The third-party license window does not accomplish its intentions, and should be an addon instead of in core.

[TML233]

Tested versions

N/A

System information

N/A

Issue description

#79599 introduces the license notice dialog in core to "Providing zero (or minimal) effort way for license compliance."

But this purpose can be easily solved by auto-generating a license file in the export folder. On platforms like Web/Mobile where the file cannot be bundled with the game, the license dialog is also not accessible without a keyboard.
It requires the developer to manually add a button to show the dialog, rendering this PR awkward as the developers need to first know that the license is a thing before they can add the button to show the dialog.
If a developer already knows the license stuff and is willing to show it in their game, they'll either make their own UI that fits their game, or download the license dialog as an addon.
The dialog itself is fairly simple and is not eligible enough to be in core. And the default dialog integration seems taking away the control from the developers and making decisions for them without asking their opinions. Many developers won't even notice that there's a hidden license dialog in their game without their permission.

If the team supports the solution of the license dialog, it should be an addon with editor support. When the project is loaded for the first time or an option is selected in the tools submenu, a prompt should pop up to tell the developer about the license thing, advises them to add a button in their game to show the licenses, asks whether to add the license dialog addon and sets the shortcut up.

My opinion is that #79599 should be reverted, and this license compliance dialog integration thing should be discussed thoroughly and implemented cautiously.

Steps to reproduce

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Minimal reproduction project (MRP)

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[adamscott]

I disagree with the issue for multiple reasons.

The issue states that the third-party license window does not accomplish its intentions, but it doesn't actually talk about the intention behind the PR. It just complains about the "awkwardness" of such a dialog. Unfortunately, #79599 doesn't state itself the intention, rather to only state the "result".

The idea is to address the issue that almost all of the games that were made with Godot don't comply with third-party licenses. We could continue to put our heads in the sand, stating that it's the responsibility of the developers to comply properly. But that stance wouldn't make the project a good open-source citizen.

Is the third-party license window perfect? No.
Is the third-party license window awkward? Yes.
Is the third-party license window has issues and the default bindings don't include a controller shortcut? Yes.
Is the third-party license window will release in its current state in 4.5? I highly doubt it.

But does it need to be perfect? I consider it doesn't.
But it does easily accomplish its intention!: to make more games compliant.

Legalese is boring and is something that nobody "enjoys". But it doesn't mean it's optional.

Also, this issue is moot by the following fact: it is more than trivial to remove the default binding.

Enregistrement.d.ecran.le.2025-03-08.a.14.55.19.mov

I do hope that making developers to disable the default binding if they don't want it is a good incentive for them to actually implement a replacement, instead of doing nothing. And again, just that makes it accomplish the intention.

For these reasons, I highly encourage the release management team to close this issue.

[Mickeon]

Just general thoughts ahead:

As #79599 is:

• The keyboard shortcut works for most platforms Godot is exported on, but it practically does not for mobile devices, or potentially consoles.
  • This requires the developer to manually implement something, which is also documented and encouraged in input/ui_toggle_licenses_dialog's description.
• Despite best efforts, there's heavy concern the default shortcut to display the dialog (CTRL + SHIFT + L) conflicts with other functionalities of the operative system.
  • Simplest workaround would be to make the shortcut even stricter (CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + L), at the cost of accessibility.
• The dialog can absolutely be refined more over time, to further justify its inclusion.
• Despite potential concerns, the dialog takes barely any additional memory, and barely no overhead at runtime.
  • All of the licensing text has always been present in every Godot executable, regardless if the developer chose to expose it or not.
• We must absolutely document and encourage third-party attribution as much as possible, even in the editor.

There's a few alternative solutions to the same problem, but I personally think the solution in the above PR, while flawed, is probably the best way to go about it, generally. That's not to dismiss how other options could be implemented along with it.

Keep in mind, "letting the developer do it" rarely works in practice. Most developers don't bother with exposing the huge chunk of legalese, even if they don't have to write it themselves.

[scgm0]

I disagree with the issue for multiple reasons.

The issue states that the third-party license window does not accomplish its intentions, but it doesn't actually talk about the intention behind the PR. It just complains about the "awkwardness" of such a dialog. Unfortunately, #79599 doesn't state itself the intention, rather to only state the "result".

The idea is to address the issue that almost all of the games that were made with Godot don't comply with third-party licenses. We could continue to put our heads in the sand, stating that it's the responsibility of the developers to comply properly. But that stance wouldn't make the project a good open-source citizen.

Is the third-party license window perfect? No. Is the third-party license window awkward? Yes. Is the third-party license window has issues and the default bindings don't include a controller shortcut? Yes. Is the third-party license window will release in its current state in 4.5? I highly doubt it.

But does it need to be perfect? I consider it doesn't. But it does easily accomplish its intention!: to make more games compliant.

Legalese is boring and is something that nobody "enjoys". But it doesn't mean it's optional.

