no-code interface to it.

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.

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.

That doesn't answer the question of why.

I feel like the answer to "why" is on the website if you read about the foundation's objectives:

https://defold.com/foundation/

≥Support the open source community and the use of open licenses.

Tbh I'm a little more confused after reading this

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.

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.

> 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.

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?

Yes it does, it’s one of their stated goals: “Prevent the Defold software from being commercialised by a third-party.”

Dare I ask why?

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.

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

> Seems fair, but sadly not OSS.

Which of their license changes makes you feel sad and why? Were you planning to sell their editor?

The current license makes it unclear whether it would be a violation to distribute a commercial game that has a built-in map editor.

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.

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.

Plenty of games have, with the most famous example being Valve's games, which (eventually) ship the same tools Valve uses for game creation.

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.

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 content.

The license allows redistribution so long as:

> a) You do not sell or otherwise commercialise the Work or Derivative Works as a Game Engine Product; and

So my read is that any tool that allows you to modify game content constitutes a game engine product and they specifically do not allow you to sell a game engine product built with Defold.

This weird technicality that is invented in this discussion about whether or not you're using Defold's built-in engine tools, or developing your own tools on top of Defold is entirely irrelevant to the language of the license.

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.

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.

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)

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.

Thank you, after re-reading, I agree.

You wouldn’t ship your game with built in editing tools from the engine. Those editing tools are not restrictive enough to just hand out to the general player base. They’re too powerful and too hard to use.

Maybe they would (different games foster different cultures). Maybe they'd use it as a starting point and derive something more friendly.

Maybe, but this isn’t remotely common with existing open source game engines.

Modding a game engine’s editing tools to the point where they are user friendly enough for your players is almost always a bigger challenge than building basic editing tools using the engine.

This entire argument is insane to me. Someone is releasing something for free with the caveat that you can’t use it for this one specific very uncommon thing. Then people are up in arms “what if one day I want to do this one specific thing? Do you? No but what if I did?” Don’t use Defold.

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

What product? They aren't selling anything. Like at all.

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/

[2] https://defold.com/about/

[3] https://defold.com/open/

[4] https://defold.com/status/

[5] https://defold.com/faq/faq/

[6] https://forum.defold.com/ ; Discourse is $100/mo or more for custom domains

Thanks, I honestly tried looking for that, but I couldn't find it.

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

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.

> 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.

> (and not trying to misuse "open source" like so many do)

They only stopped because of the backlash they received when they tried to. Their initial announcement was about "Defold becoming open source".

The Defold Foundation immediately stopped calling Defold open-source when it was pointed out that the license was in conflict with the OSI definition.

https://defold.com/2020/05/20/Some-thoughts-on-the-open-sour...

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