Comment on Report: Unity's Runtime Fee quietly gave exemptions in launch rush
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 1 year agoKeep in mind that the console makers likely don’t want too much of their SDKs to become part of Godot’s open codebase. They license it to publishers who promise them that they won’t divulge important IP.
echo64@lemmy.world 1 year ago
keep in mind that unreal engine is also open source. Epic just has a system where if you get the go-ahead from a console maker, and they can confirm that, then you get access to the parts of the engine that connect to the console SDK’s
if you are an indie dev today, you can get the go-ahead from sony/nintendo/whoever and launch your UE/unity game on those platforms without much fuss. if you have a godot game you have to contact a third party porting house and ask them to port the game to those consoles. those companies have already made the godot hookups into platform specific SDK’s but you still have to contact, and licence them to do this, if they accept working with you.
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
The problem is that Godot is FLOSS. Unreal is missing the free (as in freedom) and libre part.
echo64@lemmy.world 1 year ago
kinda, its MIT so it’s not free. I can, for example, change a bunch of godot. release my changes in binary only form and you can’t demand the source from me. I mean you can but i’ve no legal compulsion to do that.
Goronmon@kbin.social 1 year ago
The Unreal Engine is not open source by any reasonable definition of open source. Being "source available" is not the same as open source, as you can't use the code whoever you like.
Phen@lemmy.eco.br 1 year ago
Goronmon@kbin.social 1 year ago
You have it reversed. The "source available is open source" argument is the more recent idea. Unless my "recent" you mean "in the last 30 years".
echo64@lemmy.world 1 year ago
you can’t use most open source code “however you like” either, they all have licenses. the main restriction with unreal engine is that you can’t mix it with copyleft licenses and you can’t use it commercially.
but you can do what most people want to do, modify, extend, fix, learn. that’s the most relevant thing for what we are talking about here
Goronmon@kbin.social 1 year ago
Alright, sure my language was overly broad. "The licensing is restrictive in a way which makes it clearly not open source." would have been a better choice.
So, it's not open source.
That still doesn't make it open source, since you are missing one of biggest aspects, distribution.