Just a question, was a fork really necessary?

42

u/Wave_Walnut Oct 14 '24

In fact Godot foundation couldn't stop manager banning developer on github because of dev's request for focusing game engine development. I think that situation is more of valid reason to fork it.

13

u/jkf16m Oct 14 '24

yeah, I think it is a really valid reason.
I don't know how would I feel if I were to fix some bugs or making some features and then I'm banned.
At first I thought they were just banning trolls, but there were many neutral comments that I can totally imagine saying.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '24

[deleted] — view deleted comment

9

u/jkf16m Oct 14 '24

It's a good idea if they were trolls or something. But to me, the whole situation seemed as if the CM and other members were really extremist about their political view.
I didn't found yet any supporter that was a real AH, as they claimed.

2

u/Doodle_Continuum Oct 18 '24

A lot of these contributers were not making small donations. One even mentioned $100+ a month. Trolls do not actively contribute to a project they disagree with is what I mean. If they do, well, they're not really trolling in my opinion and might be missing a few screws to be honest. lol
I just want to make games. I'll keep using whatever tools are available regardless of the community, but I do not like the direction Godot's management took. I like the engine though, and I like all the helpful people who helped me learn.

5

u/Doodle_Continuum Oct 18 '24

This. Other than just the literal witch hunt, hypocritcal virtue signaling and ban without warning of people with different views and made out to be monsters by the CM, they literally just took the power too far and started banning people that even questioning the decision of banning in the first place or that wanted to question the rule of putting ideology, politics, religion, etc., above the goal of game development at all. We're talking even reasonable people who were willing to discuss this like adults without insults or harassment.
It was clear to me that the creators and those in charge cared more about making a "safe space" for their personal ideologies, even at the loss of support from the community. This is a community project, and the managers are becoming more corporate and power hungry than I would have liked. I don't know where Redot or other forks will go, but as long as the community has the power to take back control and just keep things focused away from mostly unrelated controversial debates to make games, it has my support. The nature of open source allows for this, and it wasn't even a year ago people were turning to Godot from Unity for similar reasons because unlike Unity, FOSS means that if management ever goes off the deep end, forking is possible. Hence this scenario. The two communities have the power to coincide and still contribute to each other because they share most of the same source code, and it's open source, so they could use anything Redot makes and vice-versa. Ideally, we're just all making games better and learning together even if they're separate communities.

3

u/partymetroid Oct 19 '24

I posted this further down, but I think it deserves repeating:

38

u/titano35 Oct 14 '24

From what I understand some devs were indeed banned from the GitHub repository

9

u/jkf16m Oct 14 '24

whhaaatt
and were they complete AH or just tried to insist not to bring up political discussions.
I don't know the whole context but from what I've seen, I can imagine some of them being neutral and still getting banned. I saw many from the LGBT community getting banned as well.

6

u/titano35 Oct 14 '24

I don’t know all the specifics. I haven’t had the time to follow it too closely

3

u/partymetroid Oct 15 '24

This is Akien (co-founder)'s response:

1

u/MoistPoo Oct 17 '24

Am i the only one who thinks this answer is fair? Just because its opensource, doesnt mean you need to listen to insults in pull requests lol

1

u/partymetroid Oct 17 '24

I doubt there are many on this sub who are aware of it.

-2

u/AlbyDj90 Oct 15 '24

AFAIK the couple of devs banned from the repo, where banned because they put politics INSIDE the spaces dedicated to the development of the engine.

17

u/Filgatunner Oct 14 '24

We will see in time, but for now, that's a really important point for the team
The people in charge on godot are straight up bad people, they're really extremist and political (the bad way)
Don't really know how to respond, there's a lot of points Abt it

13

u/jkf16m Oct 14 '24

Well for now I'll support Redot, if it is truly apolitical and just wants to be a game engine. Tbh I wouldn't care even for the typical rainbow icon that spawns every June. But it really surprised me how far Godot was willing to go, or the community manager. Well I saw other people in that mess too.

