5 ms·
I still remember Mojang's promise to open source Minecraft. Instead, he sold it to Microsoft. /o\
by snvzz 4y ago
I still remember Mojang's promise to open source Minecraft.
Instead, he sold it to Microsoft. /o\
- nsxwolf 4y agoFor $2.5 billion I would absolutely renege on a promise to open source my code. Every time.
- xmzx 4y ago[flagged]
- snvzz 4y agoIf I was already rich (Like Mojang was), I actually wouldn't. YMMV.
- CobrastanJorji 4y agoCounterplan: accept the $2.5 billion. Spend $10 million to fund the development of an equivalent or better open source voxel game engine. Everyone wins.
- leansensei 4y agoHis agreement probably prohibits that.
- CobrastanJorji 4y agoFund it in secret. Name it "Minetest."
- Gigachad 4y agoNotch ended up set for life and distributed out huge sums of cash to all of the employees after the sale who were not rich. At the end of the day its a video game, not firmware for someones heart implant. If it matters to anyone, they can just write their own video game.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- snvzz 4y agoYes, that's one way to see it. But Minecraft is likely to be what Notch will be remembered for, yet he doesn't even own the rights to his own work anymore. If that made him rich, it'd be one thing. But as he was already rich... was it really worth it? It might be something that torments him for the rest of his life. This has some parallels to Palmer Luckey's Oculus sale to Facebook. We already know he regrets doing that. Some promises were already broken; FB got him really good. It is unfortunate, but the field psychologists employed by Facebook got him to sell Oculus. Not unlike Faust and Mephistopheles.
- nullc 4y agoPeople did, that's minetest... and now microsoft has been using apparently bogus copyright complaints to get it taken down. So much for "can just write their own".
- snvzz 4y ago>and now microsoft has been using apparently bogus copyright complaints to get it taken down. That'd be HN front page worthy. How come I haven't heard about this?
- nullc 4y agohttps://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/13363#issuecomment-1485528633 https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/13363#issuecomme...
- snvzz 4y ago>The company is AppDetex, they appear to author automated solutions for finding copyright infringement so it's probably a mistake on their part Yeah, the usual robot DMCA fare any random project may get.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- astrange 4y agoIsn't it Java? It's basically already open source.
- streakfix 4y agoIt's obfuscated
- MrPowerGamerBR 4y agoWhile it is obfuscated, newer versions provide unobfuscation mappings to make moodders' lifes easier
- tjoff 4y agoYou typically only do that the the intended API used for modders, would guess that is what is done here? Not quite the same thing.
- _piif 4y agoThere is no official modding API for the Java edition unless that changed some time ago. I remember there being plans for it almost a decade ago now but nothing coming out of it for the Java edition - Bedrock however got modpack support.
- astrange 4y agoCan't be that bad if there's so many mods.
- herbst 4y agoYou obviously haven't battled the mod game by rebuilding and fixing your mods from zero every time a new version comes out. The good tooling is from the community. Not majong and especially not Microsoft.
- snvzz 4y agoOpen Source is not about having source code. It is about the license meeting OSI's requirements, which are more or less the same as GNU's four freedoms. The main problem with Minecraft is how Microsoft, due to Mojang's decision to sell, is at the centre. This is such an important game to computer history, and it has such huge community. It deserves better than this. IMHO the community is best served by alternative, actual open-source clients and servers, and it would be healthy to recreate everything Microsoft currently owns. Minetest is one such effort. This one is from scratch. The incremental approach is another possible route.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- teruakohatu 4y agoBrian Acton sold WhatsApp to Facebook, then helped found and fund the Signal Foundation. It's not mutually exclusive.
- rstat1 4y agoIf I recall that promise only applied if they ever stopped working on, which they clearly haven't.
- SquareWheel 4y agoCorrect. Also it was said by a lone developer a couple months after starting a hobby project. To expect that throwaway comment to mean anything after fifteen years and a 2.5 billion dollar acquisition is simply unreasonable.
- charcircuit 4y agoIt was never a promise and it was something to do once the game had died which the game clearly hasn't.
- platz 4y agoI remember when he promised to develop 0x10c
- herbst 4y agoWhich looked amazing. But to be fair would I be suddenly that rich I would probably not find the time to build sophisticated games either.