We are finally sharing the Defold source code!

Announcements
#1

Today we have some really exciting news to share with you, something which we have been planning for quite some time:

Defold is finally making all of our source code available to the community!

Today, on the 19th of May, King is announcing that the Defold game engine is available as a free and open project. As part of this process King will transfer Defold to a software foundation; the Defold Foundation. The Defold Foundation will take full ownership of the Defold product and services, including the website, build servers, user forum and social media channels. The source code is available on GitHub.

“We are immensely proud to be able to make the Defold source code available and open to contributions and we’re eager to start the journey as a free and open game engine together with our great community of game developers building games using Defold. We would also wish to thank King for believing in our vision and entrusting Defold to the Defold Foundation.” says Björn Ritzl, Product Owner, the Defold Foundation.

Developers from the original development team will leave King to work full time on Defold on behalf of the Defold Foundation. The foundation will work closely with the developer community and industry partners to drive new development in 2020 and beyond.

The Defold Foundation board will be headed by Sara Cederberg (King) and include industry profiles such as Elin Eriksson (Women in Tech Sweden).

“We’re hugely impressed by the Defold team, and look forward to seeing many great gaming experiences come to life. We’ve seen millions of players already playing the King games run on the Defold engine and we’re excited to see the community come together even more, with the support of the Defold Foundation.” says Tjodolf Sommestad, Chief Development Officer, King.

The above announcement, information about the source code launch, how to contribute and how to support the foundation is all part of our new section on the Defold website. But before you head over to check out the new content we encourage you to read the rest of this post to learn a bit more about the foundation, the new license and how to get in touch with us if you have any questions.

The Defold Foundation

The Defold Foundation is a completely independent legal entity with full ownership of Defold. King will have a seat on the Defold Foundation board, but will no longer have any direct influence on the development direction of Defold. King will still use Defold for selected live games.

As was mentioned in the announcement above some of the developers from the original development team will leave King to work full time on Defold on behalf of the Defold Foundation.

This transition is done in complete agreement between all involved parties. By handing over Defold to the Defold Foundation we believe it gives a lot of credibility to Defold as a strong and independent open source game engine.

MORE ABOUT THE FOUNDATION

Code and license

We will make all parts of Defold including the engine, editor and build server source code available on GitHub with a developer-friendly license. The new license means that there will no longer be any restrictions on the kind of games and applications you can create with Defold, as long as you stick to the license terms.

We will also take the opportunity to simplify the Terms and Conditions for the website, forum and additional materials such as project templates.

READ THE LICENSE

Questions

We understand that this is big news and potentially a big change for you. We will do everything we can to continue to provide a great game engine to you so that you can continue to focus on making great games!

If you have any questions regarding this announcement we hope you will get in touch with us:

We have also prepared an FAQ that might answer some of your questions.

SOURCE CODE FAQ

60 Likes
#2

If you speak Russian, here is unofficial Russian Defold Community Telegram Chat: https://t.me/DefoldEngine

13 Likes
#3

Big news! Super excitited to see the community help with bugs and features!

11 Likes
#4

Great news!

I’m looking forward to see Defold evolve and see all the amazing contributions this already great community can bring to the project.

11 Likes
#5

This is a big announcement! I’m super excited for this! :heart:

So nice to see the code actually, both Java/Clojure and Cpp devs will be helpful! This is my new, favorite project, thinking about quitting my job :laughing:

A new badge and a shirt is coming in 3… 2… 1… :partying_face:

(A special date, today is also a fifth anniversary of The Witcher 3! :smiley: )

I guess we need a Defold Game Jam on this occassion! :heart_eyes:

13 Likes
#6

We will for sure organise a game jam soon! :slight_smile:

17 Likes
#8

It us awesome. :partying_face::partying_face::partying_face:

Have some problem when trying to run on Windows

C:\Users\d954m\IdeaProjects\defold>scripts\build.py shell --platform win32
Running 'shell'
Setting up shell with DYNAMO_HOME, PATH, ANDROID_HOME and LD_LIBRARY_PATH/DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH (where applicable) set
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\d954m\IdeaProjects\defold\scripts\build.py", line 1917, in <module>
    f()
  File "C:\Users\d954m\IdeaProjects\defold\scripts\build.py", line 1197, in shell
    process = subprocess.Popen([SHELL, '-l'], env = self._form_env(), preexec_fn=preexec_fn)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\subprocess.py", line 394, in __init__
    errread, errwrite)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\subprocess.py", line 644, in _execute_child
    startupinfo)
WindowsError: [Error 2]
4 Likes
#9

If you’re looking for a Discord server (English and other languages), here is the unofficial Defold Community Discord server: https://discord.gg/cHBde7J

6 Likes
#10

wow, good news. now I am very happy about the open source defold engine.

now I’m Super man…

5 Likes
#11

Congrats defold! finally open source :slight_smile:

5 Likes
#12

Have you done the README_SETUP.md? It looks like you’re running a regular command prompt, which most likely won’t work well. We use msys instead.

6 Likes
#13

Yes, thanks. Msys was not added to path.
Now it worked=)

6 Likes
#14

Big hype! Future is bright! :sunny:

9 Likes
#15

A small post for Defolders, a giant leap for Defold. :defold:
Best of luck for the bright journey ahead. :sun_with_face:

7 Likes
#16

Very cool. Congrats!

3 Likes
#17

Congrats on the release! I’ve only been using Defold for a few months, but I’m really hyped.

Also, great job so far at staying civil with people on Twitter. It’s unbelievable how much some people care about the term “open source” being one exact thing, and they are super willing to explain that to you…

11 Likes
#18

Thanks! We did decide to publish a comment and also change our messaging to not step on anyone’s toes: https://defold.com/2020/05/20/Some-thoughts-on-the-open-source-discussion/

2 Likes
#19

This was an interesting read. I actually had no idea there was a debate surrounding the term “open source.” For my understanding, applying the term “open source” to Defold would imply that the engine itself may be sold by a third party, correct? And that’s exactly what the team wants to protect.

2 Likes
#20

Correct, our license prevents someone from selling Defold. And this is in conflict with the Open Source Initiative’s definition of the term open source.

3 Likes
#21

Grats! Are you also releasing the source of your build server?

2 Likes