Also, this issue is moot by the following fact: it is more than trivial to remove the default binding.
Enregistrement.d.ecran.le.2025-03-08.a.14.55.19.mov

I do hope that making developers to disable the default binding if they don't want it is a good incentive for them to actually implement a replacement, instead of doing nothing. And again, just that makes it accomplish the intention.

For these reasons, I highly encourage the release management team to close this issue.

Perhaps more should be done at the editor level, such as when creating and exporting projects. The presence of Engine.get_license_info and #79599 is too weak, and there's a potential for shortcut conflicts in #79599.
The default shortcut key assignments are ineffective on some platforms and may cause conflicts on others. By default, only code triggers should be retained, and more prompts should be provided to developers at the editor level, such as during project creation.
Moreover, if we only discuss intentions without considering the outcomes, why are there still 3.5k pull requests (PRs) that haven't been merged? And how many of the closed PRs lacked good intentions?

[TML233]

The idea is to address the issue that almost all of the games that were made with Godot don't comply with third-party licenses. We could continue to put our heads in the sand, stating that it's the responsibility of the developers to comply properly. But that stance wouldn't make the project a good open-source citizen.

But it does easily accomplish its intention!: to make more games compliant.

Legalese is boring and is something that nobody "enjoys". But it doesn't mean it's optional.

I do hope that making developers to disable the default binding if they don't want it is a good incentive for them to actually implement a replacement, instead of doing nothing. And again, just that makes it accomplish the intention.

For these reasons, I highly encourage the release management team to close this issue.

You are repeating things I already stated in the description: The license dialog is to automatically let the games comply with the licenses.
But as I said, an auto-generated LICENSE file takes absolutely no effort for developers on most platforms. For platforms like Mobile and Web, this PR neither accomplishes this without developer's prior knowledge of license stuff. The license file solution is a lot less intrusive and does the same thing when the developer takes no effort on the license complying.

For platforms that need developer efforts, editor prompts and supports is needed. Once editor-side things are added, there's no reason to keep the base dialog stuff implemented in core level. The editor should just grab this dialog into the project as an add-on when it is needed by developers.

The shortcut is never a problem, the problem is:

1. the lacking of the shortcuts on some platforms makes the PR not work better than a license file;
2. The intrusiveness of this PR to core is too high for something can be implemented by an addon with editor prompts.

The team should consider the same question of "Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?" in godot-proposals issue creation page, just like any other contributors do.

Therefore, I think this issue should not be closed before an actually working and less intrusive approach is discussed and implemented.

[adamscott]

Moreover, if we only discuss intentions without considering the outcomes, why are there still 3.5k pull requests (PRs) that haven't been merged? And how many of the closed PRs lacked good intentions?

This is a non sequitur and it's off-topic.

The title of the issue specifically mentions that the window doesn't accomplish its intention. I just said that the intention wasn't considered at all in the issue description and that in fact, it clearly does accomplish its intention.

[Delsin-Yu]

I think what OP actually means is that the current implementation is too intrusive. There are lighter implementations that can achieve identical functionality.

While the current implementation can simplify the work needed to display licenses for web and mobile developers; the argument is whether it's necessary *edit* as a part of core.

[TML233]

The title of the issue specifically mentions that the window doesn't accomplish its intention. I just said that the intention wasn't considered at all in the issue description and that in fact, it clearly does accomplish its intention.

Sorry if my point is not clear at that time. My exact point is that the license window doesn't accomplish its purpose well enough to be in core. It's neither essential enough nor implemented well enough to be a mandatory part of core. Everything of this PR should be an add-on.
Also can you read my statements and replies? I've quoted the intention stated by the team member in the original PR at the first line of the description, and I've also explained it more comprehensively in my previous reply. Please refer to those more detailed arguments. Otherwise, I don't think our current conversation can lead to anything productive.

[scgm0]

This is a non sequitur and it's off-topic.

The title of the issue specifically mentions that the window doesn't accomplish its intention. I just said that the intention wasn't considered at all in the issue description and that in fact, it clearly does accomplish its intention.

For Android, web and some other platforms, it just doesn't achieve its goal, and the PC platform that achieves its goal will have other effects. Again, I am not against the built-in license pop-up window, I like it too, but it currently has very inappropriate occupation of shortcut keys. We should improve the presence of licenses at the editor level. #79599 and the existing license API are too weak. We should not make choices for developers on the grounds of "I think this is useful to developers", but we should make developers aware of the existence of license APIs and make their own choices.
Again, I know that manually deleting the default shortcut key is not a problem, but its presence is too weak, and many developers may not be aware of its existence at all until some players are affected by the game experience and then feedback to the developers, which is not good.

[L2750558108]

Aside from the necessity of this feature, the current implementation of this feature is not very good, it embeds the license window in the SceneTree, and can cause confusion in future maintenance.
Even if want to keep this functionality, it may be better to add the license window node which detects shortcuts and toggles visibility to autoload, so that the implementation is less intrusive and identical to the current functionality.(If they want in the future, this node can also be exposed outward, and the user only needs to actively add it to the autoload to implement the current functionality, instead of making it the default)