Officially, Bukkit, if I understand how it works, is more or less a mod, meaning it requires the game's base code to even function. As the post said, they tried to get official, legal, approval to work on it, but never did, so Bukkit has always been, illegal. I do believe that open source projects can be bought. The open or closed nature of it is up to whoever owns the core rights. However, if Bukkit works as I think it does, then inherently Mojang already owned it from the beginning. Further, depending on how the project was managed, there would have to have been release forms from the members, releasing their claim to anything they did on the project for a single person to have been able to "sell" it to Mojang in the first place. So the question is, did DinnerBone have the right to sell Bukkit to Mojang as a condition for employment? That we may never know for sure.
Bukkit hasn't been illegal. It is a mod, but that just means that the standard mod lisence applied to it until Mojang bought it.
I only wonder how plugin makers will react to this, I mean, now that they no longer volunteer for an open source project but for The Company itself, who knows for how long since it's the same company that is supposed to create an official API instead of maintaining an unofficial one, will they feel uncertain about the future and quit modding, go on as nothing happened or just sail to new shores (such as Spout)? And how this new responsibility will impact on the already ridiculously busy mojangstas' schedule?
Haha me too. I'd like to see what would happen to servers if Bukkit were to shut down. R.I.P Mineplex
What might happen is the players who want to play multiplayer servers will stay on 1.7. But how long would that last? Actually, what would most likely happen is, Spigot or someone else will either hack craftbukkit to work on 1.8 or continue developing it themselves.
Forget? I've never seen an announcement saying that they ever bought it, before today of course.
There appear, however, to be a couple people like you that somehow interpreted the old announcement that Mojang hired the core devs of bukkit to work on the Mod API as somehow meaning that they bought bukkit, but most no one else interpreted it that way. How hard would it have been for them to say back then: "btw: we now own bukkit", or "all your bukkit are belong to us"... But they didn't.
In fact, jeb didn't seem too surprised that no one knew, he even "dug out the receipt" so he could prove it since so many didn't know and in fact thought it a joke that Mojang owned it, read jebs tweet where he says "not a joke". This situation forced their hand and made them explicitly come out and tell the public in order to get control of the situation. -- Notice that even Evil Seph didn't reveal the truth until after Jeb fessed up first, freeing Seph to talk about it.
* In any case; at least it looks like bukkit may be around for at least one more version, providing all the community devs who've been unknowingly working on it for mojang for free continue to do so.
btw: What is the licensing of the bukkit project anyway? I didn't know that companies could buy open source projects? Well, if they can then I guess it should be possible to fork it if it is open source that is.
*** Just to be clear: I don't have a problem with Mojang owning bukkit. Its just that this whole situation seems weird and strangely managed and definitely feels like secrets were being kept. That sort of thing can tend to hit people the wrong way.
Two years ago, Bukkit announced they were joining Mojang. In fact, a decent portion of Mojang employees were Bukkit developers, such as Dinnerbone. Bukkit collaborated with Mojang to help produce modding API.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sire I inquire as I do with most, but do you mean to gloat? For is it truly such a tire to reply to the host with but a simple QUOTE?
Which is why I questioned what was the non-mojang bukkit team developing for the past 2 years? It sounds like Mojang was using them as free development, which is super shady dealings.
That's a highly accusatory way of looking at the situation. Mojang had direct ownership of the project, but because of that, they also not only then provided blanket legal protection over it - so that whatever the hell EvilSeph was claiming would most certainly not be the case - but they also allowed the project to go on undisturbed for years. The fact that nobody even knew about the ownership should go to show that Mojang didn't sully up a community endeavor. I know of plenty of companies that would have tried to reach out and overmanage something like that.
Bukkit was from the community, for the community, and EvilSeph and his partner developers were more than happy to work on it as if it were their baby. It's just that now EvilSeph got bored of it, attempted to hit the ejector seat by blaming Mojang for a nonsense situation that he had no reason not to know about, and now Grum and Dinnerbone have to step in to officially unofficially support the project just because of it. Not that it's too much of a problem; them having the insight of code changes as they occur in real time, and having the full unobfuscated source code as a base should do nothing but help the project in the long run.
Then what would make EvilSeph think he could cancel bukkit? If he knew then why would he basically say otherwise? Acknowledging ownership and overmanagement are not the same thing. From the sound of it, not even the bukkit team really knew.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Cast aside your festive doylaks: dragon stuff is about to happen.
