Godot should be licensed with a weak copyleft license, like LGPL.

[WhyIsEvery4thYearAlwaysBad]

A copyleft license, like GPL, would protect the user's freedom; and potentially prevent a company from just creating a nonfree Godot competitor and destroying the original FOSS effort. (Here is a quick summary of the GPL license.)

It wouldn't be a good idea (in my opinion) to force all games made in Godot to be copyleft; so I specified weak Copyleft, like LGPL.

[Tols-Toy]

What are some prominent examples of companies taking an MIT/BSD project of Godot's size and making a succesful competitor?

[mrjustaguy]

You are right, it would take a ton of resources for Microsoft, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't dump them just to have it closed source.

Game Developers have NOTHING to do with distributing OSes, they Don't ship Linux to their users, they don't ship Blender to their users, they don't ship Windows to their users, they Ship their Game files, which also have to include the Game Engine or else the game will NOT work. that is why I've said you've mixed apples and bananas.

1. This is murky territory at best
2. Multiple reasons, a big one would be Security, as it's much easier to find vulnerabilities when you've got the source code, and trust me, Multiplayer games struggle with Cheaters a ton.. Now you could argue that this wouldn't need to be done in the core, and you'd probably be right, but then again, maybe not. Another reason is it might be easier to make systems fairly close to core, with direct tweaks in core to improve their implementation.
3. NDAs are really common in the buiz world, that's just reality.. a Fact of Capitalism if you will. If you're unable to work with them, you easily kill off a ton of potential opportunities.

[WhyIsEvery4thYearAlwaysBad]

You are right, it would take a ton of resources for Microsoft, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't dump them just to have it closed source.

Right. It would have been more efficient for Microsoft to just use the GPL code than to create a proprietary browser for just Windows.

Game Developers have NOTHING to do with distributing OSes, they Don't ship Linux to their users, they don't ship Blender to their users, they don't ship Windows to their users, they Ship their Game files, which also have to include the Game Engine or else the game will NOT work. that is why I've said you've mixed apples and bananas.

Game Developers and OS developers both have to distribute a framework for their target media to work. (For Game Developers, the framework is a game engine, and for OS developers, the framework is a kernel.)

I never implied that game developers distribute OSes; I was stating that game devs and OS devs distribute their target mediums in similar patterns.

1. This is murky territory at best

Elaborate?

2. Multiple reasons, a big one would be Security, as it's much easier to find vulnerabilities when you've got the source code, and trust me, Multiplayer games struggle with Cheaters a ton.. Now you could argue that this wouldn't need to be done in the core, and you'd probably be right, but then again, maybe not. Another reason is it might be easier to make systems fairly close to core, with direct tweaks in core to improve their implementation.

"it's much easier to find vulnerabilities when you've got the source code"

Yep. Open-source code results in finding vulnerabilities faster, and leads to vulnerabilities being fixed quicker.

"Multiplayer games struggle with Cheaters a ton.."

Cheaters are inevitable, regardless if the game is open-source or closed-source; cheaters will just reverse engineer closed-source code. Cheaters are the product of modifications to the game. All multiplayer games will inevitable get cheaters.

Some multiplayer games use a trusted client for anticheat systems; trusted clients don't work, so there are going to be a lot of cheaters.

Some multiplayer games utilize server moderators; which are generally reliable anticheat, but they tire out.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive utilizes VACNet, an AI-basede anticheat system. AI is the solution to automated cheaters; AI could work for longer periods and quickly flag cheaters faster than human moderators.

"Another reason is it might be easier to make systems fairly close to core, with direct tweaks in core to improve their implementation."

(This sentence seems to confusing to me. What is a core in this context?)

Then just open the changes? The game devs could just maintain a clone of the copyleft game engine and change that clone.

3. NDAs are really common in the buiz world, that's just reality.. a Fact of Capitalism if you will. If you're unable to work with them, you easily kill off a ton of potential opportunities.

Well too bad! I don't really care about the potential opportunities, though it is an attracting idea. Trying to get your game on console may lead the console developer to convert your game to an exclusive game.

Not all game developers want to become capitalists in the game industry.

