Possible trouble: Bukkit restructure/shutdown

[sorifiend]

Current Status:
Bukkit/Spigot will be updated to 1.8
No issues forecast besides the normal waiting time (for plugins).

Original Post:
For those of you that have been involved with bukkit/spigot this could be huge.

Keep your eyes on this post over the next few days:
http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/bukkit-its-time-to-say.305106/

Some juicy points:
1. With Mojang's recent enforcement of their EULA the bukkit dev EvilSeph quit the project (Very bad for servers).
2. Mojang now has full responsibility for Bukkit, no word on what they will do yet (Could be good or bad).
3. It is possible that Mojang will use this opportunity to discontinue Bukkit as soon as able and replace it with a Mojang API as they have been promising us for quite some time. This would mean that all plugins need to be re-written.
4. As a result spigot may be forced to shutdown in the future because of Mojang's actions (Very bad for big servers).

How could this effect NZnetwork, and your favorite servers:
Hopefully nothing changes, and members of the Mojang team (previous bukkit staff) continue to support and update Bukkit, however there could be a period of time where servers will remain on older versions of minecraft or run vanilla servers while a transition from an old to new system happens. As it stands now we should be able to safley update to 1.8 when its released, since Spigot plans to fully support it.

[Callan2256]

D:

[sorifiend]

Here is a recent statement from the Spigot team:

Earlier today Bukkit announced they were shutting down, a decision quickly vetoed by Mojang, who have secretly owned the project for a number of years. In the face of this uncertainty we are not yet ready to make an official statement in what direction Spigot will be going, however please be assured that we are already prepared for a 1.8 release and intend to continue Spigot for many Minecraft versions to come, whatever circumstances may unfold.

So things looks positive in that direction.

[usb_hub]

Damn :/ It's going to be a lot harder to find plugins now :c

[frogman786]

this clarifies a lot.
https://storify.com/lukegb/the-tale-of- ... ecraft-1-8

[sorifiend]

A very interesting turn of events has occurred:
A DMCA take down request has been filed by a third party (Wesley Wolfe) against CraftBukkit and spigot. Wesley is one of the biggest contributors to the CraftBukkit project.

You can find a great explanation of the take down request here: (If you dont understand how licensing works)
http://www.spigotmc.org/threads/craftbukkit-is-dead-will-spigot-be-next.28493/page-3#post-318634

Spigot intends to fight the take down request, you can find their announcement here:
http://www.spigotmc.org/threads/dmcad.28536/

For those of you that dont want to go offsite:
Mojang owns minecraft (Closed source), and individual developers (Like Wesley (not Mojang?)) own parts of the server software CraftBukkit (Open source GPL).

Because Mojang does not have full ownership of CraftBukkit? like they originally thought, they are not able to update CraftBukkit to 1.8 until they have resolved the GPL licensing issues. Some of the available options:

1) Mojang could get messy with lawyers and try to discredit or exploit the GPL license and takedown request.
2) CraftBukkit could be updated if Mojang comply with GPL (distribute their server code with CraftBukkit).
3) Mojang could update CraftBukkit if they come to an agreement with every large project contributor.
4) No one would/could update CraftBukkit so we would resort to alternate server modification:

a) Vanilla server
b) Server with Mojang API (Not ready yet? and would take a very long time to sort out)
c) Remain on the current server version (CraftBukkit 1.7.10) until option "b" is ready
d) Minecraft Realms (Not Happening)

[snow_creeper]

This may get interesting.

451 Unavailable for Legal Reasons - Bukkit 2014-09-04 19-14-23.png (24.22 KiB) Viewed 2010 times

[sorifiend]

Following up on my last post:
It seems like Bukkit/Spigot have nothing to worry about, Mojang seems to be confident in their claim that Wesley is in wrong, and that Bukkit can still be updated. Yay!

You can read the statment from Mojang here:
http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/mojang-and-the-bukkit-project.309715/

[quog38]

That Mojang post is a load of horse poop. wolfe is doing nothing wrong and the fact they are casting him as the villain really annoys me.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comme ... dreds_yes/
this explains the legal side of what Wolfe is doing and why he is well within his rights to do it

Pretty much Mojang purchased Bukkit 2 years ago to hire most of the devs and thought that includes the entire code of bukkit but only includes the code those people they hired wish to share with mojang. Wolfe being the main contributor to bukkit was not hired nor paid for his code and seeing as its under GPL it MUST remain open source so he is well within his rights to stop mojang using it in a close sourced program. HOWEVER due to the licence that bukkit itself worked under Mojang can actually say that using mojang code in bukkit is a breach of GPL and that bukkit has to stop using it, but they cant claim that code as their own because it does not belong to them.


Even shorter explanation: Mojang can tell wolfe to stop making code to utilize mojang code but can never take that code off wolfe because he wrote it so he owns it.
http://www.reddit.com/r/admincraft/comm ... ?context=3

edit: extra link added to clarify the shorter explanation.

[sorifiend]

Mojang can tell wolfe to stop making code to utilize mojang code but can never take that code off wolfe because he wrote it so he owns it.

Correct, Wesley wrote the code for an open source project with a GPL license, Mojang does not own the code.

However Wesley has no right to deny use of his code, unless the GPL license is broken. So Mojang or anyone for that matter has the right to take that bukkit code and enhance or change it, as long as they abide by the GPL license.
Now as a company Mojang cannot embed CraftBukkit within a non GPL project (like minecraft), but they could freely make a clone of the code and change it as they see fit (while complying with GPL).

The GPL issue:
This is not a Wesley vs Mojang battle, instead it is: Wesley vs CraftBukkit (And few remaining Staff).
Technically the CraftBukkit project should never have started since the Minecraft server software is not GPL, and legally cannot be distributed along side CraftBukkit (Bukkit API still complies with GPL).
The GPL license issue that Wesley raised is a huge concern for server owners, but Mojang believe they have a work around, so for the sake of the Minecraft community (in following weeks) I really hope they do.

Why is Mojang involved:
So what does this issue have to do with Mojang? why does everyone keep talking about Mojang?
In short Mojang are not directly involved in this event (although they may have helped trigger it).
Mojang did speak up when EvilSeph (recently resigned project lead) mentioned shutting down CraftBukkit.
They then announced their plan to update CraftBukkit for version 1.8 (As an attempt to assist the community).

The take down request:
So really the take down request from Wesley, is not against Mojang, its actually against the CraftBukkit project itself (That Mojang now happens to be involved in). Why has Wesley tried to shut down a project he took part in?

I dont know why Wesley has done this, but I think we roughly can draw one of three possible conclusions:
1) Wesley is trying to help the community and pressure Mojang to release server source code or an alternate solution.
2) Wesley is trying to discontinue CraftBukkit for some reason (Dislike of project direction?).
3) Wesley is taking a very odd stab at Mojang at the expense of the Bukkit project.

Knowing that Mojang will not release source code, surly it seems that Wesley is not aiming to help the Bukkit project?
Now I am not saying Wesley is wrong, but it does hurt us, and a large amount of Minecraft servers world wide.

Resolution and Future:
All of that said and done, I really appreciate the work that Wesley and many other CraftBukkit and Bukkit staff have put in over the years, and it is sad to see the project end like this, I just really hope that there is a solution that lets someone (Mojang?) update CraftBukkit to 1.8, so that we do not have to lock our servers to an old version (1.7) until such a time that Mojang release the official server API.