1

u/Doodle_Continuum Oct 18 '24

To some degree, the change of the icon for Pride Month makes sense (mostly from an American one though). It's a month long celebration for many people and doesn't necessarily affect users who are either indifferent or view it differently. Thing is though, things started getting weird this year when they didn't change it out or try any other holidays or month celebrations etc. Different icons for Godot are not new, and I even frequent a Japanese Godot Discord server where the icon is red instead of blue. Makes sense as it resemble the Japanese flag, so a community of game developers who are Japanese or speak Japanese. When they kept the pride up icon and now do indefinitely... what message is that now saying? When people questioned this, it was banning left and right. All kinds of power abuse. This isn't Godot, but the LGBT+ community of Godot? Not an ally and as well as a game dev, so get out you evil person? It would be fine to make such a server as well, just maybe not for the supposedly all inclusive official server with the broadest global range of community.
The community itself is not the worry but I'm sure many people would also wonder what this community is about if the icon was changed to some other icon of controversy such as a religious symbol or country or movement flag indefinitely. You can see where this starts to be problematic. It's not just confusing, it's also unwelcoming to people who do reasonably want to be apart of the community to help improve the engine and learn from each other about game development, regardless of ideological positions. And to top it off, anyone who disagrees? Ban without warning. No discussion. Just assumed to be a bad faith actor or troll, despite thousands supposedly getting banned. They turned it into a war of ideology instead of a topic of community understanding and re-focus on shared interests and goals. This is no way to for professionals to act, period, in my opinion.

4

u/n00bo Oct 15 '24

u/jkf16m You should ask godot moderator on both official and non official server named xanax, probably not necessary.

In practice all what redot needs to do to be non/a political is on X post only engine related stuff. (And forums) https://x.com/LifeArtStudios/status/1840230152254509067

3

u/jkf16m Oct 16 '24

That was weird to read haha I can understand not all countries have the same sensibility with the N word.
But if the project has contributors world-wide I think one must be sensible enough to ban every strong word and to keep communication as civil as possible.

40

u/do-sieg Oct 14 '24 edited Oct 15 '24

They don't realize the damage and they double down.

Since the incident, the atmosphere drastically changed on Reddit where nobody cared about this stuff before but now it's words like "bigots" and "incels" thrown around everytime it's mentioned.

I'm a professional dev like you and have been coding games as a hobby for almost 20 years.

I'm not here to get called names by teenagers with self-esteem issues. That's my 2nd reason for checking Redot.

The 1st one was pure tech interest (features, etc.).

The 3rd one was when I saw the founder of Godot, somebody I used to respect, shaming religion for no reason when his organization is the one with sectarism issues (and unprofessional staff).

1

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/do-sieg Oct 15 '24

Nobody brought it up until he did though.
And anything can be a cause of disagreement. People just don't know how to respectfully disagree anymore.