[mrjustaguy]

Godot's exported code is actually a binary, that isn't really a library.. now exporting it as a library and having your own binary link to it would potentially be ok, but again you'd have to deal with not tying your changes to the library, which could be an issue

Finding vulnerabilities faster does not mean that they are fixed faster, fixing requires resources to be poured into fixing them, so yes hiding them is a better solution for one and done games.. True we are going more into live service games that demand constant resources that does somewhat nullify this point, but on the other hand those resources often go into front end goodies, your skins, maps, etc..

Yes, Cheaters are inevitable, but why encourage them by making it easy for them to do so?

You don't care about potential opportunities, anyone who wants to make a living off of game dev HAS to, that is exactly what capitalism is all about sadly. As long as we are a capitalist society, this is a fact of life you cannot avoid.
Only Toy projects don't have to worry about making any money (or the dev has to be so rich to never need to care about making money which is highly unlikely), so that is exactly the type of project that wouldn't care too much about this.

[WhyIsEvery4thYearAlwaysBad]

Godot's exported code is actually a binary, that isn't really a library.. now exporting it as a library and having your own binary link to it would potentially be ok, but again you'd have to deal with not tying your changes to the library, which could be an issue

Godot could create a GPL-like license that allows the exported Godot binary to be used on a proprietary platform; I never stated that the license had to be GPL or LGPL, I was stating that Godot should be weakly copyleft.

Finding vulnerabilities faster does not mean that they are fixed faster, fixing requires resources to be poured into fixing them, so yes hiding them is a better solution for one and done games.. True we are going more into live service games that demand constant resources that does somewhat nullify this point, but on the other hand those resources often go into front end goodies, your skins, maps, etc..

If your team or community can't fix vulnerabilities fast enough; then the problem is with the team, not the code being open-source.

Yes, Cheaters are inevitable, but why encourage them by making it easy for them to do so?

Because cheats and vulnerabilities can be exposed faster when the source code is open. The community could also patch the vulnerabilities.

You don't care about potential opportunities, anyone who wants to make a living off of game dev HAS to, that is exactly what capitalism is all about sadly. As long as we are a capitalist society, this is a fact of life you cannot avoid.
Only Toy projects don't have to worry about making any money (or the dev has to be so rich to never need to care about making money which is highly unlikely), so that is exactly the type of project that wouldn't care too much about this.

Yep. Capitalism sucks.

However, Game developers can make money through PC-only games: Team Fortress 2, Half-Life: Alyz, Dota (2), League of Legends, Age of Empires 2, Crusader Kings. Console-exclusive games can still be played on PCs, through Emulators.

[mrjustaguy]

Consoles are sadly a huge market that is unwise to simply ignore.. there are plenty of people who'll spend 500$ on a console and get a super cheap work laptop for a total under 1k$ vs getting a single 2k$+ machine to do those two things combined (console equivalent game performance and visuals, and work).. and spending going with less on the single machine would just compromise game quality.

I mean yeah you could wait for the single machine to drop in price, but with the constant crypto booms going on, you might be stuck waiting a bit for the right time to buy.

[wareya]

Two cents:

Most copyleft licenses, even the LGPL, are a very bad idea for game tooling, because games often have to be published on closed platforms with strict guidelines that are often incompatible with most copyleft licenses, even the LGPL. Vast numbers of developers simply will not use things that prevent them from publishing on such platforms, because they have no other choice, even if there is no alternative that they could use instead and they have to build it from scratch.

However, there are copyleft licenses that do not have this issue, like Mozilla's MPL. (The MPL does not have any relinkability requirements or anti-tivoization bits. The LGPL does.)

[WhyIsEvery4thYearAlwaysBad]

Most copyleft licenses, even the LGPL, are a very bad idea for game tooling, because games often have to be published on closed platforms with strict guidelines that are often incompatible with most copyleft licenses, even the LGPL. Vast numbers of developers simply will not use things that prevent them from publishing on such platforms, because they have no other choice, even if there is no alternative that they could use instead and they have to build it from scratch.

Then don't host games on closed platforms; host on open platforms, or self-host a platform.

Libre games commonly host their own platforms: Widelands, SRB2, SuperTux, MineClone2, etc. (More examples are on libregamewiki.)

