How to stop your plugin working on cracked servers!

Discussion in 'Resources' started by Hoolean, Oct 16, 2012.

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  1. h31ix Totally understandable and in fact I can't see a easy solution for this. I think the main problem that you as bukkit staff have is that you have more or less overtaken Mojangs support, I mean how many servers run vanilla? But I can't see any solution to this. :(

    On the other hand this has nothing to do with plugins. I guess protection/economy plugins get the same false bug reports than you, but there's nothing to stop that. If somebody wants to maintain such a plugin he has to keep such things in mind. :/

    I don't understand what you mean with:
    Do you have examples except users choosing poor passwords (which a online mode server wouldn't help against, too) ?

    After all kiddies (wouldn't say 12 years old directly as there are some very clever, even if rare, also there are older who are just plain stupid) shouldn't run a server at all. But there's also nothing you can do against it.
     
    jtjj222 likes this.
  2. Offline

    Gravity

    The misconception that anyone can keep themselves safe in offline mode is very dangerous. People think that just by installing a plugin and using a password they will be able to run an offline mode server with no problems, which is completely false.

    If you understand everything that's going on at a code level, and you are smart enough to protect yourself using good means of authentication (yes, this means using strong, unique passwords but it also means making sure that your system has no loopholes. Almost nobody who uses those two systems knows how it works, they just assume it does. Installing more plugins or changing your server can affect your security, and if you don't know how it works you're screwed) you probably have the means to run offline mode if you so choose. This doesn't mean your server is perfect, though, and we certainly cannot ensure that a server run by anyone else who doesn't understand all this is, so we just have to flat out refuse support.
     
    V10lator and jtjj222 like this.

  3. I agree with your first point... Kinda but not really with the second "//EDIT: ..."

    Developers have the right to make whatever they want into their plugin even if its blocking offline servers.
     
  4. Offline

    Gravity

    Oh also I'd like to point out that Mojang doesn't support piracy, they just don't take severe measures to block it because they don't need to. Notch is very against DRM and all that, so it's just sort of indifference, not support. Support would mean the game would be free.
     
  5. h31ix Yes, he is against DRM, but he also putted offline mode and the function to play offline with any name you want in. In my eyes this is some form of support.
    Also if he would give the game for free he wouldn't support piracy but free (as in free beer) software. You actually can't pirate free software. Different thing.

    //EDIT:
    I wouldn't say so. As showed above this can make Mojang lose money. You have the right to refuse support and even print that out with a big fat warning as others showed before through. That's also what bukkit does.
     
  6. Offline

    Gravity

    I think it was necessary for the game to have an offline functionality because of how bad their servers were back in the day. Now they've gotten better, I don't think you can really pose any legitimate uses for it, although it's still nice to have. I don't think it shows any sort of support of piracy, just support of their paying users in case they can't connect as expected.
     
  7. h31ix Well, as servers become more stable it made no sense to add the function to use offline mode with any name you like, this feature is relative new (since around 1.3 IIRC).

    Also how do you explain this then:
    Source: Notch: https://twitter.com/notch/status/157261795139125248

    //EDIT: More quotes from Notch:
    Source: http://notch.tumblr.com/post/1121596044/how-piracy-works
     
    beleg, ZeusAllMighty11 and jtjj222 like this.
  8. Offline

    matejdro

    Nope.

    Offline mode is meant for legitimate players to play the game without internet connection or when servers are down. You are always named Player in offline mode. Name changing is only possible with 3rd party tools, not supported by mojang.

    EDIT: About your other post: I don't think he supports piracy, but he is against anti-piracy. So piracy is better than anti-piracy but not perfect or something like that.
     
  9. Not true. Write any name in login field, leave password empty, click on login, then on play offline. This is possible since (IIRC) 1.3. You can just test it on my testserver, it is in offline mode atm and you have IP.

    //EDIT: Also please re-read the quotes.

    //EDIT²: Especially things like
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_(Sweden)

    //EDIT³: Marked a few important things in my quotes above.
     
  10. Offline

    Kainzo

    I think its a good idea.
     
  11. And why do you think that? Please read the 3rd side of this thread completely before you reply.
     
    jtjj222 likes this.
  12. Offline

    Haribo98

    I play in Offline Mode. Since the past few weeks, there has been a few times when multiplayer sessions have gone down. I am a developer, I have 3 minecraft accounts, all of which are legitimate. Don't make a plugin disable itself as some people do use offline mode to bypass the sessions from slowing down development time ;).

    I will state, I DO NOT support Minecraft Piracy, or any kind of Piracy
     
  13. Offline

    Adriani6

    I actually use offline accounts to test plugins, on a separate server so I don't crash the server which has my community on... I guess, if you add this a your plugins, your popularity would go down, a lot of people I know who run servers do that, and use offline-mode quite a lot for testing, I'm not spending $60 to test your plugin. Thanks.
     
    blackwolf12333 and jtjj222 like this.
  14. Offline

    turt2live

    As I've said before, blocking the plugin from loading (I've actually seen some plugins shut the server down...) is stupid.

    This is what happens when you block your plugin from loading:

    From a developer point of view:
    Let's say I want to add support for your plugin to mine, but I'll need 2 accounts. I'll just start up a local server in offline mode and just login with 2 accounts and... wait... Why isn't your plugin loaded?

    From a player's point of view:
    Server's up, cool.

    From a server owner/administrator point of view:
    Why isn't <plugin> working?

    Now let's see what happens when you let your plugin load, but print 5 lines of text:

    Developer:
    Let's say I want to add support for your plugin to mine, but I'll need 2 accounts. I'll just start up a local server in offline mode and just login with 2 accounts. What's this spam in my log? Oh, offline mode. Meh.

    Player:
    Server's up, cool.

    Owner/Admin:
    SPAAAAAAM! Fix it! Oh, it's offline mode. We should change that sometime...

    And finally, what happens when you do nothing:

    Developer:
    Support added.

    Player:
    Server's up, cool.

    Owner/Admin:
    Server's up, cool.
     
    afistofirony likes this.
  15. Offline

    Shiny Quagsire

    I can honestly say I test a lot of my plugins in offline mode, ie to test permissions, so if you make a library/plugin that has some sort of expansion hooks, it can be difficult to test. When I recommended Minecraft to two of my friends, they pirated for about 1-2 months, and then they bought it. So piracy can be both good and bad.

    Also, if you release the plugin under GPL, or any other open-source license, then that will defeat the point of doing that, because they can easily modify your code to remove the check. Also, there is such thing as decompiling. So, this little code snippet can (and most likely will) be removed one way or another by the third party.
     
  16. Offline

    Milkywayz

    On my dev server I frequently use bPermissions for a test permissions plugin, and I have the dev server in offline mode because it's whitelisted, no point for auth when Im the only one who can join, not to mention the port isn't even forwarded. Anyways bPermissions has some built in anti-offline-mode features such as alerting people when they join the server is offline and disabling itself if offline mode isn't enabled in it's config.

    While I find it really annoying, I respect the authors choice and agree with the option to enable offline mode support in it's config.
     
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