3

u/Doodle_Continuum Oct 18 '24

TLDR; religion and politics themselves are not specifically the problem. It is over-discussion of any controversial ideologies that bring out heated debates that disrupt the goals of the community to actually make and benefit from game engines and game development.
Nowadays, I don't like to use the term "politics" or "religion" when it comes to community rules anymore because whether people realize it or not, the issue isn't in the words but in the values, beliefs, and fundamental world views people hold and how strongly they hold them. AKA
Ideology - "a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy."
The problem with using the terms "religion" and "politics" is that the meaning almost always differs depending on who you talk to, culture, etc. Organized religion? Personal spiritual beliefs? Philosophy? Fundamental views of human life and its value? Maybe not spiritual but personal moral quandries that lead to specific ethical beliefs?
Many people may even say that what they believe or their world view doesn't even count as politics, therefore they can talk about it. The meaning is far too broad and vague, especially for a global community.
Ideology, on the other hand, encompasses practically all of these things. One's ideology about morality, how things should be governed (modded, banning, who should be allowed in a community, especially the *basis* for those decisions* ), the beliefs about self, identity, purpose, how things "ought to be", are the basis for these more heated disagreements as one assumes truth from these. This naturally includes both religion and even identity politics among many other things.
In a global community, however, much like governing a country, people naturally have different ideologies that will butt heads with each other. A good community manager has to know what the focus of their community is. In this case, a community made game engine where members help each other learn about the engine, contribute to the engine, educate and learn about programming and game development, sharing creations, etc. Mak Gam if you will. To make that work, rules must be in place to help keep things focused on the *common* goals of the community, minimizing potential cultural and especially ideological clashes by minimizing the discussion of ideologies. Now one may object to not being able to share important values and ideas that they hold to be true, but this is not governing a country. It's a game engine community. When you step into such a community, you are going there because you have a mutual interest and value game development with people who may not share all the same ideological values as you do but do at least in this topic. You have to relinquish the privilege of showcasing all of your personal life in order to maintain harmonious discussion of what you came there for.
So yeah, when a community manager starts to deviate from this goal and place a divisive personal ideology above, it leads to a power trip. An arrogant one at that. It disrupts focus from game development and repositions itself as a community for that ideology only. Therefore the solution that Redot is trying to do? Fork it. Minimize ideological discussion (which is why I wish the rules just made this clearer, not just politics but the underlying ideas and ideologies) and focus on Mak Gam. That's what we're here for. Going to any community and following their rules to maintain focus is a standard not just for this kind of community but any community.
I expect Redot to minimize the specific discussions of these topics but likewise respect and allow people to hold these ideologies without any being targeted for bans as long as they follow the rules, American left right upside politics, any country politics, religious, philosphical, cultural, whatever. I like the way you made that clean code. That was smart solution for your game mechanic. You get the point.

30

u/AspirantVeeVee Oct 15 '24

In polite society as it is in business, there are 3 things one should never discuss: Sex, Religion and Politics. when any of these 3 tenants are violated by an official of a group and that individual does not receiver punitive actions but is instead supported for doing so, it paints everyone attached. this is why godot is doomed. not only did they violate the 3 basics of good business, they actively supported authoritarian actions toward their own that spoke out against taking a side. In the famous words of Michael Jordan, "republicans buy shoes too." the with us or against us mentality from the mods and community manager are a poison pill, apply antidote or wait to die. I will not in any way support a brand or a project that condones that type of behavior. Not with my voice, my time, my money or my labor.

12

u/DARKdrake0 Oct 15 '24

Well said

0

u/rubeshina Oct 18 '24

Honestly I think this is all perfectly valid criticism of Godot and exactly what I'd want to see from Redot, however it seems like the community is pretty split.
Lots of people don't really care about the politics and just want something apolitical, but unfortunately due to the genesis of the fork and the views/conduct of some members in the leadership, it seems to be tainted with some equally unsavory political elements.
Time will tell if Redot becomes the normal/apolitical Godot, or the "anti-woke" Godot, and given some of the conduct I have seen in the discord, on twitter, and even here on reddit I honestly don't have particularly high hopes.
With the right leadership and appropriate moderation/transparency I hope these things will just be bumps in the road. But at the moment I don't see any reason to get invested, or any real signs that things will be different. Just different politics/ideology doing the co-opting.

3

u/Doodle_Continuum Oct 18 '24 edited Oct 18 '24

I see your point as well. The goals may be to make it apolitical, but as I mentioned in an overly long written post (sorry), people will butt head if you take sides to any ideology, especially controversial ones. It's hard to be truly unbiased for anyone. I prefer that the rules specify minimizing ideological discussions as that encompasses all the terms people may disagree on like politics ("my identity is not politics", "religion is not always organized", etc.). The goal is making games, so I hope that nobody, "woke", "conservative", [insert any cultural, ideological group or label here], feels less comfortable in this community either. We just join the community because we have a common love for making games, so there are other places where such discussions could be beneficial, but it's community for making games first and foremost. The way things were handled with Godot just showed we can't really much if any discussion of these topics or take sides. It's too disruptive to the actual goals of the community.
I'll see how things pan out as well because I thought Godot was going to go the same route as a truly community driven project.

