A meeting with Mojang Specifications

Discussion in 'Bukkit News' started by EvilSeph, Jan 20, 2011.

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  1. Offline

    EvilSeph

    On Wednesday morning, as I'm sure most of you already know, the Bukkit team had a meeting with Mojang Specifications regarding their popular game, Minecraft. Going into the meeting, we were hoping to tackle the licensing issue right out of the door. Unfortunately, due to some people being unable to make it, it turned out to be a different type of meeting than we had intended.

    With only the developers of Minecraft able to attend, the meeting quickly turned into a technical discussion about what ideas we all had for Minecraft, how modding should work and so on. As we learned a lot from this meeting, we felt we should share some of the points with you. However, please understand that absolutely nothing said in the meeting is set in stone or final and can change at any time.

    So, here's what we learned:
    • Modding support will likely start as server-side only at first, then later is hoping to expand to the client-side
    • Single player is most likely going to be changed to run through a local server (this is also to enable modding)
    • They are hoping to make texture modification easier, without having to modify the client
    • They like what we're doing but need to provide us with a better alternative to the way we're doing it
    Some ideas they're considering:
    • Generic gui support
    • Server -> client communication to allow popping up an interface, etc
    • Being able to tell clients to follow different rules, like physics
    • Giving modders the ability to (make signs) show text
    While we did not have time to address our licensing issues, we believe we can honestly say that this meeting was just the beginning of a long-term relationship with Mojang Specifications. Nonetheless, we're hoping to contact Mojang Specifications specifically about our licensing issues soon.
     
  2. Offline

    pageygeeza

    Lucid: Yes, we're all fed up waiting. But if you're not interested to put in a positive contribution, you're not helping.
    So by slating what's going on, the mods and admin will start to get a little miffed. As I've said before, they're doing this by going through the correct legal channels. If they don't, then Bukkit could probably get killed by Mojang.

    Patience is the key here, if you're not willing to wait then Bukkit isn't for you.
     
  3. Offline

    4am

    Throwing your hands up in the air and making brash statements against possibly the most positive event to happen to the Mincraft modding community since, well, ever is clearly an underhanded attempt to discredit the Bukkit team and is pretty much trolling. I'll assume that you have innocently misunderstood the events which have taken place here and attempt to explain things, for the sake that this might be true. If you're just trolling, I only bite once, so don't even bother.

    You have misunderstood what happened completely.

    Bukkit went to meet with Mojang on Wednesday morning. Mojang developers where there, Mojang business/legal guys had a scheduling conflict of some sort and where unavalible to attend. As the business guys are the ones in charge of decisions regarding licencing and intellectual property, this part of the conversation could not happen.

    Instead of talking about the license issues, everyone got nice and nerdy and had a long chat about technical stuff, what Mojang wants to do for Minecraft and modding, and what Bukkit wants to acomplish on their end. From the details provided, most of this sounds like Mojang appreciates the effort and wants to try to make things happen, some things quite exciting!

    The unfortunate part is that the licensing conversation still needs to happen. As I've stated in my previous post, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, and the fact that the developers at Mojang (including notch, who is running the show) are happy and excited to add things like modding to Minecraft should be quite encouraging. All it really means is that Bukkit may be delayed if it's ready for release before the issue is solved (and it is NOT ready for release - although it's coming along quite nicely).

    If you still think that Bukkit skipped out on the meeting and that Mojang held a meeting by themselves (um, what is the point of that? They're 4-5 guys who all sit in the same office together, they're technically *always* in a meeting with just themselves) then your reading comprehension skills do, in fact, need work. Good day, sir.
     
  4. Offline

    EvilSeph

    I thought I made it clear enough that the Bukkit team is happy with the meeting that took place. We feel that it was beneficial to the Minecraft community, the Bukkit project and Mojang themselves. I just felt compelled to make it clear that we couldn't tackle the licensing issues, not that we were disappointed with how the meeting ended up going.
     
  5. Offline

    4am

    I can't stress enough that the vast majority of us appreciate the effort and time you guys are putting into this. It will certainly be an important milestone in the history of Minecraft. I hope the vocal minority expressing discontent over what really just amounts to impatience and lack of understanding about the challenges being faced do not deter your will or efforts.

    (and no, I'm not referring to any specific posts, this thread or otherwise)
     
  6. Offline

    kablam

    +1 for you
     
  7. Offline

    Nucleocide

    I am curious as to why Mojang is required to provide feedback for the license of Bukkit? Since this server mod will not require the integration or modification to third party software (e.g. Minecraft) Bukkit should be able to choose whatever license it would please.

