They have every right to have such clauses in their license. But they implicate that this license is "permissive", and mentions "Apache 2.0" - giving false impression of the actual contents of the license.

Such a noncommercial clause means that this does not really follow the Free Software definition and Open Source definition of "open source".

The license page (https://defold.com/license/) says "derived from the popular and permissive Apache 2.0 license". It never say that it is the Apache 2.0 license.

It then goes on to show the difference very clearly, and as you can see the only difference from the Apache 2.0 license is that additional clause about non-commercialisation of the engine+editor package. You are still free to sell your Defold games, sell your Defold add-ons and sell your Defold tutorials.

The frontpage right now says "Defold is free and open source software released under a permissive license derived from the popular Apache 2.0 License."

So it at the very least claims to be a "permissive" license. The non-commercial restrictions are not mentioned there, one has to read on.

The vast majority of developers that would be interested in this engine only care about building games with it and selling those without any worry, without any interest in selling any modifications to the engine itself as a new package. They are presumably the target audience for whom this can be considered a permissive license.

Both popular commercial game engines out there (Unity and Unreal) have huge markets for all kind of engine extensions. Almost all game developers use said extensions and many are interested in selling them.

I don't see why you couldn't make and sell mods for Defold. It's the engine itself that the license stops you selling, not things that use it.

I'm fairly sure Epic don't let people fork, modify and then sell Unreal Engine either.

Exactly. The license used for Defold (https://defold.com/license/) says:

* You are free to commercialise any software created using Defold * You are free to commercialise any plugin, extension or tool created for use with Defold * You are free to modify Defold and you are not required to share the changes * You are free to distribute original or modified (derivative) versions of Defold)

I think it does mean that I can't fork Deflod, rename it to Refold and sell as mine.

Just a reflection as non-native English speaker. Game Engine Product is not the same as 'Product of Game Engine'.

That's right, and such a restriction makes it not fully open source.

I will not debate you on that one. According to the Open Source Definition (https://opensource.org/osd) Defold is only 90% open source. It's a lot better than the 0% it was yesterday.

Like seriously according to your comment history you're product owner of Defold. So if you're care of success of Defold why do you need this false advertisement?

If your company worried about someone making money off editor you can just keep this part proprietary while releasing the engine under OSS-compatible license. There is plenty of "open core" projects out there.

It’s still 0% open source, it just is available under a very permissive license.

edit: Don’t get me wrong, this is great. But it’s not OSS.

^this is correct.

Yes, you can't sell GameEngine itself. Basically this is Apache 2.0 license with a point about "you can't sell the engine itself". Here is licence with Diffs from Apache 2.0: https://defold.com/license/

After what AWS did with Elasticsearch, I think a lot more projects are going to start being released like this. In a world where tech behemoths can choose to throw a hundred engineers at an open source project and replicate all the features an independent developer (or group of developers) can provide "on top" to make a living, it becomes very hard to sustain yourself.

Not strictly open-source, but I see it as a defense mechanism in order to survive.

Am I interpreting it wrong or does that mean you can still sell it as a game? Just not a game engine.

Yes, you can sell your games!

The license page is very clear on this: https://defold.com/license/

* You are free to commercialise any software created using Defold * You are free to commercialise any plugin, extension or tool created for use with Defold * You are free to modify Defold and you are not required to share the changes * You are free to distribute original or modified (derivative) versions of Defold * You are given a license to any patent that covers Defold

You can sell anything you want created with or related to Defold, but not package the engine+editor and sell those.

Are you affiliated at all?

Edit: ahh just noticed that you are(from comment history).

Yeah, sorry, product owner here!

You can't rebrand Defold and sell it, your games can be monetized in any way you want no strings attached.