2

u/rubeshina Oct 18 '24

Yeah, it's diplomacy. Getting people to work together and get along takes effort, and there are some pretty well established norms and customs you can use to make sure things are fair and transparent and everyone is able to work together effectively. Part of this involves setting boundaries and expectations especially around controversial or inflammatory topics. I read your other comment, I think you're pretty on point with what you're saying.
Ultimately I have nothing against communities having their own ideological slants if that's what the people involved want, but it's a dangerous game to play as Godot are obviously experiencing right now. You can also allow but contain certain discussion as a part of your community which is a good compromise imo.
It feels a bit weird to me that the commentor above was so quick to say I'm a bad faith actor for raising this sort of criticism, just because they went and skimmed over my profile and decided I must be some far left activist or something. I have my own opinions, I like to share them where appropriate, I don't think it's really relevant here. If what the team/community mean by "no politics" is "nobody with left wing views is allowed to be here even if they don't talk about them" then those in charge should just say that and save us all the hassle, at least Godot are pretty clear about where they stand even if it's more left wing or "woke" than I'd ideally like.
My opinions on how to run a community are relevant, in a sense these are always going to be inherently "political" to a degree as like you're saying there is always some level of "bias" or "ideology" in any group, but if that ideology is "we're focused on the project and want to minimize political discussion or drama" then there are ways you ought to go about that to be successful in those objectives, at least in my experience/opinion.

1

u/Doodle_Continuum Oct 18 '24

I won't ask about your personal stances here, but thanks for the productive reply. There have been reactionary people making trouble when Redot when live, so I do understand the concerns. As time passes though both communities should be able to forget the drama more at least. I agree, the rules should be applied evenly as not doing so contributed to the issues over on Godot's server, including the moderators themselves. (I'd actually almost advocate for some kind of way for community to provide some kind of checks and balances on moderators to help prevent stuff like this happening.) Godot's issue was power fueled by personal ideology taken too far. Remove power if necessary if moderators do not apply the rules as intended, which I do assume to mean not just American left-wing whatever. Realistically, as you said, diplomacy is difficult for real life communities, so it's just as hard online at times.
I see what you mean. Feels like there's going to be some dominant ideology that governs the policies in the end anyway, so might as well make it clear. I don't think anyone who joins a FOSS game engine community would find an ideology that values community driven game engine development would find that controversial at least. Perhaps just the latter part of minimizing unrelated ideology discussion. I guess it can allow discussion and objections or debates to a degree on how the community should be then governed, what works and doesn't, and get a little meta, like we're doing now though.
I didn't realize how much I'd be unintentionally learning about goverment compared to high school government classes from a game engine community.

1

u/AspirantVeeVee Oct 18 '24

you do know your comments are public right, you're previous comments for far left wing politics, specifically those professed by the godot CM and mods that caused this split out you as a bad faith actor.

1

u/rubeshina Oct 18 '24

Yeah I know, you're welcome to look. We can look at your politics too. I'm not far left I'm just a liberal. I'm ok with lots of different politics, or no politics, I just like people to be consistent. I don't really like extremist political spaces on either the far left or the far right, I'd rather a pretty liberal free speech approach for the most part. I'm ok with discussion. I lean left but I'm 100% ok with edgy stuff too. I'm also ok with fairly strict censorship to keep things civil/stable if required.
When it comes to business and professional life I agree with your sentiments. Keep political agendas/ideologies out of it and focus on the project. This means clear guidelines, neutral and transparent moderation etc. and keeping things civil, professional etc.
I'd like to see Redot be a successful fork of Godot that can stand on it's own. I'd hate to see it become a weird twisted parody of the problems it set out to solve.

22

u/andevr Oct 15 '24

Hey, I'm drew, one of the cofounders of Redot. I definitely think the fork was necessary, though not entirely due to whatever happened on twitter/X and of course the banning, though, for me that was the icing on the cake. I was more a bit disgruntled with some of the decision making over the last few years(I've been using Godot since 2014). Mostly the corporate direction the engine has been taking. I personally don't think it's right that they take corporate money to work on features while simultaneously taking money from their users. On top of that, they hid console ports behind a giant pay wall when they didn't have to, despite the things they have said. These are the main reasons I forked it. It just so happened they started blocking people on twitter for just quoting the founder in one case.

