Bukkit: It's time to say ...

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

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  1. Offline

    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

    Jameshobbs

    Open source still has licenses. People want credit for the work they do. See apache licenses for example. Some say you cannot use the code for financial benefit unless authorized by the author.

    So open source does not mean OPEN. It means you can use it based on the license that the code is placed under. So as long as you follow the rules stated in the license then you can use it.
     
  3. Offline

    DennisSkov

    [​IMG]

    I'm pretty sure you can't return years after, saying: Hey, I want monies for mai work nao!!
     
  4. Offline

    Jameshobbs


    Indeed it suck :( But I think that is where Wolf is coming from is all. This will probably just be a lesson learned from him. Hopefully it doesn't come back and bite him in the you know where.
     
  5. Offline

    uvbeenzaned

    Yes I understand that but my point was that he isn't getting paid to work on it right now, why should he all the sudden get paid by Mojang if it was really theirs in the first place and he was just a contributor to the project.
     
  6. SatanDaughter66 We have no idea where and when it will be done and uploaded, and all we know is he is doing it to 1.8 we have no idea about 1.9+
     
  7. Offline

    Jameshobbs

    My main question is, for the code that he contributed did he add some sort of license to his contributions? And if so does it have any weight in terms of ownership considering he was contributing to basically non-for-profit organization.
     
  8. Offline

    SatanDaughter66

    bwfcwalshy well i hope that he at least continues it...otherwise alot of people will be gone. im sure alot of people had high hopes for their servers and then this happens. i know im one of them. i was gonna make my server public soon.
     
  9. SatanDaughter66 Not to support unsupported builds but when EvilSeph first said Bukkit was closing Spigot said they would update to 1.8 so maybe if Bukkit dies everyone will just migrate to Spigot.
     
    uvbeenzaned likes this.
  10. Offline

    Jameshobbs

    bwfcwalshy what is the difference between bukkit and spigot when it comes to craftbukkit and bukkit?
     
  11. Jameshobbs The difference is Spigot has messed with the Proxy code to get things like BungeeCord to work which Bukkit (Mojang) do not like/support.
     
  12. Offline

    Jameshobbs

    So how can spigot work without craftbukkit being updated as it sounds like they just add extra features on top craftbukkit.
     
  13. Offline

    DennisSkov

    md_5 knows how to do magic as well. He did create Spigot and BungeeCord. He also asked Mojang what it would cost for him to buy Bukkit, when Mojang said they would continue the project.
     
  14. Offline

    SatanDaughter66

    bwfcwalshy but spigot doesnt support alot of the plugins here right? and if bungeecord isnt liked by mojang, someone might try to shut that down.
     
  15. Offline

    quentinbis

    Spigot support most of the bukkit plugin, expect in the last build because spigot team try to use protocol hack to allow 1.8 client to connect to 1.7 server. So some plugin are broken (after the build 1627)
     
  16. Offline

    Necrodoom

    bwfcwalshy Unofficial builds are not supported here.
    Do not advertise your unofficial builds here.
    Bukkit is not responsible for damage and errors caused by your unofficial builds.
     
  17. Necrodoom I know it is unofficial just pointing out that Spigot may live and Bukkit may die.
     
  18. Offline

    Necrodoom

    bwfcwalshy No, it wont. Advertising unofficial builds is still not supported here.
     
  19. Offline

    uvbeenzaned

    Necrodoom It is not an advertisement! He isn't saying, "Come on over and try this or that!", he is simply stating a fact. Also, it's not his build! It's someone else's. No need to be so uptight. There are other alternatives to Bukkit that work just fine.
     
    sk8er92749 likes this.
  20. Offline

    Necrodoom

  21. Necrodoom Does it really matter anymore? There is no more Bukkit builds!
     
    uvbeenzaned likes this.
  22. Offline

    ERROR372

    It was taken up by Dinnerbone. What makes you think there won't be any other builds?
     
  23. Offline

    uvbeenzaned

    Because Mojang doesn't seem to hold up to promises very well and Dinnerbone has not contributed since 2012.
     
    BossEndorphin likes this.
  24. Offline

    ERROR372

    Why would Dinnerbone contribute when there was an entire Bukkit team, and he went on to work at Mojang and their own (slowly developing) server API?
     
  25. Offline

    Necrodoom

    bwfcwalshy This is the bukkit forum, and rules continue to apply.
     
  26. ERROR372 Didn't say there won't be just there isn't right now. dl.bukkit.org is gone.
     
  27. Offline

    Necrodoom

    bwfcwalshy no it isn't gone. Do not spread misinformation.
     
  28. Offline

    Jameshobbs

    I for one am disappointed in Mojang for basically not updating the community. I mean if they do own bukkit, then wouldn't they update the home page to inform us, rather than keep EvilSeph's post on the home page? I mean in his post it says ". Sadly, this means we will NOT be updating Bukkit nor CraftBukkit for Minecraft 1.8 " .... and not everyone can find Jeb or dinnerbones tweets that say otherwise.
     
  29. Offline

    Necrodoom

    bwfcwalshy yes. It is still there, and fully functional, and still hosts Bukkit.


    No it's not, did you even check.
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    MrTang do you know the difference between CraftBukkit and Bukkit?

    Did you even check?
    [​IMG]

    EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 5, 2019
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