Bukkit: It's time to say ...

Discussion in 'Community News and Announcements' started by EvilSeph, Aug 21, 2014.

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    EvilSeph

    [​IMG]


    When we first set out to add our personal touch to what hMod offered the community 3 and a half years ago, none of us foresaw the success the Bukkit project would end up having. From a rocky start that wasn't of our own making (hMod suddenly disappeared without warning while we were just starting up the project, leaving us ill-prepared to fill the void left over), we stepped up to the challenge and managed to put together a usable, respectable alternative to other server mods. We even went so far as to improve on the Minecraft server itself. I can proudly and confidently say that Bukkit was and is a success: not only were we able to provide a platform for hundreds of thousands of Developers to build upon and make use of, we were also frequently providing our Server Admins with peace of mind knowing that the latest exploits and security holes were addressed in a timely and responsible manner.

    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. As such, my first priority at the start was to do things right: contact Mojang to try and get permission to continue on with the project and discuss our licensing. Unfortunately, while we did get into contact with Mojang and managed to have a chat with Notch and Jeb themselves (who have said that they don't like our methods but understand that there isn't any alternative and are thus fine with what we were and are doing), we never did get an official meeting with their business side to get legally sound permission to continue as we were and were unable to sort out our licensing issues. To this day we find our project in limbo with a half-applied license some could argue is invalid and little power on our end to do anything about the situation.

    With that realisation came a nagging unease at the back of our minds that at any point in time Mojang could decide they didn't like what we were doing and shut us down - something we were all expecting for the first year or so of the project's life but, to our surprise, never occurred. Naturally, Mojang's conscious decision to not take action on our project gave us the confidence to continue on (something which I'm sure Server Admins out there can relate to given the recent, sudden and unexpected EULA enforcement) and we even later got further confirmation from Notch himself that we were and are allowed to keep proceeding as we always had.

    Fast forward to more recent times and Mojang have made the abrupt and sudden decision to start enforcing their EULA in an effort to quell the outlook of Minecraft being pay to win. While I can completely understand where they are coming from and support their mission to shut down pay to win servers, it's difficult to be supportive of their abrupt turn-around with enforcing rules they consciously decided not to enforce since the start of Minecraft. On top of this, there are also clauses - which it would be irresponsible of us not to be aware of - within the now suddenly enforced EULA that directly affect the Bukkit project.

    Most notably: "The one major rule is that you must not distribute anything we've made". While the EULA does go on to try and clarify what is meant by "anything we've made", I feel that it only serves to confuse the situation even more so. At the end of the day, it seems that Mojang can determine what is a "mod, plugin or hack" of their game on the fly and their recent abrupt turn-around on enforcing the EULA has us understandably worried. Couple this with the fact that it isn't legally viable or acceptable to enforce the EULA piecemeal and our future is clear.

    At this point in time, I think it's safe to say that it's no longer worth it for us to put up a fight when it comes to keeping Bukkit and modding alive. With large and significant changes coming in Minecraft 1.8 that we'll be hard pressed to provide support for and the lack of support from Mojang with updates since acquiring our original core team (Mojang used to provide us with mappings to speed up the update process), there is little motivation for us to continue limping on across various aspects of the project. From a project management standpoint, it's become increasingly difficult to find willing and able individuals to help out the project on a purely voluntary basis due to people losing interest in Minecraft or people looking for something more. Simply put, this was ultimately the final nail in the coffin.

    Nonetheless, no one can deny that we've had a fantastic run as a project. This is due in no small part to the support we received and continue to receive from both the Minecraft community and the many companies and organisations that have graciously chosen to support us with a ridiculous amount of resources, infrastructure and backing - far more than we could have ever asked for. No amount of words can adequately express the gratitude we have for all our sponsors who have supported us through our journey and ensured Bukkit had the infrastructure required to be the vast success it is today. To list all of what these sponsors have done for us would be a post equal in length to this one, so we will unfortunately need to keep it brief. We want to give huge shout-outs and thanks to: eXophase.com for getting us off our feet and hosting us at the start; Multiplay and Curse for swooping in and providing us with (emergency) hosting we continue to use to this day including dl.bukkit.org and our BukkitDev service; as well as AllGamer for providing us test servers whenever we needed a server to certify update and promoted builds or attempt to reproduce a bug report.

    Last, but definitely not least, we'd like to thank the many staff, both past and present, that have volunteered countless hours over the years. I am at a loss for words to express just how much these people have meant to the project and to myself. The core team who have constantly worked hard to update to every new Minecraft version, while adding in new API and improving the server itself. The BukkitDev staff who spend countless hours checking over the fantastic plugins our community creates. Our moderation staff keeping our forums orderly and safe for all people seeking out a great community to be a part of. Additionally, the many unsung people who have helped in various ways despite having no official title, simply because there was work to do. Finally, my administrators, who have tirelessly helped me keep the project functioning as a whole. I would especially like to thank TnT and mbaxter for sticking through it with me to the end, always ready to discuss an issue and provide me with advice.

