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Thank you for making me realize I'm not the only crotchety old bastard who bitches and moans about this! My kids are old enough to play Minecraft but too young

by jwn 12y ago

Thank you for making me realize I'm not the only crotchety old bastard who bitches and moans about this! My kids are old enough to play Minecraft but too young to understand how to install mods. Speaking of that, I've looked into the mod making scene and it's rather disgusting. Mojang really dropped the ball by not having an official way to write mods/plugins. Instead we get a horrible client side mod environment (Minecraft Forge), and a half decent server side (Bukkit), but they're not compatible with each other. Bravo Mojang!

freshyill 12y ago
It was so much worse before Forge. With Forge, it's still incredibly arcane, but it's not batshit crazy like it was before. Of course, now you need to have the Forge version of a mod, and you have to have the right version Minecraft too. I'm getting mad just thinking about it. I need to stop now.
- Pyrodogg 12y ago
  This also highlights why client side mods (Forge based or not) are the vast minority of 'Modded Minecraft'. Configuring a Bukkit server would still have taken some work, but it also only required that to be expended on the server side. Players would be able to connect with a purely vanilla client and benefit from the enhanced interactions and gameplay mechanics that could be handled on the server side only. This attracts thousands more people than fiddling with launchers, or worse, .jar files.
makomk 12y ago
Bukkit's dead now anyway. The entire development team decided to call it quits due to legal uncertainty and general exhaustion, then Mojang announced that they weren't allowed to do that because Bukkit was actually owned by Mojang and had a special deal which meant there were no legal issues, contradicting what they'd told people who asked privately. Then one of the main developers got pissed about the fact that he'd been secretly working for Mojang for free and used the DMCA to kill the whole thing off - something he could do because his code, and all of Bukkit, was licensed under the GPL and using it for modding Minecraft was a GPL violation(!). This didn't stop Mojang from arguing that he had no legal right to do so, though. They're really keen on the whole free labour thing.
- simoncion 12y ago
  > This didn't stop Mojang from arguing that he had no legal right to do so, though. They're really keen on the whole free labour thing. My read on the situation is this: 0) Bukkit people reverse-engineer MC code. MC code is non-GPL'd. 1) Bukkit people release RE'd MC code under GPL. In order for the Bukkit folks to be able to relicense their code, they would have had to add a couple of steps, and rewrite step one: 0.25) Bukkit folks write a spec from the RE'd MC code. 0.75) Bukkit folks hand that spec to an unrelated third party who then implements that spec without any other input from Bukkit. 1) That third party releases their work under the GPL.
  - nl 12y ago
    My understanding is that Bukkit people didn't reverse engineer the Minecraft code - they decompiled it. That's a problem. (Apologies if this is what you meant by "reverse engineered" - it isn't clear)
- phaed 12y ago
  Everyone left that matters is on #sponge @ irc.esper.net recruiting and planning Bukkit's successor called Sponge, it aims to be something like Bukkit+Forge.
- Pyrodogg 12y ago
  Craftbukkit was never licensable under the LGPL. From the projects inception, it contained proprietary, closed-source Mojang code used without a license. It's LGPL license was invalid from the start. From the get go we were plagued with issues and obstacles we needed to overcome, one of which we were sadly unable to tackle despite our best efforts: the legal barrier of licensing and permission. When starting the Bukkit project and even getting involved with hMod before that, we all knew that our work - no matter how well-intentioned - fell into a dangerous legal grey area. - EvilSeph[1] This calls into question the legal standing of all derivative works of Craftbukkit. The contributors still have copyright over the things they wrote, but they also weren't writing them in a vacuum. They were creating derivatives of Craftbukkit under the assumption it was valid LGPL. The LGPL wasn't violated because it came out that Mojang controls the Bukkit project. It was voided before these contributions came into question. It's not clear what license, if any, the contributions by Wesley, et. al. fall under. I am very interested in the legal issues of this whole situation and am constantly looking for the best resources I can find. If you're curious, I suggest reading some posts by /u/VideoGameAttorney on reddit[2] [1] https://forums.bukkit.org/threads/bukkit-its-time-to-say.305106/ https://forums.bukkit.org/threads/bukkit-its-time-to-say.305... [2] http://www.reddit.com/user/VideoGameAttorney http://www.reddit.com/user/VideoGameAttorney

by jwn 12y ago

freshyill 12y ago

It was so much worse before Forge. With Forge, it's still incredibly arcane, but it's not batshit crazy like it was before. Of course, now you need to have the Forge version of a mod, and you have to have the right version Minecraft too. I'm getting mad just thinking about it. I need to stop now.