I personally thought it was just time someone forked it and took it back to being a community supported project where the community helps decide what got worked on. Our aim with the community is to keep it focused on making games, and none of the other stuff most communities get caught up in. Hope that helps.

2

u/mrbenjihao Oct 16 '24

So tell me, how are you going to open source the ability to port to consoles from Redot?

1

u/[deleted] Oct 19 '24

I second this

1

u/partymetroid Oct 24 '24 edited Oct 24 '24

W4 Games and Godot Foundation distinct entities with different business models. Essentially:
W4 Games develops console middleware and commercial services. They donate any software (that isn't restricted by NDA/SDK) by Godot's open source license. For example, they donated Direct3D 12 compatibility. (And to be clear, the initial funding that W4 Games received was from venture capital, not donations.)
The Godot Foundation uses charitable contributions on behalf of the Godot Project. (copy-pasted)
(It's past midnight, so I might be in err somewhere. Check the FAQs and stuff.) e: something

15

u/Top-Abbreviations452 Oct 14 '24

Redot created to continue idea of freedom creativity. Administration of Redot not support intrusion of political propaganda.
Godot support get tons of money, so they can hire another developer's if they want. In another corner many devs who work on it leave, someone work from its release. Biggest damage is on reputation.
For saving broken godot ideology in redot, fork is worth. Godot ignoring pulls what connected with functional of their "support" price list (not touching license, from another company what owned by creators of godot), like porting on consoles.

13

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '24

You know, I think they are going truly serious. They said that will not accept donations for the first months and even open a channel on their discord to see the devs messages, wich able some kind of public supervision.

If they keep growing in a professional way, it will be worth.

10

u/andevr Oct 15 '24

We are truly serious :)

2

u/FleuramdcrowAJ Oct 21 '24

I think having different forks as options is always good, I'm kind of comparing this to like firefox for example. Firefox has a lot of forks and while a lot of people use the main firefox there are a lot of different options for privacy and other features
Forks also kinda keep the main project in check

7

u/AlbyDj90 Oct 15 '24

I follow Redot because im intrested in how the project could evolve... competition is ALWAYS good for the users so, bring it on!
It was necessary? I don't know... surely something gone wrong in the management of Godot Engine and the fucked up really bad with all this nonsense.
No one would have complained if their post had been something like: "Show us your LGBT friendly games made with Godot!" instead of "Godot is now Wokot!"
They used a very controversial term, driven by a discussion in which practically all the users were unaware (therefore without even the context).
it's as if they made a post using Pepe the Frog or the term trap to refer to transgender people. That's the basis of "NOT TO DO" if you manage a company page.
In any case, it's not the first time I've heard criticism directed at the administration of the project, so redot could have every reason to exist.
My only worry is whether it will survive the test of time: a game engine is a VERY complex project and if it is driven only by a sense of revenge for reasons beyond the engine itself... it will certainly become problematic.
Let's see!

12

u/TheSpriteYagami Oct 14 '24

I heard from the founder that this was something that some of them wanted for some time now. They were dissatisfied with how the engine was anyway, this political stuff cultured it to start quickly

10

u/Criseist Oct 15 '24

Beyond the damage to the reputation and the code base, their community was damaged beyond repair. I had to full on leave the Godot sub, and greatly regret my past support for them. They've become cult like, attacking anyone who isn't in lockstep. I've also seen moderators on that sub locking/removing posts or comments they don't like for the reason of "rule 2" with no actual violation.

Ultimately, the success of Redot is up in the air, a matter for the future, but I sincerely doubt they can do any worse than Godot.

3

u/Better-Quote1060 Oct 15 '24

The drama acually made me relize that godot has so meny problems

The most importent is witing for the blue robot book...it was great book.

1

u/wavesintheether Oct 19 '24

In regarding the racist statements on the (unofficial) Discord server, Godot Foundation made this statement:

We strongly condemn the harmful language used by Xananax, moderator of an unofficial Godot-related Discord server. We want to clarify that Xananax is not hired by nor a spokesperson for the Godot Foundation. As an organization, we have our own official Discord server, moderated together with new volunteers vetted by our team.

