Bukkit: It's time to say ...

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

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  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. I didn't necessarily mean court - but lawyers need to analyze this thin like to the end (could mean court), otherwise they playe sitting duck with roughly 180 past contributors potentially re-iterating the whole thing. That's why i stress "lawyers".

    I can't judge if they could risk to go for some kind of solution leaving the possibiliy of it happening again, by providing some kind of agreement/payment/whatever based on amount of contribution of whomever of the past-contributors wants it. I gues they have to contact all to make sure it can't happen - the practical way would be to somehow get like 80-90% fo the code in and if the others who don't reply to contact attempt object they'll have either already replaced or flagged that code parts, so it can still be done.

    I'm afraid what they can do depends on if that claim is valid - so it'll be solved by lawyers in that they figure out what's the case and what not, court or not ...

    Right now i judge it to be uncertain.

    EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 9, 2016
  3. Offline

    Xyphos

    Sad news. 90% of the Minecraft community just died.
    I had TONS of fun and countless hours spent playing on heavily modded Bukkit servers, because vanilla servers sucks balls.

    it's a shame to see you guys go, and I don't expect Mojang to update at all, as Dinnerbone will be busy with other things.
    instead Mojang will probably be pushing for their crappy vanilla "Realms" rentals, as we've seen a lot of development going in that direction, but I may be wrong.
    (let's all hope I'm wrong)

    but, if I'm right then I guarantee I will uninstall, cancel my account and never buy another Mojang product, ever. I hate being forced into a corner without alternative options or choices, Mojang can shove their EULA where the sun don't shine. (bad customer service leads to bad customer relations.)

    In closing, thanks a lot for this awesome project, I had a blast playing and let's hope Mojang doesn't ignore their playerbase. (haha! wishfull thinking, I know)
     
    Minnymin3 likes this.
  4. Offline

    Minnymin3

    This is really sad. I'm hoping that DinnerBone will be able to get the project back up and running.
     
  5. Offline

    markdf

    What a bunch of drama queens many of you are, servers will still work even if updating to 1.8 is not possible just at the moment. Just sit back and wait to see what happens instead of behaving as if the world is about to end. Just be patient and wait for an official statement from those that actually know the facts instead of running around like a chicken with its head cut off, while make wild accusations and other stupid statements as a self-proclaimed legal expert.
     
    NewsByShawn and Inscrutable like this.
  6. Offline

    uvbeenzaned

  7. Offline

    markdf

    uvbeenzaned likes this.
  8. Offline

    Xyphos


    that post is the typical, standard-issue "damage control"
    it's even written in the old-fashioned "bullshit sandwich" format
    open on a good note, stick in your bad points, close on a good point, viola! bullshit sandwich.

    I'll start believing when I start seeing, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.
     
  9. Offline

    uvbeenzaned

    At least we have something official now. Stop griping. Geez.
     
    markdf likes this.
  10. Offline

    outburst

    I think what it comes down to is this. Forget the GPL/LGPL mumbo-jumbo.
    • EvilSeph announces that he's leaving and pulling the plug on Bukkit
    • Jeb responds [very arrogantly and rudely] that Bukkit was bought over 2 years ago. Hey they even have the reciept!! Omg!!
    • Dinnerbone also responds [somewhat arrogantly] that he's going to take the project himself and update it to 1.8
    • Grum responds [and this would probably anger me if I was a developer] suddenly after 2 years of owning Bukkit that they have taken control of the github repos and project.
    Sorry, but there are a few things wrong here.. Suddenly Dinnerbone has the TIME to update Bukkit to 1.8 when he was originally hired onto Mojang to develop a new API? Man, that's hilarious, where did you get all that time suddenly? Are you done making cute little flipped mobs with your name on it?
    Then suddenly after 2 years, Mojang decides to step in and help the Bukkit project by taking over the github? Seriously? Why is Mojang suddenly interested in Bukkit and didn't help support it if they owned the project for the last few years?
    This really comes down to Mojang's lack of support for the community that brought their crappy little game into the mega star it is now.
    Mojang, if you see this post, this is what you should have said:
    • "We are saddened by the fact that EvilSeph has left the Bukkit project, even after we've purchased the project after the 2 years, the project continued. We will leave the project in the capable hands of the community who had served it well."
    Instead of:
    • "Oh we purchased you guys. We have the reciept."
    • "Yep, we've stepped in and updating to 1.8 now."
    • "We've also taken over the githubs."
    I'm pretty sure if you would have had some PR lessons, or even some good customer service skills, you would've have angered the community and the developers who worked so hard [this includes Wolvereness].
    I'm a small server owner and pretty affected by the Craftbukkit shut down.
     
    justcool393 likes this.
  11. Offline

    markdf

    There is no pleasing some people.
     
