No, Defold is developed by six full time and two part time developers. All developers are fairly compensated. Most of the work done on the engine is "general development" funded by corporate partners, studios and publishers. There is quite a bit of overlap between the needs of specific partners and the general development roadmap.

No, data is stored in protobuf text format (and at runtime compiled to binary protobuf files ofc).

No. Wrong. Console branches are available for free if you are approved by the vendor.

Not entirely true, but sure, there are fewer bells and whistles in Defold compares to Unity, Unreal and Godot when it comes to 3D.

Here's a recently released 3D game made with Defold: https://forum.defold.com/t/cashchubbies-island/78183/22

Also https://ts-defold.dev/

C# support is still experimental and under development, but it is at least ready for testing for those that are curious. Note that it is C# with Native AOT so it's compilation and linking involved, not "scripting and hotreload".

The main repository (github.com/defold/defold) is the only one with the Defold License (ie the modified Apache license). There's also around 80 or so MIT licensed repositories with Defold engine plugins for things such as analytics, monetization, ads, attribution, game servers as well as tools such as Spine, Tiled, Rive etc.

Yes, you are correct. An MIT license was preferred by the Defold team but the modified Apache license was what was decided upon in the end.

The Defold Foundation immediately stopped calling Defold open-source when it was pointed out that the license was in conflict with the OSI definition.

https://defold.com/2020/05/20/Some-thoughts-on-the-open-sour...