Limitations of Defold's open source license

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#1

Hi i have a few questions about the license.
In the license it talks about “derivative works” and a “Game Engine Product”.
And how you can’t make or comercialize such things with Defold.

Now my question is, does that include a “game making” application/game.
So if you make an app that allows people to make “games” or other interactive experiences, say in a drag and drop fashion, that run within the given game/app. So it’s like a sandbox. Is that forbidden by the license? And what about if you have the option for people to “export” into ready made Defold solutions, so they can compile their creation natively with Defold?(being that they are already using the defold engine in the background)

Thanks for any clarification.

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#2

The complete license: The Defold License

And I suppose you are referring to 4a):

  1. Redistribution. You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without modifications, and in Source or Object form, provided that You meet the following conditions:

a) You do not sell or otherwise commercialise the Work or Derivative Works as a Game Engine Product;

And the definitions:

“Game Engine Product” shall mean software used for video game development. This includes both the content authoring software and the software used to show the created content.

“Work” shall mean the work of authorship, whether in Source or Object form, made available under the License, as indicated by a copyright notice that is included in or attached to the work (an example is provided in the Appendix below).

“Derivative Works” shall mean any work, whether in Source or Object form, that is based on (or derived from) the Work and for which the editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications represent, as a whole, an original work of authorship. For the purposes of this License, Derivative Works shall not include works that remain separable from, or merely link (or bind by name) to the interfaces of, the Work and Derivative Works thereof.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer which means that whatever I write here should not be considered formal legal advice.

Let’s start by looking at the first part of the 4a):

You do not sell or otherwise commercialise the Work … as a Game Engine Product;

I think this part is clear and easy to understand. “Work” is the source code and compiled binaries of Defold (editor and runtime). You are not allowed to sell them.

And here is the second part of 4a) which is perhaps a bit harder to interpret:

You do not sell or otherwise commercialise the … Derivative Works as a Game Engine Product;

If you take the source code of Defold and make your own modifications you have Derivative Works. If you try to sell the source code or binaries (ie Object form) of the Derivate Works you violate the terms of the license.

Note that the license applies to the source code of Defold and the binaries produced from the source code. The license does not apply to your own game code which is run by the Defold engine. As you know, the game engine binaries (part of the Work in Object form) are included in all games made with Defold, but you are obviously not prohibited from selling your games. This is because the Defold license states that:

For the purposes of this License, Derivative Works shall not include works that remain separable from, or merely link (or bind by name) to the interfaces of, the Work and Derivative Works thereof.

This means that if you link to or use the functions of Defold from your game, the game is not considered Derivative Work. And this is exactly what you do in your Lua game logic.

Did this make sense?

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#3

This is a fantastic response. I suspected as much(with regards to the last part), your mention of the linking bit i think is essential. That cleared it for me. If I understand correctly, and my understanding aligns with what you described, this is a great license for Defold.

Thanks for taking the time.

#4

Most of the Defold license, including the “merely link (or bind by name) to the interfaces”, is taken straight from the Apache 2.0 license. It is my understanding that explicitly stating this in the license itself clears up a lot of legal doubt that you would find in other software licenses where this isn’t mentioned. Especially since the Defold license has the addition of non-commercialisation of the Work and Derivative Works.

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