Thread by @Xrayez

People of #GameDev used to raise reasonable questions about @GodotEngine when it went #OpenSource!

The leadership of Godot acts like contract game developers that benefit from free labor, which explains everything about Godot's governance.

#GodotEngine #CancelGodotEngine

You can read my analysis as an ex-contributor regarding Godot's governance model which confirms the above comments:

https://twitter.com/Xrayez/status/1539652735804485633

Commenting on "what's wrong with that" regarding free labor:

The lead developer Juan Linietsky (@reduzio) wrote that there's "true meritocracy" in Godot. But if you ask him directly, he says that everything is based on trust, and "not meritocracy":

https://twitter.com/Xrayez/status/1529726621929947136

There's technically nothing wrong with collaboration on this level. That's the entire ideology of #FOSS and alike. But Godot is acting disingenuous and hypocritical, which makes it a candidate project that exploits the free work done by contributors.

https://twitter.com/Xrayez/status/1539906659681767425

This phenomenon is called "Exploitation of labor".

"It denotes an unjust social relationship based on an asymmetry of power or unequal exchange of value between workers and their employers."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitat…

Example: as you may probably know, Godot doesn't provide official support for game consoles out of the box:

docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tuto…

Godot says that they cannot do this because they must be licensed as a company. However, they link to third-party companies that can provide console support:

The first link they provide is a third-party company called "Lone Wolf Technology":

When you go to their website, you'll stumble upon Ariel there, @GodotEngine co-founder.

Ariel is part of @GodotEngine's Project Leadership Committee (Godot PLC). You can verify this for yourself if you go to Godot's governance page:

godotengine.org/governance

Godot PLC is responsible for making all funding decisions in the project:

If you've read my analysis above, you'll understand that Godot is associated with OKAM Studio, a private game development studio based in Argentina. You can even verify that Godot used to have hardcoded references to OKAM Studio:

The "punto-" nickname you see above belongs to Ariel Manzur. You'll rarely if ever see him discussing things publicly in Godot: github.com/punto-

Even now, you'll even see Rémi (@Akien) (project manager) requesting a review from Ariel even for trivial changes, because Rémi doesn't have access to closed, proprietary platforms himself to properly test his changes. Ariel approves changes, so he has write access to Godot.

Therefore, Ariel (punto), a co-founder of @GodotEngine, manages both Godot (open-source, non-profit), and at the same time, Ariel manages a private commercial company that ports Godot to consoles, for money.

I'd like to reach out to @Conservancy so they could provide their official response explaining the above situation, unless they choose to keep ignoring my requests.

Question: are we being lied to? Do you see the deception? Prove me wrong!