The most important fact about Java Minecraft that most people are missing is that long after Notch left the company they started distributing deobfuscation maps

The most important fact about Java Minecraft that most people are missing is that long after Notch left the company they started distributing deobfuscation maps for it: C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\versions\1.17.1\1.17.1.json Look for: client_mappings & server_mappings https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/e4d540e0cba05a6097e885dffdf363e621f87d3f/client.txt https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/e4d540e0cba05a6097e88... https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/f6cae1c5c1255f68ba4834b16a0da6a09621fe13/server.txt https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/f6cae1c5c1255f68ba483... The tricky part is they don't provide deobfuscation tools, so everyone makes their own and it's a mess. But Minecraft is for all practical purposes open-source since 2018! Legally you cannot distribute the deobfuscated binaries, so most people map the code. I would probably use the 1.17.1 as the last "open" minecraft and start a fork that you compile and work with after deobfuscation and then re-obfuscate at each release. Dunno what the legal team at Microsoft would think about that!