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Comment by mikulas_florek | Hacker News Reader

Perfectly valid question. You are right, while there is a high chance that UE and Unity will be maintained, there is no guarantee. In any single person project, especially noncommercial, the chance it will not be maintained is much higher and Lumix Engine is not an exception. The only "proof" that it will be maintained is that I already worked on this 4+ years (as you can see on github) and that I'm making a commercial game with the engine.

If someone is not prevented by something (personal preference, license issue, features) there is no reason to use Lumix Engine rather than UE/Unity. UE/Unity should be the right option for 95% of developers.

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I do not wish to appear overly cynical (and apologies if this does), but what is stopping me investing all my time/effort into this, and finding out the licensing terms have changed such that it becomes more on par with commercial offerings?

Seems like the only benefit would be short lived, whilst I would take on a lot of the disadvantages of not going to a more commercial offering immediately. I'm genuinely interested. I can imagine this putting a lot of people off "committing".

You/I/Anybody can not change the license retrocatively. It means that current source code is MIT and it always will be. I/Anybody might fork the engine under different license or even close source it, but that won't change the fact that current source code is still MIT licensed. Me close-sourcing it is the same as me abandoning it - you can still continue using/developing it under any license you wish.

Appreciate the answer, thanks. I guess that would rule out the people who definitely do not even want the possibility of the prospect of maintaining their own engine. I would be curious to know what kind of percentage we would be talking about...

No engine is guaranteed to be maintained, not even the UE/Unity. Look at CryEngine, once a big, popular engine. Now with all the CryTek's problems, I would not bet it won't get dumped.

Thanks for the reply. I will have look and try to test it.

But if you think this is something ready to use in commercial projects, ask for money. I usually feel personally better to if I can pay for things, also paying for things opens a window for to have quality requirements.

It's hard to monetize projects like this, donate button is useless, maybe patreon.

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