dragonbones has been renamed to LoongBones and will continue to be updated
I hope defold can continue to support the new LoongBones, as it is completely free and easy to use
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Well, we never supported DragonBones directly, but only Spine compatible content.
As long as they support Spine fully, it should work well imho.
If you ever encounter any issues with the new tool, I suggest you redirect any issues to them.
Defold is completely free, spine is completely paid for, and the new LoongBones are completely free. Why should we use spine format as the standard instead of embracing the same completely free LoongBones
Honestly, Spine is the industry standard, which arguably is also why DragonBones tries to mimic the functionality.
Also, Spine have a C reference implementation ready-to-use, which we do.
This limits our support burden to a minimum.
And, as long as your tool produces compliant data, it should work for you.
Supporting code isn’t free, it takes a surprising amount of time and effort to do so.
So, we stick with the battle tested code path of supporting the spine format.
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I understand that as a programmer, one should pay attention to industry standards, but if that’s the case, defold is simply imitating Unity’s industry standards and creating an editor.
I think open source and free are more important than industry standards. Open source and free engines introduce commercially charged spine, which seems out of place. Why can’t open source and free engines use another one that is also open source to determine their own standards.
I understand that doing so may reduce a lot of workload, but it makes users feel like they are driving a good free car, but the steering wheel is chargeable.
I’m working on my game and I’m using spine.
Spine has a lot features, one of the most important thing for me is the physics, constraints, which has saved me a lot of time
I think there is a reason that spine has been the industry standard. it has a fast performance and is already battle tested (so many games using spine)
I think the defold team is already on the right track for implementing the industry standard which most professional is using
On the english version of the site with doc I found that LoongBones exports 3 files: json with LoongBones format data, json with atlas information and png - the texture itself. If the format will be not compatible with Spine’s format there might be a need to write a separate parser, but it’s definitely possible imho.
Library Pane documentation also mention that it can import Spine format (with some plugin):
EDIT:
Looks like it also supports export to Spine format data, then you might try it directly with Defold’s spine extension 
Of course we can, but you do realise that our time is limited and definitely not free? We work on Defold for a living. There is nothing but work on Defold that puts food on my table. If I spend two months working on a LoongBones implementation who will pay for that? Will you? Will the people behind LoongBones? Probably neither, but if you are indeed willing to pay for an implementation then by all means, let’s talk!
PS You are also free to create a LoongBones extension if you wish. The source code for the Spine extension is open source and I’m sure you can base a lot of the work on that extension.
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