I do agree with @KamilCSPS amilCSPS, 3 pages of most people probably using unity for over a decade and yet a lot of mistrust and nothing of a healthy debate.
Anyway as a software engineer myself I can see how the Unity devs themselves are :
Doing what they can with what the have (Might have less cash than some competitors)
Trying to add new content to keep competitivness and innovation up
Trying to maintain in parallel several LTS and Beta versions.
Make difficult decisions like this, adding a new tech version and postponing the next LTS although they wanted to reduce the number of versions.
There might be a way to think about how to reduce the strain on the 3rd point. Multiversion management is hard, you end up with cohorts of people not having the same issues nor features. (urp/hdrp anyone ?)
Reducing the number of release and having clearer expectations on each was a good move. (Alpha/Betas cripled with bug but new features, Tech releases to fix the new features, LTS to clean up the mess once a year)
Moving most of stuff to plugins seemed also a good move as you could decouple and add more stability in the long run + open source parts.
Removing all github like issue tracker was not a good move. Your own issue tracker is rejecting me since forever, we should at least be able to make pull request.
the date when the updated terms of service was already announced in this thread, April 2024
and I was loosing my time waiting for any unity stuff to show up on that thread they locked up.
new rules starts with 2023.3 so it is logic that they will not release the TOS before the date when this version is released.
the complete lack of respect from unity, just say it don’t let us talk for 70 pages bumbling around then act annoyed and lock the thread because is “off topic” when there was nothing off topic there.
I agree, the work of Unity moderators is remove the comments that violate the forum rules, but in this case they are closing all threads that they not like, if moderators cant make their work then close the complete forums section, is absurd that Unity users need go to Reddit or other forums to talk about the new Unity licensing.
Can someone clarify if the new rev share ToS apply to 2023.1?
For example we are on 2023.1.20 now, in 2023,
but let’s say 2023.1.26 releases on Jan 2024, is that still under old ToS? or the new ToS?
Correct me if I’m wrong but this means the first unity version under the new ToS will be 2023LTS and after that every future versions regardless of it’s a tech stream or beta or whatever.
Seems that the new release schema for 2023.x is bringing some extra pain for the users; features are not backported anymore to “2023.1.x”, as I guess the just released “2023.1.20” is the last version. 2023.2 is still in beta, though.
I reported critical bugs in spring, they got fixed in summer in 2023.2, but backport to 2023.1 never happened, and now status changes to “won’t fix”. This is a bit of a mess. I hope some wonderful features are still coming to 2023.3 to give some sort of justification for this extra pain, but I somehow doubt that this will be the case.
I think often happens/happened that a beta fix won’t be ported to a tech stream if it’s a lot of work, as in a few weeks/months the beta will become the new tech stream.
No backports to LTS would be a lot worse.
I could understand, if not the backports where in work for several month already as stated in issuetracker, and then changed to “won’t fix” now. Something seems not too work correctly currently in the workflow, and my best guess is that it’s due to the extra tech stream.
Since today, 2023.1.x was removed from public tickets. These bugs basically make the feature “High Quality Lines” unusable in 2023.1, where it was introduced. Only chance to use it is to go to 2023.2 beta once the fixes land there.
That seems like normal flow of development on tech streams. That’s why they are there. To give a preview before providing a long term version, while the alpha and beta phases are done.
For more updates move on to the next tech stream or lts
We even have staff members state as much from time to time. That said they usually keep updating a tech stream until a new one has been made available and the next one is still in beta. I’m thinking this is either a difficult bug to fix or it’s just very low priority.
Actually am surprised they haven’t called it Unity 12. After all there were 6 major versions since the old Unity 5. Unity 6 will be the 12th.
Guess #5 is old enough that none would assume the next to be the direct successor at least.
Good decision to take out the pressure of releasing every year in every case.
I wonder at which of the 2024 versions the URP will start on its final stable beta cycle towards a final release that will not break the code anymore.
As we stand URP is not even in Alpha yet, as it changes constantly, forcing things like replace blit with Blitter, convert every render feature to the new render graph breaking every single project using custom URP image effrcts, removal of direct camera rendering function and many more breaking issues and changes.
Is there a plan to release a stable finalized URP version sometime in 2024 ? I think this should be the top priority, so can move to URP as a finalized stable platform, like BiRP is currently.
The BIRP is kinda only stable because technically it is deprecated.
Technology progresses and thus there may be breaking changes every now and then. But you are not forced to update all the time.
Take .e.g the 2022 LTS and stick with it.
Btw. Unity just had a neat live stream on the relatively new set of URP examples:
I think with BiRP the API was about same across many versions, e.g. i still use the same commands since unity 5.6 to do image effects, with URP this breaks every other version and sometimes inside a single version. And still BiRP image effects are much faster in performance.
It is not now and then, they break everything and redo the backend constantly. URP imo should at some point go to a Beta with a final backend so can be tested also properly with a complete and concrete feature set.
E.g. when the Render Graph releases all URP image effects will stop working completly. This is not a minor update either, requires endless hours of work if use many effects.