    E.g. I build software which runs on Linux (GPL), PHP, MySQL, Apache (Apache), yet since my software doesn't modify the core technologies or rely on compiling it's source code, I can build my software under whatever license I choose.
     
  8. Offline

    LucidLethargy

    As there is no reason to get into any outstanding arguments, I will keep things "progressive" with a practical question... my question is a response to the following:
    Specifically I would like to address the key point of "If they don't, then Bukkit could probably get killed by Mojang." I cannot for the life of me see Notch or ANYONE in Mojang doing this, as it would cannibalize their interests. If they were to disable the features Bukkit offered, the community would be in outrage and many would likely flat out stop playing... and if Notch has his own plans to supersede bukkit, then all the power to him, but if this is a fear of the Bukkit Team (that their work will be for nothing in the end), then simply tell us it is and stop beating around the bush.​

    Furthermore, as I stated above, Notch has delayed even writing his own legal agreement out, so I doubt he cares unless Bukkit is discussing SELLING this mod - is this the case? I'm all for it if it is - just be real with us Bukkit team. I am also interested in knowing if hMod had ANY sort of agreement with Mojang - to my understanding they did not, since I believe Hey0 himself claimed he had made no attempt and that his mod was operating without any such license the Bukkit team is hoping to obtain.​

    If my above assertion is correct, and hMod was operating without any such license, then the fact it was NEVER contested or frowned upon by Notch is reason enough to understand his future course of action. He is an indie game developer, and it is widely understood by the minecraft community that he is simply stoked that his game is getting so much attention... he just wants what WE want, which is a fun game with plenty of features and, of course, the tidy sum he receives from sales.​

    Enlighten me if any of this is incorrect, namely that hMod was/is both unlicensed, and uncontested by Notch - you would know better than I... I am merely going off of what I have understood from past public statements. Furthermore, boo me if you will, but I am emanating many commonly held viewpoints and questions from this community. You may choose to say my comments are not constructive, but I would wonder how far ANYTHING would go in this world without negative feedback and an inquiry for further information and answers - especially to a community such as this which is widely confused and misinformed. The many other posts besides my own contest to this.​

    Either way - arm us with knowledge, Bukkit Team, if you posses the answers we seek and are in a mood to give them freely.​

    P.S. I in no way mentioned displeasure for the fact that the Mojang team was discussing some forward progress with modding, 4am, so if anyone is attempting to troll here, it's you.
    P.S.S. Your own reading comprehension skills may need work, as my understanding comes straight from this DIRECT quote at the head of every page of this thread which reads: "With only the developers of Minecraft able to attend."
    P.S.S.S. This will definitely turn into a troll storm if people keep missing the point, which I'm fine with, but I doubt the Bukkit team wants that.
    P.S.S.S.s.ssss-BOOM
     
  9. Offline

    Afforess

    CraftBukkit most certainly does modify the Minecraft server code. In fact, CraftBukkit downloads come with the entire MC Server inside.
     
  10. Offline

    GGreenBass

    Rofl you're totally right, but I wasn't saying that anything wasn't going to happen or the legal people were in his way- I was just saying the nature of legal things makes them relatively slow. I know what I'm talking about too :)
     
  11. Offline

    barghest

    LucidLethargy, you keep quoting that one sentence, and forgetting that the previous paragraph says (to paraphrase) "The Bukkit team and Mojang had a meeting, but some people couldn't come so the meeting was a bit different than we planned." Then it goes on to say only Mojang's devs could attend.

    Obviously if the Bukkit team and Mojang had a meeting, at least some of the Bukkit team would've had to be there at the meeting. Otherwise it's just Mojang's devs sitting in a room and the Bukkit team wouldn't be writing about it. Right? That's part of reading comprehension too, everyone-talking-about-reading-comprehension: Reading what's meant, not just what words are actually said. In this case, a syntactically important but easily-inferred clause, "with only the developers from Minecraft [on Mojang's end] able to attend." Because, again, if BukkitTeam(TM) hadn't been there, it wouldn't have been a meeting, which the first paragraph said it was.

