What Exactly is Spigot and What is Bukkit Now?

I've been away from all of Minecraft for about two years now, and I've skimmed the forums and there seems to have been events relating to Mojang, Microsoft, policy changes, etc. I think I get the gist if it. So it seems that Spigot is a project that is much an offshoot of Bukkit that has continued to develop despite Mojang's warnings? What has Bukkit been doing since, because it seems idle at the moment. Are we just hoping for them (Mojang) to change what they said so that Bukkit will develop again? Thanks.

 

Spigot is a server software like Bukkit, it can use Bukkit plugins and can connect to BungeeCord proxies servers which you can host.

In the past 2 years all minecraft server downloads have gotten weird, you have to compile the jar yourself, because the new EULA rules state that only apis are allowed.

 

No, the EULA did not make it so you have to compile it. That is the DMCA, Spigot thought of a semi-legal bypass.

 

@Cowboys1919, I have a work in progress essay explaining the Bukkit DMCA.
https://sites.google.com/site/tecnowizardplugindevelopment/my-stance-on-the-bukkit-dmca?pli=1
@bwfcwalshy, mind going though this and see if I messed up anywhere?

 

Of course not! Give me a few mins.

EDIT:
Found a mistake, first paragraph, you put Welsey Wolfe. It's Wesley Wolfe
You could also mention that Grum and EvilSeph also got hired by Mojang. EvilSeph left later on.

 

@bwfcwalshy, good addition. Putting it in.

Done and back to OP.
Microsoft implemented a EULA that states that you may not monetize servers in any way that changes the game experience. I went and found the post, but I must clarify. Later on Mojang explained that there are server exceptions, but I cannot seem to find the official youtube video right now. If anyone knows what i'm talking about, please post it.
https://account.mojang.com/documents/minecraft_eula

 

Actually i'd not think of semi here - the whole Bukkit project has been DMCA-able more or less from the start, so it has been "semi legal" or "illegal" (?) ever since (...). In fact what the Spigot people did, is to make a "legal" version of the whole thing, however at the cost that you have to run the build process for the server jar on your own machine, because distributing the final jar is illegal in some countries due to the DMCA. Now you could call that "semi", because you can't distribute a server jar file directly, but the project itself seems to be on legal ground and you can build it on your own machine for your own use.

Of course considering a country like idk... Sealand perhaps, they could declare the whole GPL license or parts of it invalid, resulting in strange situations for people who want to host their machines there - but currently i'd call it legal, they worked around the issues that made the DMCA work, resulting in a project that seems to satisfy the GPL license.

 

Make sure you explain that Warren Loo (EvilSeph) was told in the beginning (January 2011) that a GPL license was unsuitable for CraftBukkit, but he ignored this advice. You can find the relevant posts in these forums, e.g.:
http://bukkit.org/threads/what-license-is-the-bukkit-project-under.154/#post-1804

It was also suggested that contributors be required to sign a developers agreement (something that Spigot requires now), but that advice was also ignored.

Addressing both of these issues in the beginning would have avoided the entire DMCA problem.

 

@Tecno_Wizard please see the PM that was sent to you if you really want a truthful information article. As of currently its extremely wrong.

@asofold False. Spigot still redistributes Wolverness code. They dont have access to it as it was revoked due to the invalid GPL. Not going to reply to you further since you only respond to oppose.

@Bobcat00 No. http://bukkit.org/threads/what-license-is-the-bukkit-project-under.154/page-2#post-2885

If you knew about the project you would know that Mojang refused to work with us, bukkit team, towards a proper license.


As for general, i recommend not trying to get accurate information about Bukkit project from bukkit.org.

 

@Necrodoom_V2

That's all anybody needs to know.

 

"however we're waiting till we can get in contact with notch till any changes are made."

You do realize that when you say that all contributors need to sign a developer agreement, that includes Mojang due to their code in Craftbukkit, right?

Mojang refused to contact.

 

I also wouldn't want to rehash all this, but your position seems wrong here, because that is not what the DMCA is - the DMCA does not and can not remove the code Wolverness has written from the net.

I just re-state: The project is legal and in compliance with the GPL, there is no space for a DMCA, also not a past one. [Strictly seen, there is always space for a DMCA email, but providers are unlikely to fall for such, it would certainly be contested, given the current state of the Spigot project.]

Nice try - the license + CLA is for all contributors to the Bukkit project and Mojang has never ever contributed. A better set up would have prevented what Wolvereness did, but of course it can't shield against Mojang killing off stuff. Mojang/Microsoft could at any point declare the code base of MC-platform-XY as the new main version and scrap all java based stuff, then start to kill off every mod that allows killing - i assume they are not that stupid, though.

