Because many users suggested switching to a different license due to LGPL not being suitable for Android, libGDX changed its license to the Apache License 2.0 in July 2010, making it possible to use the framework in closed-source commercial games. The same month its phpBB forum was launched.
The rest of 2011 was spent adding a UI library and working on the basics of a 3D API.
At the start of 2012 Zechner created a small helper library called gdx-jnigen for easing the development of JNI bindings. This made it possible for the gdx-audio and gdx-freetype extensions to be developed over the following months.
In June 2013 the project's website was redone, now featuring a gallery where users can submit their games created with libGDX. As of January 2016 more than 3000 games have been submitted.
After the source code migration to GitHub the year before, in September 2013 the issue tracker and wiki were also moved there from Google Code. The same month the build and dependency management system was switched from Maven to Gradle.
After a cleanup phase in the first months of 2014 libGDX version 1.0 was released on 20 April, more than four years after the start of the project.
In 2014 libGDX was one of the annual Duke's Choice Award winners, being chosen for its focus on platform-independence.
libGDX allows the developer to write, test, and debug their application on their own desktop PC and use the same code on Android. It abstracts away the differences between a common Windows/Linux application and an Android application. The usual development cycle consists of staying on the desktop PC as much as possible while periodically verifying that the project still works on Android. Its main goal is to provide total compatibility between desktop and mobile devices, the main difference being speed and processing power.
The library transparently uses platform-specific code through various backends to access the capabilities of the host platform. Most of the time the developer does not have to write platform-specific code, except for starter classes (also called launchers) that require different setup depending on the backend.
Several official and third-party extensions exist that add additional functionality to the library.
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