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Non-Commercial License Why? Switch to Commercial Friendly MIT License #214

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WithinAmnesia opened this issue Sep 30, 2023 · 2 comments
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@WithinAmnesia
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WithinAmnesia commented Sep 30, 2023

Godot 4 has commercial use in mind. Why make an RTS only to remove any use for anyone who uses any element of it to be unable to monetize and pay themself for their work? https://github.com/spicylobstergames/shotcaller-godot/blob/main/LICENSE.md
https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Why do this? Nothing in this project can be used by anyone to learn or adapt other than to be broke and hurt independent development. No big studio is going to use this code and why build such gate keeping on top of the MIT Godot license?
https://godotengine.org/license/
https://github.com/godotengine/godot/blob/master/LICENSE.txt
MIT license:
"Copyright (c) 2014-present Godot Engine contributors (see AUTHORS.md).
Copyright (c) 2007-2014 Juan Linietsky, Ariel Manzur.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE."

So why does this project insist on gatekeeping any commercial attempt at even using a part of this code yet it is viewable as open source? So anyone who wishes to learn a piece of this cannot use or adapt any of this for commercial uses; thus this whole project is relegated to useless niche anti-community hobby project for people who are not serious about making games for games and development of any significant value are not free. Regardless if the developers are good or evil people should be able to pay themselves for their own work. The opposite is literally poverty and near slavery and a race to the bottom. This whole thing seems like a legal trap waiting to happen for it's open source, YET there is no way to use any of the code to adopt or modify use a small piece for commercial use. Also if any person did use any piece of this projects' code adapted transformed or not the entire dev's work would be under threat from legal take down on a whim on Steam Itch.io GoG or any other legal online games store that abides by the Madrid convention / international copyright laws; which is basically all the civilized western world: https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/registration/madrid/

This whole project is stillborn and cannot contribute to any future game development with these non-commercial licenses. Might as well take this whole thing down make it propitiatory and stop the half on half off, just pick your lane and live with with the pros and cons of either side, hopefully pick an open source commercial friendly MIT license so everyone wins. Tragically there is no commercial friendly license anywhere here and this whole projects is instead cursed to have the worst of both, no resources and no community; it should be commercial friendly licensed like with MIT license so it can grow naturally with independent developers.

I am biased. I am not happy with these non-commercial licenses and I will not use any code here even though I'd like to and I could be greatly helped if I was able to even use a piece a small part or adaption but no these are strictly non commercial. So any time I or anyone one else spends here is wasted for literally everything valuable or can help people make games here is illegal to use commercially; even adaptions or small pieces. RTS games are hard to make they require serious talent to pull off and it is a shame that so much work here is rendered to nothing more than a shiny display piece because of a non-commercial license. You can have copyright and no one can use your exact version but they can make their own unique version that would solve this mess but no its non-commercial and legally binding. I don't want my work stolen either but I have copyright where anyone can copy adapt and sell my game content but if they try to sell my exact version I have copyright to I can take that exact copy down for I have copy right to do so. Yet this entire project is cursed for anyone to use this code for it's anti-developer and tragically it is as if this whole project is restrictive as a proprietary game engine for the legally binding double non-commercial use licenses. What is the point of having this on Github if developers cannot use any part to help pay themselves with their own work? This is not a museum, this is new work and its open to see but illegal to interact with other than the most gatekept worst of both versions. You effectively have the legal restrictions of a proprietary game yet the resource limitations of an independent developer.

Why not just make the license commercial friendly MIT license and keep the copyright for your own exact version like most open source people do? Take a page from Flare: https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/if-i-make-a-video-game-via-the-flare-engine-can-i-copyright-the-video-game-as-like-clint + https://github.com/flareteam/flare-engine/blob/master/COPYING
Or GemRB: https://github.com/gemrb/gemrb/blob/master/COPYING
Or Solaris: https://docs.solarus-games.org/tutorials/basics/choosing-a-license/
I wish the team the best, but it's such a wasted opportunity having the anti-community non-commercial license. Why not make a version of this whole thing under MIT like Godot 4+ and just be friendly and open with the independent developer community? Everyone would be better off with a commercial friendly open source license like the MIT license that comes from Godot. I wish this project was MIT License so people could make awesome commercial friendly RTS games in Godot.

@erlend-sh
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The core engine will be MIT licensed once we’ve finished the migration to Godot 4 :)

@WithinAmnesia
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I'm sorry I got really upset. I think I was stressed out I should be more nice too. This is really cool, thank you for MIT license.

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