What product? They aren't selling anything. Like at all.

This looks similar to the classic "enterprise support" and "distribution" lifestyle business play, which is incredibly sustainable and benefits both the software community as well as the maintainers. From their website:

Support [1] page:

> Please contact us at business@defold.se for more information on how we can help you publish great games made with Defold.

About [2] page:

> Product development, marketing, support and sales - Refold AB is owned by members of the Defold team and is contracted to perform most of the day to day work on the Defold product.

Open [3] page:

> Q: Is there still going to be a roadmap for Defold?

> A: The Defold Foundation has decided to no longer share a public roadmap at the beginning of each year.

Status [4] page:

> Defold will never change into a subscription model, request royalty payments, introduce licensing fees or in other ways charge for access to the main (emphasis added) product.

FAQ [5] page:

> Q: What kind of user tracking are you doing?

> A: We log anonymous usage data from our websites and the Defold editor in order to improve our services and product.

They're using a lot of SaaS typical for startup/business growth. Their forums are Discourse [6], they're running a bunch of analytics, SendInBlue for campaigns, etc. That in and of itself doesn't imply anything, but they do seem to be very mindful of their community's health and growth.

There are some very dedicated people at the wheel. It looks like they've carved out enough leeway for commercial and support offerings to sustain themselves and keep others from stealing it like Amazon and others have done to other open source projects in the past, all the while building a cool community-powered open game engine.

[1] https://defold.com/support/

[2] https://defold.com/about/

[3] https://defold.com/open/

[4] https://defold.com/status/

[5] https://defold.com/faq/faq/

[6] https://forum.defold.com/ ; Discourse is $100/mo or more for custom domains