Multiplayer is lonely once you understand how it actually works.
Wasnt the spout project shut down long ago? I recall reading an announcement that they will no longer update their client and server due ressource and code issues ages ago.
Honestly my infos about the multiplayer modding community are outdated at least 1 year, I don't know which alternative projects to Bukkit actually exist.
Forget? I've never seen an announcement saying that they ever bought it, before today of course.
There appear, however, to be a couple people like you that somehow interpreted the old announcement that Mojang hired the core devs of bukkit to work on the Mod API as somehow meaning that they bought bukkit, but most no one else interpreted it that way. How hard would it have been for them to say back then: "btw: we now own bukkit", or "all your bukkit are belong to us"... But they didn't.
EvilSeph knew about it ever since he was hired. In fact, that was- in his own words- one of the stipulations of the lead developers of Bukkit being hired. Has EvilSeph ever told anybody else what he already knew? I don't think so. There are some who are basically saying Mojang should have told people they owned the Bukkit Project. But Mojang were not the one's vetting commits and getting people to contribute to the source. The people at Mojang did not subsequently quit to focus on working and encouraging others to contribute to an Open Source project that was owned by Mojang. They did not knowingly lie to the community when they basically said they were "shutting down" the project. They did not throw a temper tantrum in an open forum when their teenage software developer capabilities suddenly came to a head and they realized that the task of software development is not always fun.
In fact, jeb didn't seem too surprised that no one knew, he even "dug out the receipt" so he could prove it since so many didn't know and in fact thought it a joke that Mojang owned it, read jebs tweet where he says "not a joke". This situation forced their hand and made them explicitly come out and tell the public in order to get control of the situation. -- Notice that even Evil Seph didn't reveal the truth until after Jeb fessed up first, freeing Seph to talk about it.
No, EvilSeph could have talked about it any time he wanted. NDA's are typically mutual in these sorts of cases. Of course I don't know what if anything they signed.
btw: What is the licensing of the bukkit project anyway? I didn't know that companies could buy open source projects? Well, if they can then I guess it should be possible to fork it if it is open source that is.
Bukkit is GPL. Open Source Projects have owners. Red Hat owns Red Hat Linux, for example; Mozilla Owns Firefox. It does not prevent those products from being forked and worked on by others, but the ownership is clear. Fact is even if Bukkit was to "shut down" spigot- one of many downstream projects- would have continued on. They have much of the same expertise, if not more, given their contributions to things like Bungee.
*** Just to be clear: I don't necessarily have a problem with Mojang owning bukkit. Its just that this whole situation seems weird and strangely managed and definitely feels like secrets were being kept. That sort of thing can tend to hit people the wrong way.
Projects are owned. Bukkit was started by Dinnerbone. So he was the original owner. He was able to bring others on board- effectively Dinnerbone was the one "dictating" who 'owned' the project in the sense of who had the authority to decide what did and did not go into the project. These developers were hired by Mojang. EvilSeph than quit his Job at Mojang to work "full-time" on bukkit (does he have a job? how is that supposed to work, I wonder? How do you work full-time on an Open Source Project like Bukkit?). He decided to not reveal that Bukkit was actually a project owned by Mojang.
Mojang's stipulation was probably to prevent possible issues as well as allow code-sharing between the GPL project and the game itself without problems from the GPL (the owner of a piece of code can adjust and change the license as they see fit). They didn't reveal that they bought it because there really was no need to. They only bought it to protect their own IP, not to control that project in any way.
EvilSeph is an interesting case, Though. As far as I can tell, he has absolutely no other development experience outside of bukkit and a few bukkit plugins. He's never worked as a software developer, games or otherwise, anywhere else. And he managed to get a Job at Mojang.... Then subsequently quit. Or was he fired? I don't know. He was supposedly working on a MOD API for his entire term of employment. Not sure what we have to show for that. The thing I don't get though, is the quitting part. He has no other projects. He has no real work experience. The fact that he was even hired by Mojang was amazing, though you might not guess that from his Humblebrag reddit post in his AMA. Which also has this gem:
We had to rush to put Bukkit together because the hMod project was discontinued alongside a Minecraft update coming out and server admins were frantically searching for a replacement.
Sound familiar? I also liked where he said he had been "Seriously programming" since he was 12.