  12. Offline

    Necrodoom

    markdf yes, half of it is false, other parts are just insults, while stating that mojang does not actually plan to do anything.

    People fail to realise that neither Bukkit team, which has planned to stop development, and is now forced out of their own forums and repos, and mojang has said that they do not plan to contribute to bukkit anyway. No matter what insults you throw at @wolverness, it doesn't change the outcome, because except dinnerbone, who loses access since mojang's repo lock, no one can or will update bukkit. Bukkit is declared dead for a while, and mojang is just trying to pull off stunts now.
     
    justcool393 and slipcor like this.
  13. Offline

    mossyblog

    I think Necrodoom reaction is on point here. The damage inflicted at the moment is that it creates a negative spiral of "Why bother" attitudes across the community and it at times can be the death of a good thing - not a quick sudden death but one that drags on for months if not a year or so.

    I'm not sure what the COO of Mojang was attempting to achieve in that post but I suspect its not going to work as well as he'd hoped. The narrative is all wrong in my opinion and someone at Mojang should quietly engage a PR consultant rather soon. The reason I say this as you don't approach a politically hot situation like this with "You" its "We" as it builds on a response of "Ok ok , lets put this genie back in the bottle" (even if the other party is hostile or not).

    The correct approach would have been something like "We are shocked and dismayed at the reaction of current Bukkit Leadership team. We acknowledge that our ownership has caused some tension in the community specifically around the spirit of Open Source .." etc etc.. You craft the narrative so that you firstly take back control of the messaging around who vs who din't (which will just fan the flames) you also move beyond blame and work to re-establish a peaceful fair outcome. You can go on to state your points of division around how Mojang will never be able to allow their Intellectual Property to be officially deployed outside their own server channels and more so to outline the liability and legal issues that arise from this (irrespective on your stance on licensing there are still issues here that impact trademarks etc).

    Then you also build out a framework that resets the boundaries on how modding in general is going to work with the game itself, as whilst there has been a lot of forgiveness baked into the current status quo its still however always been living on borrowed time. This sucks in a lot of ways as it feels like there's a loaded intellectual property gun pointed at your head everytime a release happens.

    The stark reality here is that I highly doubt the consumer base for Minecraft are more likely to associate Minecraft Online for PC as being Craftbukkit itself. Looking at the plethora of hosting solutions around on the market today, Bukkit / Craftbukkit and Spigot dominate. To assert that there is no attachment here or impact here is misguided and amateur. I think this issue has been building for quite some time and it usually arises around release time given Mojang do a great job at ratcheting momentum on their client release(s) through snapshots/betas but then comes the latency between an official release and then the "deobfuscation" has to occur.

    Going forward i'd love and prefer both parties to come to a middle ground, find a way past the past and look instead at how the two worlds can come together. The reality is Bukkit has momentum and ubiquity in the Minecraft hosting community and unless you can develop a solution with either feature parity or smarter ways to handle release management than it is today, you have to get involved or simply let the whole thing collapse into the dark corners of private hosting (very hacky) solutions (much like Ultima Online had many years ago).

    Having personally written a voxel "engine" inside Unity3D to see what it was like to write Minecraft, I can honestly say it wasn't an easy thing to have built on your own, so there is definately coding talent within Mojang but I suspect in the next release if it comes down to feature catalog of "build more mobs" or "build a modding server/client" API then i'd say the later is far more important now than ever.

    I'm hopeful for the future here but any attempt now to help or contribute to the Bukkit Project is a bit toxic right now as if anything these posts are probably counteracting the goodwill thus far.

    I'd also love to know what it would take the Bukkit Leadership folks to come back to the fray, is it money, is it really the EULA? or is it more?
     
    feildmaster, drtshock and Inscrutable like this.
  14. Offline

    Lordsrbin

    I cant believe.
    This is really unfair.
    I have been leading a server for 2 years.
    And this...
    Why????????
     
