Legal status
Godot is financially supported by the Godot Foundation, a non-profit organization formed on August 23rd, 2022 via the KVK (number 87351919) in the Netherlands. The Godot Foundation is responsible for managing donations made to Godot and ensuring that such donations are used to enhance Godot. The Godot Foundation is a legally independent organization and does not own Godot. In the past, the Godot existed as a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy.
Godot can't be sold or purchased by any company.
While the Godot Foundation holds assets on behalf of Godot including trademarks, contracts, and the bank account, the copyright to Godot's source is held collectively by every contributor.
Mission
The mission of the Godot Foundation is to financially support the growth, initiatives and activities of the Godot Engine project, an open-source project that provides a free suite of tools and educational materials around the Godot Engine.
The Foundation strives to help Godot continue to break down barriers to video game development and make it possible for everyone to create high quality video games, regardless of who they are and where they are located.
The Board of Directors
The Godot Foundation is led by the Board of Directors (formerly the Project Leadership Committee) who are responsible for making all funding and institutional decisions for Godot. The Board is made of the project founders (Ariel Manzur and Juan Linietsky) as well as trusted contributors and community members. As spaces open up on the board, current members may reach out to contributors and community members with a proven track record and deep understanding of the project and ask them to join.
The Board must be made of a balance of contributors with technical expertise, and community members who bring the perspective of the community at large. The Board is subject to rules set by the Godot Foundation.
The Board of Directors currently consists of the following members:
Advisors
The Board has enlisted the help of its most trusted and veteran contributors whom they call the advisors. The advisors are consulted on usage of funds as well as institutional matters. It is important to note, however, that while the advice of the advisory panel is weighed heavily, the final authority on these matters remains with the Board. In practice, the Board rarely makes an important decision without at least discussing it with the advisors first.
Like the Board, contributors do not apply to become advisors. Instead the process of joining the advisors group is organic; trusted contributors may be asked to join after showing dedication, expertise, and leadership within the Godot community.
Funding decisions
All donations and sponsorships go directly to the Godot Foundation. The Board makes all decisions on how the funds are used, following rules established by the Foundation. These rules dictate that funding can only be used for the benefit of the project. Usage of funds generally includes:
- Hiring contributors
- Organizing events
- Reimbursements for traveling to events
- Purchasing hardware required for contributors to work on Godot
At the end of each operating year the Foundation publishes audited financial statements outlining funds received, and how such funds were used in that year. Financial reports take time to prepare and audit, as such they are not available immediately at year end. They are available on the Foundation's website as soon as feasible after they are prepared.
Technical decisions
Technical decisions are made by Area Owners and the project leaders. Godot has the following established roles:
Leadership
- Juan Linietsky — Technical and Project Lead
- Rémi Verschelde — Project Manager
The project leaders have final say on all code merges. In theory, this means the leaders will have the final say when maintainers cannot agree. In practice, this authority rarely needs to be invoked because decisions are made by maintainers in consultation with the community.
Teams and area owners
Engine teams are groups of contributors interested in a specific area of the engine. Teams provide a way for contributors to have focused discussions with other people with similar expertise and interests. The opinion and expertise of team members is valued in discussions, but ultimately the authority over an area of the engine belongs solely to the area owner and the project leadership. Area owners are entrusted with final say for code merges in their areas. Area owners are trusted contributors who are chosen by the project leadership and have shown knowledge of the specific area of the engine and the engine's philosophy as a whole.
In practice, area owners aim for consensus among contributors, especially among the relevant team. The "rule of thumb" is to not merge code if significant disputes exist over a change. However the final decision still remains with the area owner. The Godot project strives for rich, public, technical discussions where anyone can contribute and agree on the way to move forward. Additionally, the leadership and area owners consult with other contributors and the community as much as possible every time new features and improvements are planned.
We strive to make our relationship with the community as symbiotic as possible within the limits of feasibility. The Godot community is made up of users, contributors, maintainers, and project leadership. Godot exists because its community trusts the work we do, so we try to entrust the community with deciding the general direction of the project as much and as openly as possible. This is how we see the process as community-driven:
- Open development: All development (code that makes it into the engine, docs, website, etc) is
made via Pull Requests. They are open for anyone to see,
review and comment on. From the leadership to the new contributors, everyone is required to create them in order
for their work to be included. Pull Requests are approved and merged by the respective area maintainers while,
again, always striving to promote agreement before moving forward. All improvements to the engine are made through
the Pull Requests of community members.
- Open discussion: Before doing any significant amount of work, we encourage maintainers,
contributors, and community to open and discuss features and proposals in the Godot proposals repository. This allows all contributors to have a much better understanding of how users expect the new feature to be used. Because the primary aim of Godot is to produce a useful tool, we ask those who open proposals to discuss real-world use cases based on problems they are having with their current projects. This allows maintainers and contributors to have a much more "down to earth" understanding of user's requirements. This philosophy is best explained in the engine contributor guidelines.
- Community-minded: The Godot project is developed by and for the community. No corporate entity exists behind Godot that prioritizes one feature over another. Priorities are set by project leadership and area maintainers based on the feedback of the community in bug reports, proposals, and discussions in the various community channels. Ultimately, it is the community that determines the direction of the project.
Every improvement to the engine, whether it is a feature or bug fix, is driven forward by Godot's community of contributors, users, maintainers, and leadership. Godot wouldn't exist in its current form without the countless contributions it receives from community members every day.