Haha me too. I'd like to see what would happen to servers if Bukkit were to shut down. R.I.P Mineplex
What might happen is the players who want to play multiplayer servers will stay on 1.7. But how long would that last? Actually, what would most likely happen is, Spigot or someone else will either hack craftbukkit to work on 1.8 or continue developing it themselves.
Yeah. People seem not to realize that modding or even hosting servers is not dead until people need it and are willing to work for it, regardless of what Mojang does (short of suing everyone Apple-style). Remember hMod? It was at peak popularity before its author(s) shut it down completely out of the blue, when it was THE multiplayer modding API, than someone took over the project, rewrote it and bam! Bukkit.
People should legitimately be worried only if the community was shrinking to the point of Minecraft turning into "you still play that?", but I don't see it happening anytime soon.
I dont care about the "Mod API," as a dev, I have spent hours on some of my most complicated plugins, just to see that I cannot use them anymore? ANNDD I WOULD HAVE TO LEARN A NEW API! ABSURD! I would curse at Mojang if I could, but I would get a warning point on here. I am very outraged.
Relax. The original creator of bukkit is taking his own time out of MC development to ensure bukkit stays alive for a 1.8 release. Dinnerbone isn't just going to watch it all go to hell.
The Plugin API doesn't have anything to do with it at this point, Dinnerbone has outright said Bukkit is not good enough for that purpose.
I dont care about the "Mod API," as a dev, I have spent hours on some of my most complicated plugins, just to see that I cannot use them anymore? ANNDD I WOULD HAVE TO LEARN A NEW API! ABSURD! I would curse at Mojang if I could, but I would get a warning point on here. I am very outraged.
I wish Mojang would use Bukkit technologies. Or make their technology work with bukkit plugins. Or at LEAST have a bukkit-to-mojang converter to convert bukkit plugins to the new API.
I wish Mojang would use Bukkit technologies. Or make their technology work with bukkit plugins. Or at LEAST have a bukkit-to-mojang converter to convert bukkit plugins to the new API.
They won't though, Dinnerbone doesn't want that. He's openly said Bukkit isn't good enough to be part of the API.
btw: What is the licensing of the bukkit project anyway? I didn't know that companies could buy open source projects? Well, if they can then I guess it should be possible to fork it if it is open source that is.
Of course a company can buy an open source project. They can also change the license to any code they have the rights to (any code for which the original author allows such a change, which is not insignificant given that they employ the old main devs). If they get permission from everyone and or remove the bits that they don't have permission for, they can take it all closed source if they want. The previous, open source versions would still exist and could still be forked of course, they can't retroactively close that. But any future releases could be closed (given the requirements above are met)
Bukkit hasn't been illegal. It is a mod, but that just means that the standard mod lisence applied to it until Mojang bought it.
BTW I'm totally enjoying the drama.
Haha me too. I'd like to see what would happen to servers if Bukkit were to shut down. R.I.P Mineplex
What might happen is the players who want to play multiplayer servers will stay on 1.7. But how long would that last? Actually, what would most likely happen is, Spigot or someone else will either hack craftbukkit to work on 1.8 or continue developing it themselves.
Two years ago, Bukkit announced they were joining Mojang. In fact, a decent portion of Mojang employees were Bukkit developers, such as Dinnerbone. Bukkit collaborated with Mojang to help produce modding API.
Sire I inquire as I do with most, but do you mean to gloat? For is it truly such a tire to reply to the host with but a simple QUOTE?
That's a highly accusatory way of looking at the situation. Mojang had direct ownership of the project, but because of that, they also not only then provided blanket legal protection over it - so that whatever the hell EvilSeph was claiming would most certainly not be the case - but they also allowed the project to go on undisturbed for years. The fact that nobody even knew about the ownership should go to show that Mojang didn't sully up a community endeavor. I know of plenty of companies that would have tried to reach out and overmanage something like that.
Bukkit was from the community, for the community, and EvilSeph and his partner developers were more than happy to work on it as if it were their baby. It's just that now EvilSeph got bored of it, attempted to hit the ejector seat by blaming Mojang for a nonsense situation that he had no reason not to know about, and now Grum and Dinnerbone have to step in to officially unofficially support the project just because of it. Not that it's too much of a problem; them having the insight of code changes as they occur in real time, and having the full unobfuscated source code as a base should do nothing but help the project in the long run.
Cast aside your festive doylaks: dragon stuff is about to happen.
Multiplayer is lonely once you understand how it actually works.
