If that is your experience, then your speed isn't really giving you 10m byte.

Seriously man. Something is wrong.

4Mbps is too slow and I think it should be raised to 6 or 8Mbps but that's so you can support some HD quality video since almost every consumer TV now has a HD quality.

Basic web browsing uses almost no data. A friend was able to browse through my lumia last night because her internet was down and 10 minutes of browsing and sending a couple emails didn't even show on the usage summary.

Mojang is very explicit.

You may charge for access to your server.

You may charge for banners, colored things, vanity items. You may charge for having bright yellow letters saying "VIP" in front of your name.

You may not charge extra and give different/extra items that help players beat the game and other players to only some players.

For example...

You may charge $15 for server access and give EVERYONE the same amount of free diamonds, invisibility potions, and sharpness V swords.

You may NOT charge $5 for 10 diamonds, $3 for 10 invisibility potions, and $1 for a sharpness V sword.

I.e. you are not allowed players to "pay to win" on your server. Apparently they were getting a lot of complaints from customers or parents of customers about servers using this business model. Some have alleged that bukkit members were connected with or running P2W servers so that's why they were so upset.

Reading the bukkit goodbye's, it was probably a lot more complex than that. Some were probably running P2W servers, many were just burned out, some were upset that the original 4 founders of bukkit got jobs but they didn't (and some were apparently more active than some of the 4 founders). At least 6 non founders had made significant contributions to the project.

And a lot took Mojang owning the name and the repository/distribution setup to mean Mojang owned Bukkit.

I think Wes felt bukkit had enough stroke to force Mojang's to give in.

I also think Wes misjudged things, ruined his rep with a lot of people and perhaps with potential employers.

One of the ironic things is that that Bukkit community was getting upset with Mojang for making changes to the internals necessary to bring out their API because it was breaking Bukkit and making a lot of work for them to stay in compliance.

And least I think it's ironic. Perhaps it's sardonic.

Minecraft has had a lot of API preparatory refactoring for the last 20 months or so.

I appreciate all the work they did on the project and had donated to servers that used their work.

Please reread what you quoted.

Until the moment the DMCA was filed, the code was still considered "GPL" and open source and could have been forked. My point was Mojang didn't own or control the source.

Yes of course it was violating Mojang's copyright and yes of course it wasn't actually legitimate. However... Mojang has allowed that for literally years and would have continued to do so in the future until they turned "evil" (probably after they released their own API- but maybe never) so the violation of Mojang's copyrights isn't what shut things down.

The issue didn't become critical until the programmer filed the DMCA. Now Bukkit is dead as are all the projects, mods, mini games, etc. that depended on it. It was a choice the programmer made that the programmer *had the right to make* but it hurt a lot of bystanders.

Servers will probably use the last version they had and in 3-6 months something will replace it. It's happened before. It's the internet- damaged areas are routed around. And it's probably for the best because it puts pressure on Mojang to prioritize the official API higher. They were already working on it pretty seriously for the last 20 months or so.

My limited understanding is that while both forge and bukkit support and make creating mods easier, bukkit was more aligned with performance of multi-player servers.

Forge is apparently a "clean" implementation while Bukkit used decompled, deobfuscated code.

There are several other projects, "Sponge", "Cauldron", and so on which also cover server support but most are incomplete or only complete to an earlier minecraft release (like 1.7.2).

Bukkit also supported older releases (1.4.5, 1.5.2, etc.) and now those versions are gone too. So if you were running an older copy and had custom in house mods developed against it, you better keep a backup copy but otherwise you are okay. Except you may not have a local copy of the source code to develop against since you always expected it to be available for download.

The worst thing I see is that you work on a GPL project for a couple years- write a lot of code for it- perhaps even get work helping write software for sites using the project, and then another programmer on the GPL project shuts the project down with a DMCA.

Your work is now undistributable and is basically useless text.

His code allows a small industry of private servers to run large population servers which drives sales of minecraft for people who show the game to their friends. He has a right to say, "Don't use my code". It's 23,000 lines so rewriting it will take time. And now there is a known risk that others might say "don't use my code" after his code is rewritten.

The number of players involved could be anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 players.

You can run minecraft okay with up to about 6 people on the free server. But if you want to go over 6 people, you pretty much have to use Bukkit or Forge.

Mojang acquired the bukkit name and repository structure but not the bukkit source code. They also hired four bukkit founding developers and were paying them to work on bukkit. They may have acquired the code written by those four developers as part of the hiring agreement.

The bukkit source code was still open source, gpl, not owned by Mojang and could have been forked. But it relied on decompiled minecraft source code so it was really illegal from day 1.