However, there are copyleft licenses that do not have this issue, like Mozilla's MPL. (The MPL does not have any relinkability requirements or anti-tivoization bits. The LGPL does.)

Copyleft licenses are not to blame for the issue of closed (source) platforms.

[wareya]

Then don't host games on closed platforms; host on open platforms, or self-host a platform.

OK, you just limited godot to only being used by toy projects, good job :)

[WhyIsEvery4thYearAlwaysBad]

OK, you just limited godot to only being used by toy projects, good job :)

Uh, how does Godot become a toy project just by hosting it's own open platform?

• Blender hosts it's own platforms for the Blender software (and company); it's not exactly a "toy project". (Blender's site., Blender's PeerTube instance, and blender.chat. )
• The Linux Foundation hosts it's own open platform for Linux; Linux is not a toy project.
• The Free Software Foundation hosts it's own open platform for its free software (like coreutils); they are not toy projects.
• SRB2 hosts it's own platforms for documentation. I don't exactly think it's a "toy project", considering the amount of effort that is put into maintaining it.

[mrjustaguy]

Because a lot of serious people will aim at consoles, which require NDAs. Godot not being able to directly port to consoles (due to being Open Source and unable to comply with the required NDAs to implement this in core which is basically required) is already a huge problem for many, but that you can do yourself or with help of third parties.

[Listwon]

In my opinion this would in fact "destroy the original FOSS effort". This would instantly discourage me from any further contribution to the engine. And I'm pretty sure this would slow down or even kill the growing popularity of the engine. Changing to less permissive license than the other open source competitors (game engines and frameworks) is simiply a bad idea. Some examples: cocos2d-x - MIT, Urho3d - MIT, libgdx - Apache, Armory - zlib.

[Xrayez]

Having a commercial Godot fork could be actually fruitful, in the sense that commercial projects tend to have a more clear direction. Godot is mostly driven by hype and whoever is willing to sponsor the project nowadays, which steers Godot in whatever direction, which makes the engine unstable to use for long-term projects.

That doesn't mean that Godot cannot have a clear development direction, though. This mostly depends on who leads and manages the project. However, it looks like Godot does not have a direction in the first place, it's mostly about solving problems exclusively. The problem is that Godot lead developers do not have a real-life game project they are personally working on using Godot at the moment (from what I can see publicly, otherwise we'd see them described in "Describe the project you're working on" question when they create proposals themselves here at GIP), so we're left with the situation that they have to "guess" how to solve concrete problems faced by Godot users. The cornerstone lies within the quality of communication between userbase and developers, which becomes suboptimal nowadays, or the solutions in Godot get too general (or rather simplistic) to be useful. Therefore, I'd personally be interested in trying out some commercial version of Godot (source-available), where financial support is explicit, and there exist at least some sense of obligation regarding the software quality of the engine.

That said, what I'm saying is that Godot should be either totally FOSS, or become a commercial project. The latter is very unlikely to happen, so it's totally up to commercial companies to make a viable Godot fork, which does have its merit (the success of commercial engines like Unity and Unreal Engine cannot be denied). For some time, I think that most commercial Godot forks will not be published directly, but companies are going to modify the base engine to suit their needs for game projects.

From the downloads page: https://godotengine.org/download

[wareya]

these are not game engines and are thus not valid counterexamples

…

On Thu, May 19, 2022, 16:09 WhyTheHellIsEvery4thYearGarbage? < ***@***.***> wrote: OK, you just limited godot to only being used by toy projects, good job :) Uh, how does Godot become a toy project just by hosting it's own open platform? - Blender hosts it's own platforms for the Blender software (and company); it's not exactly a "toy project". (Blender's site. <https://www.blender.org/>, Blender's PeerTube instance <https://video.blender.org/>, and blender.chat. ) - The Linux Foundation hosts it's own open platform for Linux; Linux is not a toy project. - The Free Software Foundation hosts it's own open platform for its free software (like coreutils); they are not toy projects. - SRB2 hosts it's own platforms for documentation. I don't exactly think it's a "toy project", considering the amount of effort that is put into maintaining it. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4237 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAEO6EBNGA6LHKXYHPJPXALVK2NXXANCNFSM5RDPI5HQ> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.*** .com>

[WhyIsEvery4thYearAlwaysBad]

these are not game engines and are thus not valid counterexamples

Oh. Then Game Editor, Gluon, and Sludge (listed on Libregamewiki).

