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 developed open source extensions are available through the Asset Portal.
I think this is clear enough, and doesn't seem like they're abusing the open source terminology. Whether you agree or not with their license is another topic, but their copy seems clear to me (an OSS enthusiast and first-time visitor on their site).
That said, the title of this HN post is misleading, and definitely needs to be updated to reflect this.
(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.)
... was, in fact, not addressed.
To the extent that my comment contains speculative claims, the charges are aligned with their 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 them the benefit of the doubt. There is no doubt here—no reasonable doubt, at least. Only willful mendacity.
They are not being willfully mendacious. You are being willfully dickish.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Oh, and please don't say "the standard definition", because that is definitely contested, even after all these years.
That's easy: Defold (the project linked here).
> Also, if that source is available, you could point out which definition of open source you are going by.
That's easy, too: I'm using the same definition that the Defold developers are using.
The important part is that if there's a problem, you can debug it yourself instead of staring at a binary blob.
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 licensing.
> 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)
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.
I disagree there. Licensing is still a huge issue with incorporating a console SDK. Each one plays by their own ball game, and it will take a tremendous amount of effort to work through the legal, business, and licensing issues for each platform. And once that's resolved, you'll still need to provide an avenue for end-users to obtain and hook up the SDK to the open source engine which sounds like quite the engineering effort to simplify it.
Edit: And it looks like Godot is pulling it off quite well, thank you for the link to their blog post
Godot is MIT licensed. Godot _can_ be used for console development—just like any other piece of MIT-licensed code you want to build your game with. It's just that doing so is (read: remains) an undertaking that you have to deal with on your own, since Godot Foundation doesn't offer anything besides the Godot engine source code under compatible license terms. There's nothing particular about Godot or its license here.
From the documentation you yourself linked to:
> Regardless of the engine used to create the game, the process to publish a game to a console platform is as follows: [painful and/or expensive and overall shitty process]
For posterity, here's Godot's post a year or so ago on the struggles they've had with console middleware over the years.
https://godotengine.org/article/godot-consoles-all-you-need-...
> Q: Why don't you use the term Open Source when talking about the source code?
> 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).
Their foundation charter is interesting, too: https://defold.com/foundation/
Given the issues w/ Unity, I think this information is pertinent and welcome.
"Open Source" was wrongly added to the title by the poster. It's not used on the site to describe the engine.
Leading to page that says that Defond is not actually open source.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23235217>
What am I misreading?
They didn't say they were going to "no longer use the term (with respect to the Defold engine)". They said weren't using it. Why? Precisely so "as to not confuse it with the OSD". Let's recap:
They used to use the term "open source" (one part of an overall effort to misrepresent themselves and their work). Then they said they took it out—which means that if the term is there now—and it is there now—then they either didn't actually take it out, or they took it out and then put it back in, even after saying they were "sorry for misrepresenting the license under which we make the source code available".
Prevaricating on the whether or not a known bad actor is technically wrong in sidling up next to a line they've already once crossed isn't a defense of the subject of here—because the subject is not strictly confined to whether or not they are crossing it now. It is the very fact that they've indisputably crossed line before, admitted to it and issued a presumed sincere apology when called out, and yet here they are—reaping the rewards of the misleading[1] way in which their messaging is being perceived (again).
My "gloss" of something they themselves acknowledged—how are you not getting this?
It's like if someone gets charged with something, briefly attempts to maintain some dubious and not-terribly-convincing story that they didn't do the thing, but then does eventually cop to doing the thing, gets a light sentence for having acknowledged that they did the thing (maybe even cheered on for their humility in doing so), and then three years later upon having some new sketch called out, defenders leap up saying, "oh, well that's just your take; prove they'd ever done that". They already acknowledged it themselves; that's not a "move" that's available to you anymore, bud. These are total motte-and-bailey shenanigans.
> and a response to the wrong title. . They didn't write the title
I flag comments that complain about titles. Between the two of us, you are the only one to have mentioned the title of the submission—which isn't even the title anymore. (Repeatedly. Why?)
