Mana System Plugin Update: Licensing, Distribution, and What’s Next

As I near the completion of the first major version of the Mana System Plugin for Godot, I’ve decided to make an important change to the project’s licensing approach.

Originally, I planned to offer the plugin under a dual-license model: one free for non-commercial use, and one paid for commercial projects. But after some reflection, I’ve chosen to fully embrace open-source by releasing the plugin under the MIT License — free and unrestricted for all users.

My main goal with Mana is to support other developers by providing a flexible, modular ability system that fits naturally within Godot’s architecture. While I still hope to raise some funds to help with ongoing development and maintenance, I’ll now be doing so through donations instead of paid licensing.

To support that, I’ve set up a tip jar. Later, once the plugin reaches a production-ready state, I plan to publish it on itch.io and the Godot Asset Library with a pay-what-you-want model. It will always remain freely available on GitHub, but users will have the option to contribute financially if they’d like to support the work behind it.

I’ve also decided to keep version 1 of the plugin private. It was a learning phase — planning, experimenting, and iterating through different approaches. While the core ideas remain, the code in that version doesn’t reflect the standards I want to maintain going forward. From this point on, I’m working from a clean top-level breakdown (built in Obsidian), and writing code that’s consistently formatted, fully documented, and easier to maintain and extend.

This does mean the project will take more time to finish, but the end result will be much stronger.

If you’d like to follow along or support the project:

• Leave a tip, support the project
• GitHub Repository (Still in Development)

And if you’d like to be notified when the first version is released or receive occasional updates, make sure to sign up for email updates.

Thanks for following along!