    I'd go as far as to say it's obvious that this is what was meant; so obvious, LucidLethargy, that I actually just assumed you were trolling, as 4am did. Until you posted a long thoughtful post that agrees with my opinion of Notch's stance completely. ;)

    Notch, any time he's directly asked, says "I HATE MODS OF MY CODE THEY MESS WITH MY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY!" and then he never goes after anybody, says very mildly that he thinks some mods have cool ideas, and basically shows that legally he must behave in one way, but "off the record" so to speak, he personally has completely different feelings. He's been doing this since day one.

    You might validly ask - since Notch has not bothered to go after Bukkit, what's the big deal - why the licensing concern now? But the way it seems to me is, Bukkit wants more.

    They don't just want to be unofficially permitted by a blind-eye sort of policy. The Bukkit team want to talk to Mojang, and have Mojang say to them "We are legally and officially permitting this modification of our source code. Here's the fine print to prove it." Don't ask me why they want this, but they obviously do. And amazingly, it looks like they're getting it.

    It's possible that Mojang could C&D Bukkit into dust. Everyone seems to be at least slightly concerned by it. I agree FULLY that based on Notch's actions, it honestly doesn't look like he'd ever let that happen (which means Notch kicks ass, BTW) - but, you gotta agree with Bukkit Team's stance. Tacit approval isn't really approval - the second he says ANYTHING seriously negative, you can't say there's even tacit approval anymore. And you got a problem. They want explicit approval. Wouldn't you? Bukkit's a crapload of work. Hate to see it law-bombed.

    P.S. 4am wasn't trolling. :p
    P.P.S. It's P.P.S., not P.S.S.. It stands for post-post-script.

    HTH, HAND
     
  12. Offline

    Phantum



    Your post screams to me, "I'm a crybaby, I'm not getting my own way..."


    I'm also really digging how many server admins think they are "entitled" to telling the bukkit team what to do. [/sarcasm]

    Honestly, Whitelists are perfectly fine for multiplayer servers, I've built communities on pure vanilla, and honestly, get over yourselves.

    Just because you can't "/cfill diamond," doesn't mean your life is going to end. Be patient, and if your members don't appreciate a vanilla server, then don't keep them around. Sometimes you just have to rule with an iron fist. If people grief, then ban them/delete from whitelist, if they do, that's what backups are for.
     
  13. Offline

    KoryuObihiro

    Thank you. My sentiments exactly.

    Whatever the case, the fact that Bukkit has established this sort of relationship with Mojang is incredible. I'm new to modding, but the fact that this mod team was actually able to meet and discuss with MC's game developers sounds very promising. Here's to you, Bukkit! :D
     
  14. Offline

    moparisthebest

    Modification of code isn't the issue, nor is it illegal. The distribution of the code (modified or not) is the issue. If need be, bukkit can be distributed in a way that does the downloading and modification of the minecraft code when ran, therefore no minecraft code is distributed, therefore it is perfectly legal.
     
  15. Offline

    Phantum

    You're welcome :)
     
  16. Offline

    Bradley-san

    You guys are awesome! Keep up the good work team Bukkit.
     
  17. Offline

    Katryna

    I signed up just to post on this.
    It's a little ridiculous how many people are getting so angry. I mean, dear god, these people are working on it for free, in their spare time. And yet people are demanding all these things from them!
    I can imagine too, as I'm an artist. It's like someone coming up to me as I'm drawing, and then demanding that I draw something for them for free, which takes a lot of time to do (not to mention the countless hours I've spent to even get to the level of skill I'm at!). And then, even worse, demanding that I hurry up and telling me how I should do it. And then if they start guilt tripping me, and bashing me because I'm not doing everything miraculously fast and perfect? ...It's amazing that they're even still doing this project.

    I think this meeting is good news. No, they may not have worked some things out that they wanted to, but in the end, it may be better that they did it that way. Why? Because they laid down a foundation, a basic relationship. If they're both discussing what they see for the future, this is great news! It's kind of hard to explain what I mean, but in my mind, it's better that they communicated about all of this without the pressure of working out all the legalities first because in the future it may mean that Mojang will be more willing to work with Bukkit. It's basically the difference between being asked a favor by someone who you don't know, and someone who you do know and you know is on your side. I hope that makes sense.

    Anyway, I look forward to whenever Bukkit will be released. I hope it will be easy enough for someone such as myself to understand (I run a small server for a few of my friends and myself), because reading through some of these posts that go on about the technical stuff, I'm just like "....wut?"
    However I'm also confident I can learn too!