  15. Offline

    ViperZeroOne

    I have to admit, my first reaction to this post was to feel a little betrayed. As someone who has operated Bukkit servers since Bukkit came into existence, and got many others to switch from hmod over to Bukkit, it's like the carpet is suddenly being pulled out from under my feet. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate what the team has done over the years. That said, without us operators there wouldn't have been a successful Bukkit project, so I can't help but feel left out in the cold when we need them the most (To get to 1.8 compatibility). I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with my RPG servers now, probably just shut them down. It's a shame considering all the hours I put into building locations, programming quests/boses, and making it almost like an MMO... Bukkit had the best server, the best plugins, and the most reliable coding in existence. It's shutdown will be the "nail in the coffin" for Minecraft's PC Multiplayer community... It's a dark day indeed.
    Sad thing is, most of the P2Win servers aren't even using the newer code. They're all FTB-style servers running versions 1.4.7 to 1.6.5 of Minecraft... *sigh*
     
  16. Offline

    DrPyroCupcake

    You said you switched from hMod to Bukkit. Well you can switch from Bukkit to Spigot if it dies. (Not trying to support Spigot, I am just saying if Bukkit dies then people will have to switch to Spigot like they did with hMod to Bukkit.)
     
  17. Offline

    Xyphos


    ...until Mojang starts going after Spigot admist of their shitty vanilla "Realms" campaign.
    cuz ya know, Mojang has ideas so good, they're mandatory.
     
  18. Offline

    KillerKozmo

    I love you guys so much you were the most amazing people and I am so depressed to see you go I love you guys and you have inspired me so much I have been here since day 1 and you guys were amazing I am so sad to see you go it was an amazing run and I got the bukkit 1.8 before you guys shut it down :D I will try to use it to my atvantage
    thanks so much


    - KillerKozmo
     
  19. Offline

    Orchface

    [GoodbyeBukkit]
    What's up with this recent "Goodbye Bukkit. It was great." thing? I have never seen anything like this before... all the administrators leaving... I am very sad to see this and I really need Essentials 1.8. If everyone is leaving I might want to keep Bukkit going. I am learning Eclipse and hope to be a developer soon. I do know HTML and might be able to help maintain the site. I heard about Wesley Wolfe recently. I do not know anything about him except that he has caused a major disturbance in the Bukkit community. I do wish this gets resolved soon and Bukkit continues to make and show plugins. Bukkit has been my favorite site for plugins. Also, I'm sad to see TnT leave. He was a phenomenal admin. Please PM me if you want to contact me.

    Best wishes to the Bukkit Team,

    Orchface


    Edit: Never mind. If Mojang is taking over Bukkit then I shall leave. Goodbye. It was fun.
    [/GoodbyeBukkit]
     
  20. Offline

    jonoaa


    Sigh, I to spent almost 2 Years on my RPG map... It's still there but with the removal of Meta-data and this news, I'm not sure what to do. Hope Bukkit gets through this.
     
  21. Offline

    Pew446

    Uh, guys, Bukkit isn't dead.. Dinnerbone said himself that he will be updating it to 1.8... Read this.
     
  22. Offline

    JWhy

    He can do that privately, but since the DMCA complaint he can't publish an updated version
     
  23. Offline

    hellspawn3200

    it was someone who contributed to bukkit who killed it because he felt like mojang was profiting from his work.

    he just has to remove 'infringing code'
     
  24. Okay, now I understand what is going on. Except for one thing, who is this person who filed the copyright claim, and cause the downloads to be taken down?
     
  25. Offline

    robotnikthingy

    So all of the bukkit staff is resigning? So this is the end then, the end of 99% of all servers... the end of all the plugins which took such hard work to create both past and future, the end of probably minecraft unless mojang is able to pull a modding API out of its ass at this very moment, which it cant...
     
  26. Offline

    Creeoer

    robotnikthingy
    Time will tell the answer my friend, a few of the staff members will wait and see how thigns turn out, but a majortity of bukkit dev staff are gone, they're are alternatives...which I don't think I'm allowed to name, you could use.
     
  27. Offline

    robotnikthingy

    Also, it looks now like my project on bukkitdev will never get approved :(
     
  28. Offline

    Brianetta


    Heh, "just".

    Unfortunately, the infringing code is distributed whenever somebody clones the source repository, because Git maintains 100% of its history. Removing the offending code would be an insane amount of work. The mother of all rebases, and that's no guarantee that what's left would work at all.
     
    Joro likes this.
  29. Offline

    Plo124

    robotnikthingy
    Theres no more bukkit to approve it. Bukkit is dead :X
     
  30. Offline

    Xyphos

    as a C# coder, I don't claim to know Java much, but what I've seen from the Maven repo, Bukkit had
    [a copy of] Mojang's vanilla server as a dependency. EG, Bukkit code will not compile without it.
    to remove 'infringing code' would be to remove the whole server 'core'
     
  31. Offline

    Hawnu

    If it were not for the stupidity of Master Wolvereness now bukkit would follow up with Mojang yet, but no, this man declares 'Illegal' when her face is totally LEGAL software.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page