Hi guys, I was wondering if Disney is still using Panda3D for their commercial projects. In these times of Unity, UDK etc, it seems nobody wants to use a free engine for big projects or in big companies. I am not sure about this, it’s only a view point to be discussed.
Humm … i guess the answer is yes. The pirates and toontown are alive and kicking in internet.
But it’s really matter? I guess the important is if you’re using Panda3D in your projects.
If you have a good project and people like it, the community grows up , the Panda3D grows up, you grows up, developers will be more motivating etc.
Panda3D itself open doors to you, but just you can go through. If Disney is using it or not is a minor thread, but if you are using this is a real important thread.
Panda3D become the only truly free (and open) alternative for webbrowser game development. The community share knowledge that cost tons of dollars in training…
I guess the more important focus is in Panda3D itself, nor in showcase.
[]s
Or rather, is it being maintained by CMU?
Nope, hasn’t been for a long time.
Panda3D is still actively in use at Disney and maintained by Disney. CMU owns Panda3D and maintains the servers.
“owns Panda”?
And that means…?
That means they hold the copyright and that means they own the engine. Which part is unclear to you?
I just don’t understand what that means for an open source project. Is it just the name and giving them the credit?
Open source != public domain.
It works the same exact way as any other kind of copyrighted software licensing. The creators (or someone else who owns the project, because it could’ve been acquired by another entity) keep the copyright, and thus ownership (understood as “the right to decide what happens with the project and it’s availability in the future”). They then make the project available to end users on a specific license, which may be closed source or open source. In any case, the end user, who might also become a developer, based on the level of freedom and/or obligations the license provides them with, is bound by the license and additionally forbidden to claim ownership (copyright) to the project and misrepresent it’s origin.
This is extremely important for open source projects, because if they were public domain there would be high chance of someone falsely claiming the ownership of the project (with no way to legally disprove that), limiting it’s availability and maybe even trying to sue.
And it’s also important for permissive licenses, such as BSD, because that way even if someone makes the source code of their modified version of Panda close-source, the license and copyright protects the original engine and thus protects us, it’s users.
So it’s more than just an arbitrary line in the documentation.
that was enough
Not that I would want to see it happen, but how would this affect a fork of the project or if CMU decided to drop support completely and another group decided to take over?
Panda is using a modified BSD license. This basically means you can do whatever you like with the software as long as you acknowledge Disney, and CMU as being the originators of Panda. You also can’t use their name in any advertisement.
For example, OS X is Apple’s operating system, but if your read their copyright notice carefully, they still acknowledge that it originates from BSD. If you fork Panda, you’ll have to do the same thing. (But that is pretty much it.)
As for comparing Panda to Unity, they are basically the samething – except each have their own strength. They are both Dx9 level engines. Unity is better packaged, more friendly to use, but I also find it more confining. Panda is orientated more towards programmers which I like. Panda have some advanced features like geometry shaders that Unity doesn’t have.
The only thing I don’t like about Panda is the strange linux-orientation which results in a poor DirectX feature set in many areas. On the other hand, Unity is Mac orientated so it doesn’t have things like hardware instancing which the Mac doesn’t have.
If CMU were to decide to drop support, they’d probably transfer ownership to Disney. Panda3D has switched owners before. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.