Pyrodogg 12y ago
This also highlights why client side mods (Forge based or not) are the vast minority of 'Modded Minecraft'. Configuring a Bukkit server would still have taken some work, but it also only required that to be expended on the server side. Players would be able to connect with a purely vanilla client and benefit from the enhanced interactions and gameplay mechanics that could be handled on the server side only. This attracts thousands more people than fiddling with launchers, or worse, .jar files.

makomk 12y ago

Bukkit's dead now anyway. The entire development team decided to call it quits due to legal uncertainty and general exhaustion, then Mojang announced that they weren't allowed to do that because Bukkit was actually owned by Mojang and had a special deal which meant there were no legal issues, contradicting what they'd told people who asked privately. Then one of the main developers got pissed about the fact that he'd been secretly working for Mojang for free and used the DMCA to kill the whole thing off - something he could do because his code, and all of Bukkit, was licensed under the GPL and using it for modding Minecraft was a GPL violation(!). This didn't stop Mojang from arguing that he had no legal right to do so, though. They're really keen on the whole free labour thing.

simoncion 12y ago
> This didn't stop Mojang from arguing that he had no legal right to do so, though. They're really keen on the whole free labour thing. My read on the situation is this: 0) Bukkit people reverse-engineer MC code. MC code is non-GPL'd. 1) Bukkit people release RE'd MC code under GPL. In order for the Bukkit folks to be able to relicense their code, they would have had to add a couple of steps, and rewrite step one: 0.25) Bukkit folks write a spec from the RE'd MC code. 0.75) Bukkit folks hand that spec to an unrelated third party who then implements that spec without any other input from Bukkit. 1) That third party releases their work under the GPL.
- nl 12y ago
  My understanding is that Bukkit people didn't reverse engineer the Minecraft code - they decompiled it. That's a problem. (Apologies if this is what you meant by "reverse engineered" - it isn't clear)
phaed 12y ago
Everyone left that matters is on #sponge @ irc.esper.net recruiting and planning Bukkit's successor called Sponge, it aims to be something like Bukkit+Forge.
Pyrodogg 12y ago
Craftbukkit was never licensable under the LGPL. From the projects inception, it contained proprietary, closed-source Mojang code used without a license. It's LGPL license was invalid from the start. From the get go we were plagued with issues and obstacles we needed to overcome, one of which we were sadly unable to tackle despite our best efforts: the legal barrier of licensing and permission. When starting the Bukkit project and even getting involved with hMod before that, we all knew that our work - no matter how well-intentioned - fell into a dangerous legal grey area. - EvilSeph[1] This calls into question the legal standing of all derivative works of Craftbukkit. The contributors still have copyright over the things they wrote, but they also weren't writing them in a vacuum. They were creating derivatives of Craftbukkit under the assumption it was valid LGPL. The LGPL wasn't violated because it came out that Mojang controls the Bukkit project. It was voided before these contributions came into question. It's not clear what license, if any, the contributions by Wesley, et. al. fall under. I am very interested in the legal issues of this whole situation and am constantly looking for the best resources I can find. If you're curious, I suggest reading some posts by /u/VideoGameAttorney on reddit[2] [1] https://forums.bukkit.org/threads/bukkit-its-time-to-say.305106/ https://forums.bukkit.org/threads/bukkit-its-time-to-say.305... [2] http://www.reddit.com/user/VideoGameAttorney http://www.reddit.com/user/VideoGameAttorney