Currently, there aren't many copyleft game engines, so this conception that copyleft game engines will harm game devs isn't possible to test yet.

[wareya]

Sludge

Okay, this was used by a couple of serious projects, but they are incredibly small in number, so I don't think it indicates a pattern.

The other two are so dead that their sites are either full of broken photobucket image links (???) or only available on the internet archive.

Currently, there aren't many copyleft game engines, so this conception that copyleft game engines will harm game devs isn't possible to test yet.

I'm not sure that argument holds up. id tech, one of the most important game engines in the world, has a multiple GPL releases, and people who use id tech commercially all use commercially licensed versions.

Also how SDL's license was a big obstacle to adoption as mainstream game tooling and it had to relicense as something non-viral before anyone could use it outside of PC gaming. The LGPL's relinking requirement was an actual genuine dealbreaker for SDL 1.2.

Also how OpenAL moving from a BSD license to LGPL killed it in the water. (It killed itself even harder later on by moving to a proprietary license, but what can you do.) (It lives on as OpenAL-soft, and is used by a lot of serious source projects; but serious commercial projects stay away from it because it's LGPL, They end up using things like fmod instead.)

Being able to use your runtime game tooling on user-hostile closed platforms is a non-negotiable requirement for the overwhelming majority of commercial projects. It's not a matter of the harm it does them, it's a matter of how their decision-making processes work. Arguments of the form "don't use user-hostile closed platforms" aren't even on the table until Apple and the big game console manufacturers get hit with big antitrust rulings, which is going to take years and might not even go the way we want.

[WhyIsEvery4thYearAlwaysBad]

What about Stratagus?

---

I'm not sure that argument holds up. id tech, one of the most important game engines in the world, has a multiple GPL releases, and people who use id tech commercially all use commercially licensed versions.

Corporations use proprietary licenses; the common man still uses the copyleft license.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_II_engine#Games_based_on_the_GPL_source_release
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3

Also how SDL's license was a big obstacle to adoption as mainstream game tooling and it had to relicense as something non-viral before anyone could use it outside of PC gaming. The LGPL's relinking requirement was an actual genuine dealbreaker for SDL 1.2.

Also how OpenAL moving from a BSD license to LGPL killed it in the water. (It killed itself even harder later on by moving to a proprietary license, but what can you do.) (It lives on as OpenAL-soft, and is used by a lot of serious source projects; but serious commercial projects stay away from it because it's LGPL, They end up using things like fmod instead.)

Yep. This is the fault of the capitalist economy, not the GPL.

Being able to use your runtime game tooling on user-hostile closed platforms is a non-negotiable requirement for the overwhelming majority of commercial projects.

Yep.

It's not a matter of the harm it does them, it's a matter of how their decision-making processes work. Arguments of the form "don't use user-hostile closed platforms" aren't even on the table until Apple and the big game console manufacturers get hit with big antitrust rulings, which is going to take years and might not even go the way we want.

Antitrusts won't ever work; the capitalist economy will still exist so Apple can just continue forming monopolies.

[wareya]

You can blame capitalism all you want, it's not going to change other people's decision making processes.

[mrjustaguy]

Yeah, everyone is just working around the situation they've got. If you don't like it, change their situation, oh wait, you can't end capitalism, however shitty it is, sadly.

[Faless]

A copyleft license, like GPL, would protect the user's freedom

Well, our users are gamedevs, and I don't like the idea of limiting our users freedom by forcing them to only distribute on some platforms and not others.
I don't like the idea of restricting gamedev freedom to publish on iOS (even if I would never buy an iOS device).
I think this is the main issue with the GPL, It made sense back in the days, and it makes sense in the desktop/server application space.
It's just not free enough when it comes to game development, preventing users from using it on certain (widespread) platforms.