    It's been a fantastic 3 and a half years of providing what we believe to be the absolute best modding platform for the wonderful Minecraft community to use. We really enjoyed seeing the amazing feats our many Developers and Server Admins achieved with the product we provided and continue to be amazed every day at the ingenuity our community shows. Thanks for everyone's continued support! It has and will continue to mean the world to us. Together we were able to provide a Minecraft server used by hundreds of thousands of servers out there (with our last Recommended Build having over 2.6 million downloads!), which is certainly something to be proud of and a great note to end on.

    This is the end, it's time to say goodbye. It's been an amazing run and we achieved much more than anyone thought was possible, even ultimately culminating in Mojang hiring our original core team. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and the Bukkit project has run its course, leaving me to make one final - incredibly difficult - decision to shut down the project I’ve poured 3 and a half years of my life into which means so much to me. We're no longer able to confidently distribute our modified versions of the Minecraft server and it is no longer smart for us to continue with our update process. Sadly, this means we will NOT be updating Bukkit nor CraftBukkit for Minecraft 1.8 and, since Minecraft 1.7.10 introduced the EULA enforcement, we will be placing the project under a code freeze for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, due to obvious legal reasons we will not be helping anyone else complete any updates nor sharing our methods despite any desire to the contrary. Although the project itself will essentially be no more, we'll continue to support our community, the forums, IRC and BukkitDev as long as we are able and as long as our partners support us with the resources and infrastructure to do so.

    As for us? Well, who knows? Maybe we'll find another game, program or project to be passionate about and we'll be back with a vengeance? Only time will tell, but I hope that we'll see you around the next passion-project of ours when it happens :)


    [lukegb]There's more to come on this. Please read this for more information about where we stand.[/lukegb]
     
  2. Offline

    ThexBuilder

    Gamecube762 Thanks for the reply. It is clear and understood. #BukkitLives
     
  3. Offline

    Kainzo

    Patiently awaiting that 1.8 patch Dinnerbone :D
    Good luck!
     
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    SyTeck

    I literally nearly started crying. Bukkit has been my life for at least 2 years now and today I read that you are going to quit. First my mind didn't want to understand but I see now that you are not joking. I hope that Mojang soon sees that Minecraft will drop in sales, servers will start disappearing and that the perfect game Notch once created is no longer so perfect.

    Thanks for everything and goodbye.
     
  5. Offline

    robotnikthingy

    bukkit is not dead
     
  6. Offline

    SyTeck

    Who are updating it then? For me it seemed that they were shutting down forever.
     
  7. Offline

    InsanityNetwork


    Bukkit is being updated by dinnerbone. Follow the link on where bukkit stands in the OP and it'll show the twitter message indicating so.
     
  8. Offline

    robotnikthingy

    Dinnerbone and Grum said in a tweet they would themselves if they had to
     
  9. Offline

    desht

    So you didn't actually read the OP, then? The updated version? I quote from the big visible link:
    tl;dr: Bukkit is not dead and will be updated for MC 1.8
     
  10. Offline

    SyTeck

    A team of 2 people? The bukkit team was pretty big and it took ages for them to push out updates, and why would they shut it down if they are going to update it themself? I know that they added support for 1.8 but you can't use like blocks or anything from 1.8 on a server, and are they really going to update this in the long run?
     
  11. Offline

    robotnikthingy

    Thats because they had to de-obfuscate the minecraft code and basically put a ton of puzzle pieces together. Dinnerbone and Grum have access to the un-obfuscated minecraft code though, which means they dont have to deal with de-obfuscating the code, which im guessing at least takes 50% of the time of making a new version of bukkit
     
  12. Offline

    God_Fear

    So when will 1.8 Bukkit be released? Now releases should be on the same day as new minecraft releases?

    Gosh I wish someone would thumb Modang in the head so we could get a decent server code with plugins... how hard is this?

    Mo$ang making what more than half a mill a day? and this is a problem... REALLY?!?!? Stupid Stupid Stupid business sense. But what do you expect from a bunch of amature script kiddies. (am i making friends yet?)

    Just KIDDING! /rant /vent /lol

    Get it together guys!
     
  13. Offline

    rheuer22

    Bukkit isn't shutting down, i thought mojang took it over and one of mojang's staff is coding it still.
     
  14. Offline

    Gamecube762

    This is asked every Minecraft update, "When will Bukkit ___ be released??", and it always has the same answer:

    There is no ETA, there never was an ETA, there never will be an ETA, Bukkit will be out SOON.
     
  15. Offline

    mossyblog

    This kind of reads like a former / current employee miscommunication or tit for tat moment. I'd assume Mojang are working towards a reboot moment for the whole Official Modding API (Server/Client) going forward and 1.8 is just a step in that direction. Which by the way i'd be all for as whilst this is still a vibrant and energetic community to play and consume from when it comes to all things Minecraft modding, it's also a mess at times when it comes to release management ...

