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Godot Engine hits over 50K euros per month in funding (www.gamingonlinux.com)

submitted 1 year ago by Mystify0771@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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One of the big winners of the Unity debacle is the free and open source Godot Engine, which has seen its funding soar to a much more impressive level as Unity basically gave them free advertising.

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[-] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 79 points 1 year ago

Yeah, now I'm concerned this might happen with Unreal Engine, even though they've given no indication that it will. Once Godot works out the kinks with level and texture streaming, and has a landscape editor I will be going back to Godot.

[-] AProfessional@lemmy.world 98 points 1 year ago

Proprietary software can never be truly trusted. You are always at their whims.

[+] abbotsbury@lemmy.world -11 points 1 year ago

Unreal is completely open source, you can compile it yourself.

[-] AProfessional@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago

It is source available, under the terms Epic licenses to you. Not Open Source

[-] jimbo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

When did the term "open source" start including specifics about licensing terms? My understanding from the past few decades was that "open source" meant the source was available for people to look at and compile.

[-] WaterSword@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 1 year ago

Open source has always meant under a free license. Being able to fork and publish your own versions is integral to the open source philosophy.

[-] abbotsbury@lemmy.world -4 points 1 year ago

Being able to fork and publish your own versions is integral to the open source philosophy

No, that is an enumerated freedom of the free software movement, not open source

[-] WaterSword@discuss.tchncs.de 20 points 1 year ago

Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. from Wikipedia

The same article also talks about the difference between open source and source available:

Although the OSI definition of "open-source software" is widely accepted, a small number of people and organizations use the term to refer to software where the source is available for viewing, but which may not legally be modified or redistributed. Such software is more often referred to as source-available, or as shared source, a term coined by Microsoft in 2001

[+] abbotsbury@lemmy.world -13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Under that strict definition, software under the GNU GPL would not be "open source" because the license stays with the code, and is not truly "for any purpose," which is the same deal with the Epic license: you may use, study, change, and distribute the Unreal source code, but it stays under Epic's license.

If you are talking about the FREEDOM to fork and publish and share and whatever, then you mean Free software.

[-] heckypecky@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 year ago

You are not allowed to distribute unreal source. From their FAQ:

Unreal Engine licensees are permitted to post engine code snippets (up to 30 lines) in a public forum, but only for the purpose of discussing the content of the snippet

[-] abbotsbury@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago

But the code is easily visible and you can compile it yourself. If you say "I only run software I 100% knows what it does because I can read it's source code" then Unreal Engine fits, it's open source.

[-] rbits@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's not why people want an open source game engine though, they want it to be open source so that they can't do a unity

I agree the phrase "open source" is a bit confusing

[-] abbotsbury@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

they want it to be open source so that they can’t do a unity

That has nothing to do with open source, that has to to with licensing, which I'm pretty sure isn't an issue anyway since I think Unreal versions are tied to specific license versions, i.e. if you download the engine under one term, thats the only one you have to use

[-] AProfessional@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ideas started in the 70s, Free Software Movement happened in the 80s, the term Open Source from the 90s as an alternative to “free” to be more clear.

It always meant this.

[-] abbotsbury@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

It is source available

Yes, open source.

Not Open Source

You mean free/libre? Open source literally just means you can see the source.

[-] AProfessional@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code,[1] design documents,[2] or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

[-] AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

And then later on...

Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use or modification from its original design.

Unreal Engine is technically open source, because it's source code is made available to the general public. But it is licensed under a restrictive EULA instead of any of the normal licenses you'd expect for an open source project (MIT, Apache, GPL3, etc).

This is definitely pedantic, but "open source" is a colloquial term, not a technical one. Most people mean FOSS when they say open source, but the terms aren't exactly equivalent. The license that governs the code is really the only part that actually matters.

[-] Anamana@feddit.de -3 points 1 year ago

Let's just call it OpenSource+ at this point ;)

[-] Epicurus0319@sopuli.xyz 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Long-term I think corporate tech as we know it is screwed. Their explosive growth from the pandemic making everyone terminally online is drying up as more and more people go back to touching grass, so now the bill’s coming due and it’s only a matter of time now before Unreal also does something stupid we can’t even imagine for a quick buck

[-] elscallr@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

People were terminally online well before 2019. It exacerbated the problem but we're not going back. I don't really think that's a problem, technologically it pushed us further ahead which is always a good thing.

You're right in that we are starting to rediscover what it means to be physically social again. I think that's a good thing, too. People that got away with shit before aren't getting away with it any more.

[-] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

The problem is that interest rates have gone up after being extremely low ever since the 2008 crash, so investors lost their endless supply of debt-fuelled free money. They can't pump money into companies operating at a loss anymore, so suddenly those companies have to find a way to turn a profit.

[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

And some of them realistically can't. Every other commercial game engine is developed for the studio first; Cry, Source, Unreal etc. These engines were made for, well, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, Unreal Tournament. The studio saw returns for engine development in the sales of games, then they said "We could probably further monetize the work we've already done if we license the engine and SDK out to third parties."

Unity on the other hand is trying to have the Autodesk/Adobe business model of "We have a free student or hobbyist tier, and then a commercial license that's $100,000 per minute per seat." The thing is, Autodesk and Adobe really don't have realistic competitors in their market sectors. Unity very much does. Unity competes directly with GameMaker Studio, Godot, Unreal, Source 2 among others, the development of which are either directly supported by the sales of first party titles (or are outright FOSS projects in the case of Godot). So Unity has to set their prices to compete in that market, without the support of first party game sales.

You can see how that's working out for them.