    Good luck & The best of wishes to the bukkit team! Thanks for all your hard work! <3
     
  18. Offline

    Deightine

    I've come to notice that most of the negative reactions we're seeing are from a perceived lack of control. People panic when they go from having control to not having control, and control is a pretty integral part of how we feel comfortable. But panic tends to lead to people jumping at every shadow, every possible perceived slight, etc. The control freak comes out, and often, ranting at other people seems a way to expressing what you want.

    Having an active whitelist is how to protect your investment in a server, so people want that. It must be one of the most used plugins to date for just that reason. I know it was the first one I installed with my dev build--everything else was cream. I restrict my personal server to just those individuals who help donate from for upkeep within our little community. When hMod went away, and the Bukkit team stepped up (despite the crap they were getting the whole time) to offer a hand and try to patch things, I was in awe. It was a good samaritan moment, and the net doesn't see a lot of that even on a great day. Good on you, Bukkit Devs, for trying to do that.

    The hMod fix didn't work, and having seen some of that code myself, I can't say I'm surprised. So what happens? Out of next to nowhere, we're seeing functional development builds handled with much more care than a lot of dev builds see--why? Because they intended it to try to fill the gap for the people panicking. That's another good example of people trying to help the community. It let me get my whitelist back, the one measure of control I feel I need over my server space. Thank you, Bukkit Devs. :)

    Don't let all of this negative crap get to you, it'll just slow your work, piss you off, and make you want to walk away. There are some of us out here that appreciate the effort you show, regardless of where things have gone or will go. A lot of them have stuck up for you in this comments thread so far... Read their posts, dismiss the others, and just know you have our thanks. Keep up the good work.
     
  19. Offline

    SAMDAN

    Bukkit devs, you rock.
     
  20. Offline

    LaDestitute

    A question, when the public release for Bukkit/CraftBukkit comes out, will CraftBukkit have a gui and in-console commands?
     
  21. Offline

    sp1nn3y

    I'm sorry to sound so disappointed here but.. the MAIN TOP Priority issue here is licensing.. We have hundreds of servers down or using unfinished builds just to scrap up and TRY to keep the community going, without these simple commands we ran off of hey0 mod, our population has gone down considerably, this isn't including the recent server down problem they've been having.. Honestly I'm a little 'besmirched' at how all of this is being handled.. Yes, I agree a working relationship with the Mojang crew is great and all, but if the first, most important meeting 'didn't go as planned' how can we expect any others will?

    Sorry to be a pushover here but being a server owner myself i see that this is just going to take longer than expected.. and no one enjoys having to run a complete vanilla map.

    I digress... Thanks for the efforts guys and the want to put a new mod out there.
     
  22. Offline

    SAMDAN

    Guys, all my server really needs is a ranking system. Can you guys release one before you have another meeting? I know there are legal issues, but HMod never seemed to have these problems.[​IMG]
     
  23. Offline

    Selbram

    @SAMDAN, how does that have anything to do with this conversation. Please put that request in "Plugin Requests".
     
  24. Offline

    Chewi

    It did have these problems, it just chose to ignore them. That was never going to end well.
     
  25. Offline

    SAMDAN

    Ah. See? I'm only 13, I'm not all that geeky either. no offense meant.
    --- merged: Jan 23, 2011 4:24 PM ---
    Sorry. Nobody reads those. I have to put it where the conversation is happening, or i won't get a response.
     
  26. Offline

    mindless728

    i read them all the time, and there are plenty of plugin devs that do as well

    though back to convo, yeah the meeting didn't go as planned but it was still productive so that sounds good to me
     
  27. Offline

    SAMDAN

    I'm sorry for my mistakes, please forgive me.
     
  28. Offline

    mindless728

    it's cool, it actually sounds like a neat idea so you should post it in the request thread
     
  29. Offline

    SAMDAN

    Ok. Thank you.
     
  30. Offline

    Andred

    I think Samdan is talking about a groups/permissions system, which exists, but what he wants is INTEGRATED groups/permissions (which is actually pretty big, since it's a real pain in the ass for every plugin to use their own permissions system, and only slightly more convenient for some of them to use the Permissions plugin.) I am actually waiting on built-in permissions before I go public with my server, but I did read that Bukkit will soon be undergoing changes regarding how it accepts commands from users, which MIGHT mean that built-in permissions are around the corner.
     
  31. Offline

    SAMDAN

    Ya. that is what i mean. I was hoping bukkit could have that initially, before needing to have another meeting.
     
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