[Faless]

Note that this also possibly applies to LGPL: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2012/11/22/vlc-lgpl.html

[RabbitB]

This is a very unpopular opinion, but I will stand by it till the end of my days: copyleft licenses like GPL and LGPL are fundamentally opposed to free and open software and are just another method of source control--different but same, from closed-source. I believe that free software means free, not free with limitations. What an oxymoron that is. I think any issue with MIT and other 'true' open licenses, comes from our differing perspectives as developers and not from any flaw in the license. Case in point, I think not only should a company be allowed to take and monetize Godot, but it leads to a healthy atmosphere of competition. The worst thing that could happen to us as a community is to become so successful that no other engines can compete within the market, and make no mistake, we are part of the market whether we intend or want to be.

[dukemagus]

MIT is good enough; it allows people to work with Godot, change it to suit private needs and build closed forks if needed by contractual reasons.

There's no iminent threat for godot's development and even if a multi trillion dollar company just decides to make a closed source commercial godot fork and sell it, the main repo will still exist and follow its own pace.

GDevelop have a couple of forks with its own naming and the main repo is still going strong.

[SlugFiller]

I'd actually take it in the opposite direction: It should go UNLICENSE. I was always iffy about GPL's entire world view, that was built on "I need GPL to compete with commercial software, and be mutually exclusive, so I can one day have a fully working computer, with 0 chance of any closed-source software spying on me". The reality is that people had their crypto-currency stolen by perfectly open-source software, and Stallman is no closer to having a printer he can fix than the day he got angry at a firmware bug in one. If anything, open-source hardware has proven to be a huge flop, with adjusted-for-security options like Graphene, leaving the likes of PureOS in the dust.

However, what really tipped me over was reading this:
https://questioncopyright.org/promise

Copy-left is ultimately relying on copyright laws in order to exist. Without copyright, there can be no copyleft. People don't sign GPL terms like some sort of NDA. If the default was not "allow nothing", then GPL would be meaningless. The realization that the "allow nothing" default is born in sin, and is harmful to society a thousand times more than any closed source NDA-protected project, makes me unable to support any attitude that perpetuates the misconception that copyright can be a force for good.

This is especially true for "programs that make other programs". Now Godot isn't simply a compiler. Having massive built-in functionality, including its own physics engine and rendering with batching and custom mega-shaders, makes it legitimate for it to have MIT license. Credits for such a physics engine are well deserved. Compare and contrast with Rust, which is merely supposed to compile user code, which could go down to being as low level as kernel code without a hint of a standard library or API call. But due to how it's set up, any such user code falls under Rust's MIT. That's why I stay away from Rust like the plague. I would never code anything in Rust, nor recommend it to anyone.

Contrast with LLVM, which, despite being GPL at its core, has an explicit "compilation exception", which means that the license does not apply to products created using it, unless they explicitly include LLVM as a library. This is the bare minimum of what would be expected from a "program making programs". The code that you write should not belong to the person who wrote the compiler you use. Not any more than the excel sheet describing your company's finances should belong to Microsoft (unless you're Microsoft's accountant).

At the very least, if Godot had been GPL, I would not have picked it up, and I would not be contributing to it now. I would have been working on my own engine instead. It's not impossible some of the other contributors feel the same.

(P.S. Despite all of the above, it would be impossible for Godot to go completely UNLICENSE, because many of its third-party dependencies are Apache/BSD/MIT, e.g. ThorVG)

[Calinou]

(P.S. Despite all of the above, it would be impossible for Godot to go completely UNLICENSE, because many of its third-party dependencies are Apache/BSD/MIT, e.g. ThorVG)

It would be impossible for Godot itself too, as many significant contributors are no longer reachable today (some of them have passed away by now). Godot does not have a CLA allowing us to relicense without asking for permission 🙂

[SlugFiller]

There have been cases of large-scale open source projects relicensing without having a CLA in advance. It can't be done overnight, obviously. It's usually a long process involving an issue with a long list of checkboxes, as each contributor (or their next of kin) is contacted for authorization. Despite the difficulty, the maintainers may in some cases feel that it is worth it.

Incidentally, this same issue could actually exist with relicensing to GPL. While MIT is technically compatible with GPL, in terms of linking the two together, the license in the files themselves clearly says "The above copyright notice and this permission notice", meaning that replacing it with a different permission notice might technically be a violation.

[Zireael07]

some of them have passed away by now)

O-oooh. Didn't expect this since Godot is a fairly young engine...