Corona is an open source Lua powered cross platform game engine, first released way back in 2009. Back in 2017 Corona was released for free, after being acquired by AppoDeal earlier in the year. Yesterday they announced that Corona will now be available under a dual licenses, GPLv3 and a proprietary commercial license. If you require more details on the various open source licenses, be sure to check out our guide to open source licenses available here.
“The transition of Corona to the open source model of development has been our long-term vision since Corona Labs was acquired by Appodeal in 2017. We believe that this move will bring transparency to the development process, and will allow users to contribute features or bug fixes to make the project better for everyone,” said Vlad Sherban, product manager for Corona Labs.
The open source model will bring more visibility and flexibility to the development process by allowing visibility into exactly what the engine team is working on and where the project is going, and by contributing valuable new features that will help spearhead Corona to the next level. Additional benefits for businesses include the potential to acquire a commercial license for source code and customize the engine for specific commercial projects.
“Corona Labs will continue to have a dedicated team and infrastructure to support our flourishing plugin ecosystem and infrastructure, as well as to keep up to date with the ever-changing requirements and updates coming from applications stores. Powered by the new open source model and supported by the development of new features and bug fixes will make Corona more community driven — but not without our help and guidance. Ultimately, going open source will provide confidence in the future of the engine and an opportunity to grow community involvement in engine development,” said Vlad Sherban, product manager for Corona Labs.
Corona is available under a split license:
- You can download the Corona source code under the GPLv3 license and build your games and apps, however, those games have to be distributed under the GPLv3 license, i.e you have to make your source available. Games and apps based on the open source distribution of Corona have to be distributed using the same license (GPLv3).
- You can download the Corona source code, negotiate a commercial license agreement with Corona Labs, and build a version of Corona that has a custom feature. You can then distribute your games and apps without opening your own source.
- This does not apply to daily builds and releases. Their license remains unchanged. You can download builds to freely build and distribute your apps as before. The new changes only apply to the source code of the engine which is now available.
The last point is important, as it means existing customers using the free engine can continue to use the binary releases for free, so long as they don’t touch the source code. Speaking of source code, the code is now live on GitHub.