    It's kind of a 3rd tier curation issue in that how do you separate signal from noise when it comes to mods in terms of "Teams that work hard to reduce performance and increase gaming experience" vs "Look i learnt Java today and this is what I made" (which can be equally as rewarding may i add). Point is there has to be a convergent point and i'd say the future of Bukkit is "deprecated" not before Mojang settle on their answer to this fundamental problem around keeping release parity in the market whilst also empowering / enabling mods that don't degrate the the gaming experience.

    The EULA imho also a good decision by Mojang as putting the "Minecraft $$ per month" genie back in the bottle was definitely worth whatever negative / complaint(s) they've acquired since.

    I'd also state that the CommandBlock / Redstone additions are also another mature decision giving kids access to "Programming / Hacking" in a playful environment.

    my 2c :)
     
  16. Thank you Bukkit for everything:
    Mineplex, Skga.me, minecraftzocker, The Nexus, Nexus V2, hypixel.net, vikkcraft, etc would not be possible with out you guys! :( :) Thanks for ALL THE GREAT WORK!
    For a second time!
    GG
     
  17. Offline

    korsakof

    what a sad transition for an open source project.
     
  18. Offline

    HammerHedd

    Actually, it seems to me that this would be a great time for some new programmers to volunteer to help maintain the bukkit code, and work with DB and Grum to put together another team to do it.
     
  19. Offline

    CoolV1994

    What concerns me is that now Mojang is in control of Bukkit, and Dinnerbone has taken the responsibility upon himself to update Bukkit to 1.8. Mojang is a team of professional Minecraft coders, Dinnerbone is one person, one who has not made a commit on the Bukkit repo since 2012. I know it takes a lot of work and time to remap and manipulate code between 2 completely different sources, but with more staff quitting, people losing interest in server... Bukkit seems like it will come to an unfortunate demise; I suspect before a stable 1.8 release, considering we're still recommending a MC 1.6 build. Don't get me wrong, I highly appreciate everyone's hard work who contributed to Bukkit and would like to thank all of you. But.. What I am saying is Mojang seems to be pissing a lot of people off right now and I don't see them getting any better in the near future. If Mojang has paid for, and is probably making money back from,why can they not give assistance in updating THEIR server modification. Many many people clearly prefer Bukkit to vanilla. Obviously it would be in their best interest to update Bukkit at the same time they update vanilla. I feel as though Bukkit may never get to see it's full potential and many players won't be able to play their favorite servers basically resulting in Minecraft collapsing into itself.
    In addition to this rant; if Mojang could be more descriptive and informative when it comes to legal things, less issues would arise. Twitter seems to be a suitable medium for them so I wouldn't expect anything more then 160 characters to come from them.
     
    BossEndorphin likes this.
  20. Offline

    uvbeenzaned

    Dinnerbone Bring Bukkit and CraftBukkit back or my whole programming hobby and life is over.
     
  21. uvbeenzaned Despite the fact that he has already said that he will update it, I'm sure your post was exactly what he needed in order to actually do it. Also:

    "Hey man, don't get too attached to things. Learn to let go."
     
    uvbeenzaned likes this.
  22. Offline

    uvbeenzaned

    AdamQpzm I know that he said he would do it but I am so used to people saying that they will do stuff and then it actually never gets done. That is what I see for Bukkit. It is almost never that a big company (even though they bought Bukkit) will come and rescue something that is (un)official and isn't theirs. But hey, that's not mine to say. We'll see what happens. I would just hate to see this go because this is the thing I come home to and look forward to doing in my leisure time. Thanks for saying something at least anyway. I thought I might not even get a reply back from anyone.
     
  23. uvbeenzaned From my POV, and the POV of many others, it's in Mojang's best interest to keep Bukkit going. And my main point still stands - your appeal to Dinnerbone is more likely to do more harm than good if anything else.
     
    uvbeenzaned likes this.
  24. Offline

    ROTN

  25. ROTN Congratulations on being the, as far as I can tell, first of millions to make a forum post about it.
     
  26. Offline

    uvbeenzaned

    AdamQpzm Actually that was just up when I checked a minute ago. So you're wrong...
     
  27. Offline

    uvbeenzaned

    AdamQpzm The download site just went down. I went and looked at some old builds just this morning. The take down just happened.
     
  28. uvbeenzaned That fact does not contradict anything I said.
     
  29. Offline

    uvbeenzaned

    AdamQpzm sorry my fault. I misread. And... That is how rumors get started on the internet lol. Completely misread your other post. My apology.
     
    AdamQpzm likes this.
  30. This's a bit of a shock. I was just about to grab a dev version of CB when it disappeared.

    I do hope this was just a miscommunication of some sort. The DMCA is a bit of a heavy-handed law, after all.
     
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