You can continue to try to get me to direct my attention to the title, and I will continue to ignore it and limit my comments to what's actually at issue. Go ahead and keep strawmanning the shit out of me, though. Maybe it'll stick.
Let's make it stick by wrapping up here.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grice's_maxims>
This is the issue: you are in the untenable position where...
- those you are defending had a charge leveled against them
- they have acknowledged that they were doing it—there is no cloak of plausible deniability here, and yet
- you are defending them on grounds of plausible deniability
So square the circle—and stop mentioning the submission title. (I'm not interested in the title. Nobody is.)
I have received your letter of this date containing the terms of the surrender of the Army of Northern Tangentia, as proposed by you. As they are substantially the same as those expressed in your letter of the 8th inst., they are accepted. I will proceed to designate the proper officers to carry the stipulations into effect.
You're not allowed to fork and then profit from the engine itself, or the editor. That's a really important distinction, and you're right that it should be highlighted.
But it seems very reasonable to me. Any real game dev won't care about that. Basically, you can't resell the engine, but you can do anything you want with the games created by it.
They make the license terms very clear. Their license page highlights the differences to the text of the Apache 2.0 license. The only change is that you can't sell the engine itself. https://defold.com/license/
"intentionally deceptive" "there's a big fat nav item at the top of the site"
The Defold guys have released multiple components on Github with the MIT license. The fact that a navigation item is named "Open Source" does not say that all or most of the software from this company is Open Source. For example, the fact that the Apple developer site has a navigation item named "Open Source" similarly doesn't mean that all or most of Apple's software is Open Source.
"Everything about this screams"
You're attributing unverifiable negative intentions to the Defold developers.
This, the last HN thread about this, and other similar negative feedback create an incentive to avoid the term "Open Source" in order to steer clear of potential negative publicity for innocent misunderstandings and different opinions.
But they also have an incentive to keep the words "open source" in a sufficiently prominent position on their website to ensure that search engines list their page in the results for the search term "open source game engine", since it's a relevant result for almost all people who search for that term.
I'm attributing motives to them based on their own admission—that they were misrepresenting their project. There's nothing unverifiable about it. They posted on HN and tweeted about it—their own words. It's not reaching on my part. (Why are you, like other commenters here, so attached to the plausible deniability angle? It's not available anymore. It's gone.)
> they also have an incentive to keep the words "open source" in a sufficiently prominent position on their website to ensure that search engines list their page in the results for the search term "open source game engine"
Uh...? Giving an accounting of the incentives isn't exculpatory.
Thieves have an incentive to take things that aren't theirs. Liars have an incentive to tell people things that aren't true. Cheaters have an incentive to have sex with someone who isn't their partner. We already know _why_ they want to do it. That wasn't ever in dispute.
> This, the last HN thread about this, and other similar negative feedback create an incentive to avoid the term "Open Source"
This is as baffling of a remark as the earlier one.
By "avoid the term" you mean "avoid misrepresenting the license under which they're really making the source code available".
Prosecuting murder is a form of negative feedback that discourages people from carrying out murder. This is known. It's not an unfortunate consequence. It's rather the whole point.
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 association with the cachet and warm fuzzies of the Apache license by throwing that name around, despite not actually being Apache licensed. This is not the result of oversight or ignorance. It's intentionally deceptive.
For anyone who thinks that I'm reading between the lines and overstating this, you can refer to the last time this came up. They received sufficient pushback about their messaging. They're not just aware of the discrepancy between the consensus definition and the way they're using it, they acknowledged it explicitly. In response, they said, "We are humbled [...] also sorry for misrepresenting the license" and that "We have updated the website to reflect this and we no longer use the term"[1]. In 2023, there's a big fat nav item at the top of the site that says "Open Source". You click it and read the fine print which gradually reveals the truth of the matter. The "open source" part refers (apparently?) to... their extension ecosystem?
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."
1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23235217>