In fact, if Mojang turned evil, they could kill bukkit at any time too with a built in poison pill. Not likely as that would be very player hostile.

The pressure on Mojang is really only towards new sales on the PC. Existing servers can continue to run on 1.7.10 for a long while but new enhancements are probably mostly dead. All other platforms (Xbox, PS3, PS4, Android) are uneffected by this issue.

Mojang has been working on their own server API seriously for about a year now. They might be able to focus on it and get it out in 6 months to a year. Especially if they retask those 4 bukkit founders purely to the minecraft API.

What it really seems to mean is that before you work on any GPL project- you better check it and anything it depends on for truly clean code. For really large stuff, that might not be possible. Also, things clear after the fact (writing based on copyrighted closed source code) may not be obvious to you before the fact. So there is just a risk to working on GPL projects.

A lot of other programmers who were writing mods are now dead in the water.

It's okay- most closed source stuff you work on doesn't last more than a few years either.

It's possible that the developers will move to Forge and Bukkit is dead even if this issue is resolved. Forge seems to be clean.

Yea, I should have put a link to the DMCA-- certainly not the full text tho. That would have been over kill.

I wasn't trying to sway opinions, just report the story.

My primary interest in the story was the risk that if 100 people contribute to a GPL project which is tainted in some way, then anyone of them can shut the project down for a while by denying use of their contributions. They can even do this for a shorter period of time if the project *isn't* tainted in any way.

Bukkit was very popular and a lot of other programmers based a lot of work on it. All their projects are dead now too.

It's a risk you need to watch out for before you put significant time into a GPL project. People should be aware to check for that risk.

I wanted to see what informed people like you had to say about the situation.

Don't assume malice on the part of the submitters.

Mojang didn't' buy bukkit.

They hired four developers and bought the rights to the name "bukkit" and bought the repository.

The code is still GPL and could had been forked to "Hakkit" up to the DMCA.

I think the developers may have given rights to the code they wrote to Mojang (that's unclear).

So Mojang didn't release Bukkit.

Mojang is paying four developers to work on a GPL project, Bukkit.

Many companies pay developers to work on open source projects.

One thing to keep in mind is that even if this kills bukkit, it probably resulted in at least $26 million dollars in sales-- likely more-- while it was available.

And that "extra" popularity resulted in a lot more sales of plush toys, magnetic stickers, foam swords, minecraft Tshirts, etc.

But I did submit this mainly because I wanted to see people's thoughts on the GPL implications.

Multiplayer server vanilla minecraft on the PC is a small part of their market now.
They have releases on android, ps3,ps4, and xbox. Most young kids I know play on xbox.
Lots of people also prefer to play solo vanilla on their local machine.

They've been working seriously on the API for the last year. And that work is pissing off the Modders because it's changing the data structures of a lot of stuff.

I think if it becomes critical, they are at a point where they could get something minimal out in 6 months. It wouldn't be bukkit but it would be official. So multiplayer server people would be stuck with forge, or staying on 1.7.10 for six months instead of 1 month. We were not planning to upgrade our private server to 1.8 for at least a month anyway.

I agree mojang was nice and helpful to the modding community. I think it was based on friendliness then as mojang was still pretty small and even thinking of opensourcing at the time. These days, this could affect a hundred thousand of their players. But the financial impact is small since you don't subscribe to minecraft- you pay once.

The impact on future sales is more serious but it seems more like a 6 month stutter step to me than "killing the game" as some drama folks are saying.

Mojang didn't buy Bukkit.

Mojang bought the name "Bukkit", hired four of the existing developers and bought the infrastructure to support the distribution. It has no ownership on the code.

So you have
GPL code in a respository owned by Minecraft under a name owned by minecraft.

Four of the programmers working on it are paid by minecraft but minecraft won't own or use the code they create for the project.

The rest of the programmers are people working on it for free.

The code is still GPL and could have been forked, was open source, etc.

Put in a positive light, Mojang was paying 4 programmers to help a popular open source project because it benefited a lot of their players and drove sales.

But they didn't own or control the source code.

And they are working on an official API project which will make Bukkit unneeded pretty seriously for the last two releases.

Minecraft players on large multiplayer servers comprise a fairly small part of minecraft's player base these days. This won't affect minecraft on PS3,4,Xbox, and solo play on PC's. It will have limited effect on small servers (1-6 players).

It mostly effects people who play on servers with 7+ players.

He and Stahlman should get along nicely.

I don't think they tried to claim GPL viral.

I think Wess said "You can't use my GPL code unless you GPL the MC code" and there is a risk that one or more other programmers might be wait to DMCA until after they recode Wess's work.

Otherwise, my impression is what you said is accurate.