Alpha 1.0.4
won't download 1.9
Honestly my infos about the multiplayer modding community are outdated at least 1 year, I don't know which alternative projects to Bukkit actually exist.
EvilSeph knew about it ever since he was hired. In fact, that was- in his own words- one of the stipulations of the lead developers of Bukkit being hired. Has EvilSeph ever told anybody else what he already knew? I don't think so. There are some who are basically saying Mojang should have told people they owned the Bukkit Project. But Mojang were not the one's vetting commits and getting people to contribute to the source. The people at Mojang did not subsequently quit to focus on working and encouraging others to contribute to an Open Source project that was owned by Mojang. They did not knowingly lie to the community when they basically said they were "shutting down" the project. They did not throw a temper tantrum in an open forum when their teenage software developer capabilities suddenly came to a head and they realized that the task of software development is not always fun.
No, EvilSeph could have talked about it any time he wanted. NDA's are typically mutual in these sorts of cases. Of course I don't know what if anything they signed.
Bukkit is GPL. Open Source Projects have owners. Red Hat owns Red Hat Linux, for example; Mozilla Owns Firefox. It does not prevent those products from being forked and worked on by others, but the ownership is clear. Fact is even if Bukkit was to "shut down" spigot- one of many downstream projects- would have continued on. They have much of the same expertise, if not more, given their contributions to things like Bungee.
Projects are owned. Bukkit was started by Dinnerbone. So he was the original owner. He was able to bring others on board- effectively Dinnerbone was the one "dictating" who 'owned' the project in the sense of who had the authority to decide what did and did not go into the project. These developers were hired by Mojang. EvilSeph than quit his Job at Mojang to work "full-time" on bukkit (does he have a job? how is that supposed to work, I wonder? How do you work full-time on an Open Source Project like Bukkit?). He decided to not reveal that Bukkit was actually a project owned by Mojang.
Mojang's stipulation was probably to prevent possible issues as well as allow code-sharing between the GPL project and the game itself without problems from the GPL (the owner of a piece of code can adjust and change the license as they see fit). They didn't reveal that they bought it because there really was no need to. They only bought it to protect their own IP, not to control that project in any way.
EvilSeph is an interesting case, Though. As far as I can tell, he has absolutely no other development experience outside of bukkit and a few bukkit plugins. He's never worked as a software developer, games or otherwise, anywhere else. And he managed to get a Job at Mojang.... Then subsequently quit. Or was he fired? I don't know. He was supposedly working on a MOD API for his entire term of employment. Not sure what we have to show for that. The thing I don't get though, is the quitting part. He has no other projects. He has no real work experience. The fact that he was even hired by Mojang was amazing, though you might not guess that from his Humblebrag reddit post in his AMA. Which also has this gem:
Sound familiar? I also liked where he said he had been "Seriously programming" since he was 12.
Yeah. People seem not to realize that modding or even hosting servers is not dead until people need it and are willing to work for it, regardless of what Mojang does (short of suing everyone Apple-style). Remember hMod? It was at peak popularity before its author(s) shut it down completely out of the blue, when it was THE multiplayer modding API, than someone took over the project, rewrote it and bam! Bukkit.
People should legitimately be worried only if the community was shrinking to the point of Minecraft turning into "you still play that?", but I don't see it happening anytime soon.
Relax. The original creator of bukkit is taking his own time out of MC development to ensure bukkit stays alive for a 1.8 release. Dinnerbone isn't just going to watch it all go to hell.
The Plugin API doesn't have anything to do with it at this point, Dinnerbone has outright said Bukkit is not good enough for that purpose.
I wish Mojang would use Bukkit technologies. Or make their technology work with bukkit plugins. Or at LEAST have a bukkit-to-mojang converter to convert bukkit plugins to the new API.
They won't though, Dinnerbone doesn't want that. He's openly said Bukkit isn't good enough to be part of the API.
I can understand that... It's nice hat Mojang will make a BETTER api, but it should be compatible with bukkit plugins.
Of course a company can buy an open source project. They can also change the license to any code they have the rights to (any code for which the original author allows such a change, which is not insignificant given that they employ the old main devs). If they get permission from everyone and or remove the bits that they don't have permission for, they can take it all closed source if they want. The previous, open source versions would still exist and could still be forked of course, they can't retroactively close that. But any future releases could be closed (given the requirements above are met)
What solution have MOJANG to continue it?