<Edited by bwfcwalshy: Merged posts, please use the edit button rather than double posting.>

 

Ah, so there isnt any Mojang code in Craftbukkit, after all.

I asked you before months ago, and i ask you again now - Stop pinging me with nonsense.

 

Mojang did not offer any contribution to the Bukkit project code-wise. They have not made any pull request and they did not "hand over" any code. Does that explain?

Edit: Given that, only the contributors have to sign a CLA and the license needs to be "sane", what Mojang does is their thing and not of much relevance to this one. You can argue that the current Spigot project but also Forge and others are on better ground than the Bukkit project has ever been, concerning what Mojang can do, but the main point is what contributors could do, as explained above...

Edit2: Another point to make is, that the code CraftBukkit was using hasn't been "Mojang code", it has been the result of decompiling and partly remapping an obfuscated binar jar file. I think this makes clear that that is not a contribution by Mojang, future-law-changes not regarded.

 

Thats not how any of this works! You cant just declare the entire CraftBukkit codebase as no one's because Mojang did not "hand over" the code to bukkit. They WROTE the code.

Decompiling your code does not make it not yours. It IS Mojang's code.

Once again, you are not a lawyer, stop pinging me with nonsense.

EDIT: And more replies from asofold. Note to other people reading this: this is what a derail looks like.

EDIT2: for people who want to know why im not replying to him - the argument is based on the assumption that even though Craftbukkit is Mojang's code, we can somehow license their code whatever we want without their authorization. This goes against the very basics of copyright and so im not going to argue against someone who has no actual knowledge on the matter.

EDIT3: More asofold spam. Not interested.

 

Correct is that i am not a lawyer. However your argument is goying astray here - you are trying to argue that the code resulting from decompilation belongs to someone THUS should be regarded as a contribution? This can not be correct, the Mojang-legalese response to the DMCA also states that CraftBukkit is not using the original server code.

What you describe makes up for "Bukkit stole Mojangs works", if you will call it code derived from decompilation of a Mojang binary which resulted from Mojang code, but that still doesn't make it a contribution by Mojang.

The point why the DMCA worked is that the code resulting from decompiling the jar file did not have a GPL-compliant license, it's not even been authorized by Mojang. Whatever you make of this, you won't be able to make it look like a contribution by Mojang.

 

There is Mojang code in this repository?
https://hub.spigotmc.org/stash/projects/SPIGOT/repos/craftbukkit/browse

 

Oh so? Let's look what a detail look like....

You are shifting targets here. My main point is that the Bukkit project has been invalidly licensed, but that other projects are validly licensed. Now i also mentioned that i can imagine that the Bukkit project could have had a valid license, if done right - at least they could have prevented contributors from killing the project, which is what killed the Bukkit project. Now the question if the Bukkit project as we knew it could have been valildly licensed instead, can certainly be answered positively, but they may have been infringing on Mojangs copyright - which though, after Mojang effectively consenting with them doing so, would not have been an actual issue, at least for past versions of Minecraft. Please note that Mojang has officially stated that they've been OK with what CraftBukkit was doing - there is no problem with crafting/choosing a license that covers contributors and code resulting from decompilation, effectively being able to do modding and to prevent any DMCA by contributors. How much you want to depend on Mojang for a game that Mojang is developing, that is entirely up to you. Mojang can always kill off modding, even if the projects are fully legal, they could change platform, internals, client, server, authentication, what not... that then would also make life hard for all other modding techniques.

Please don't go wildcard (this, entirely). Copytright issues are for a part tightly linked to the licensing, the focus of discussion is to be able to do modding and to effectively avoid contributors from killing the project. You shouldn't mix the copyright claims by Wolverness covering use of the code he himself contributed to the CraftBukkit project part with the copyright Mojang may have on their works, whatever the code resulting from decompiling a binary jar file is called in (future?) legalese. Code resulting from decompiling Mojangs officially distributed binaries has been used but can not be seen as a contribution, even then it does not seem to be Mojangs intention to meddle there, they could have copyright claims, but once the license for the project is chosen right, there are no copyright claims by contributors possible.

I'd say it's (L)GPL compliant.

 

Its also not Craftbukkit. Its Spigot.

EDIT: and also completely irrelevant to this topic as Spigot did not exist in 2011

 

I am going to lock this here, the topic of the thread is Spigot and Bukkit now and what happened but not what made the license invalid/what they did. If you need any info on why Bukkit went down and what happened in the past I suggest you talk to @Necrodoom_V2 he is well informed on this topic. If you disagree with him then please talk to him about that.