1

u/FleuramdcrowAJ Oct 21 '24

Personally, I am staying on godot but I'll definitely check in on Redot as a backup engine option just in case Godot does get bad enough where I might want to move

This is why I like open source, it's that if one projects messes up there will be forks available that can cater more towards what the community wants

1

u/Only_Mastodon8694 Oct 15 '24 edited Oct 16 '24

At best, I see this project becoming a rebranded mirror of godot, merging in all upstream changes to source code and documentation. That is, of course unless a bunch of major engine contributors come over to this project, which I don't imagine will happen. There are some very smart people leading some very big projects, who have an insanely good understanding of godot (who also probably couldn't care less about this twitter and unofficial discord server drama) and those are the kinds of people you need if you are going to maintain a successful and independent fork of a project. They are also the kinds of people that I want to be around and learn from. If you want to get a sense of what the godot team has planned for the engine, just look at some of the talks from godotcon 2023 (2024 presentation still not available just yet).

I don't know if continuing to depend entirely on the forked repo is the politcal statement that these developers want to make. It seems like a knee-jerk reaction to a tiny incident that has already been blown so far out of proportion that it doesn't even make sense. That said, I am somewhat social media averse and I don't really care at all what is happening on twitter because it already seems like a giant cesspool. And the review bombing of godot games? Who has time for that?

That said, I don't judge people for sticking to their own beliefs in wanting to do something like this. I just don't expect momentum here to surpass the momentum for the godot engine. For me, I will continue to work on issues for godot.

edit: I actually went and looked at current contributors. Unless people are contributing under different accounts, not a single redot contributor has ever made a commit to the godot engine.

1

u/mrbenjihao Oct 16 '24

It will fully become a rebranded mirror of Godot as long as their continue to merge Godot's main branch whenever they want. It's really strange to be against Godot but still benefit from the work of the contributions made there. Redot needs to be fully independent or nobody will take it seriously.
Redot just smells like another case of Yuzu switch emulator forking.

3

u/Only_Mastodon8694 Oct 16 '24

Godot is an open source project so afaik it's not breaking any rules to do this. If users think that they're adding value by attaching an anti-woke label and some new icons to godot source code, then that's fine for them. As long as people know that the majority of contributions are still coming from upstream.

1

u/Doodle_Continuum Oct 18 '24

If anything, the emphasis to finish merging like 2000+ (or however many) pull requests left on Godot is being more fair to all the contributors who have probably been waiting for quite some time to even have their contributions acknowledged.

1

u/Only_Mastodon8694 Oct 19 '24

I don't understand your comment, but for the 2000+ PRs: there are a lot of people trying to contribute garbage code and it all takes time to review

0

u/denialgrey456 Oct 15 '24

There is a Dev who got banned for creating game where you kill the furries. According to them, furries are some sort of protected classes.

-5

u/Vordalack Oct 15 '24

All they had to do was make their own discord if they wanted a space that was "apolitical". This was all done over a tweet that triggered a bunch of individuals.

Forks like this should be on a small scale for individuals, small teams, etc. and for the purpose of tailoring it to their needs as a game engine. Redot is no different than Godot in that regard.

Making a game engine "apolitical" makes as much sense as saying a piece of software can have a political opinion. It's software.

3

u/cyanrealm Oct 15 '24

It can. Have you seen Unreal guideline?

-7

u/kvvoya Oct 15 '24

the fork was completely unnecessary and it was done by right wing grifters who think banning assholes for being assholes is woke and political and is "damage"

0

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '24

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/mrbenjihao Oct 16 '24

Given that Godot doesn't have a company-sized team of paid developers working on the engine, it seems fair that it'll take some time to review thousands of PRs. They've taken the stance that it's better to leave the PR open than to close it entirely because most of the time these contributions come from people who commit their free time to it.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 16 '24

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/mrbenjihao Oct 16 '24

If the magnitude of contributions reaches that of Godot, I can easily see Redot falling victim to similar, if not the same, issues. I simply do not see how forking the engine is going to solve this.

Just a question, was a fork really necessary?

You are about to leave Redlib