r/gamedev - Should free (and open-source) game engines (like Godot) be copyleft?
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0 votes and 3 comments so far on Reddit

(I quickly got downvoted on the main post. lol)

  • Ephera
    6·
    3 years ago

    Well, I’m guessing, you don’t mean strong copyleft (e.g. GPL), which would force any games made with that game engine to also be copyleft.

    Weak copyleft (e.g. LGPL) is more complex, but I think, it would mean that:

    • Games can be proprietary.
    • Any plugins for the engine can be proprietary.
    • Changes to the engine code itself need to be open-sourced.

    So, it’s not perfect protection, but I would probably go for it (if I cared for popularity; my own projects are often AGPL).

    Others might not go for it, though, because weak copyleft is relatively hard to define (e.g. the LGPL refers to ‘linking’ which mainly exists in C), so just that uncertainty might deter gamedevs from adopting that engine.