Bukkit: It's time to say ...

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

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    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

    inventorman101

    Ya I just caught up on this sorry :)
     
  3. Offline

    Tulonsae

    Well, for anyone following things for the last 2-3 years, yes - they probably read that Mojang said they were taking over Bukkit.

    However, if you're a developer who's reading the GitHub sources, there is no indication of it at all. The Bukkit and CraftBukkit repos are licensed GPL and LGPL, respectively. And there is no mention in the README.md about Mojang or in the license files themselves.

    So, why isn't Mojang making their ownership on Bukkit/CraftBukkit sources explicit by at least putting a comment in the README's for the sources? Or perhaps even Copyright comments in the sources?
     
    LDX likes this.
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    SirFaizdat

    Bukkit is NOT SHUTTING DOWN. Dinnerbone himself said he will see it through 1.8 personally. Do not worry.
     
    LDX likes this.
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    Creeperkid892

    Hey guys thanks for all you have done you have made everything about minecraft servers possible and you should be pround thx!
     
  6. Offline

    LCastr0

    Man, think about Mojang FULLY taking care of Bukkit. One "snapshot" per week, would it be good? No. Bukkit updates about every day, sometimes even 5 times a day. (Or more...)
     
  7. Offline

    EnderTroll68

    For anyone who things this whole thread is way too long and doesn't feel like reading the whole thing, I will summarize it here.

    - EvilSeph posted that he was ending the Bukkit project, and most of the community started to cry and have all sorts of theories about what is going to happen with Bukkit, most of which most likely will not happen, as seen in this entire thread.
    - EvilSeph was under the impression that he had the authority to end the project, but Mojang actually owns the project and it is their call to cancel it, as seen in the tweet here and here and here.
    - Dinnerbone says that he is willing to code the project, and has already started work on it, as seen here.
    - Mojang has officially taken over the Bukkit and Craftbukkit repos and projects on Github, and are discussing what will happen next, as seen here.
    - (For anyone who cares) Spigot will have a version for 1.8, but it will not have all of the things that Bukkit will have when it is updated, so it will be exactly what has happened for all of the previous patches in the relation between the two, <mod edit-removed link for unofficial builds>

    That is all of the news that is currently out there. Anything you see from other people are just theories. My personal theory is that Bukkit will get even better than it used to be, as Dinnerbone used to be the main coder for Bukkit, and is now taking it over again. I think that there is not anything to worry about, as there is NO WAY Mojang will let Bukkit go down the drain. It is what the bulk of servers run on. Also all this talk about how it is "going to go down the drain", why would that happen? Dinnerbone is an amazing programmer, and since _grum has now started talking about Bukkit, he may be working on it as well. Bukkit is now going to be lead by some of the best Minecraft coders in the world, and are labeled as such as they MADE Minecraft in the first place.

    As for all this talk about how the "EULA is ruining Minecraft" and "This new EULA sucks", here is some information about the EULA.
    • IT HAS NOT CHANGED.
    • Mojang has only just started enforcing it.
    • It prevents servers from having people be way over powered.
    • It makes it so that server game play is fun for everyone.
    • Servers can still have donations, they just need to change the way it works, as to not give unfair advantages.
    I will be updating this post with news as it comes in, so just keep an eye on it for the most recent news and links to the tweets, since everyone is posting tiny little bits all over the place and it is hard to keep an eye on it all.
     
    durand1w and leeo97one like this.
  8. Offline

    rippin

    Okay, Mojang owns Bukkit, but why didn't they provide help to the Bukkit team during this whole time?
     
  9. Offline

    TheHandfish

    I don't think people realize that Bukkit is still here even though Seph and the old Bukkit team(?) have shut it down decided to stop updating it. It's at a stand-still until it's updated by its new owners caretakers(?), Mojang.

    This is a great opportunity for reform, guys. I wish that Seph had felt a bit more supported, and maybe, just maybe if we'd know, we could have been that support. But change is natural. Most big businesses get bought out eventually. I know Bukkit isn't exactly a "big business" (or a business at all, really, correct me if I'm wrong), but the fact that Mojang itself cares about it enough to take over the reigns should be a sign that Bukkit is awesome.

    Then again, I don't know all that much about this other than I wake up and people are foretelling the death of Minecraft (not unlike when Mojang announced they'd be enforcing their EULA).

    I'm not too worried. It's sad in a way, but sort of exciting, don't you think?

    Lemme clarify what I meant, lol.

    Done.

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

    caseif

    Sorry if my reply sounded a bit douchey. One more thing I want to point out, though, is that as of writing this and to my knowledge only EvilSeph is leaving the project. No one else has announced that they plan to.
     
  11. Offline

    TheHandfish

    No, no, it's alright. :p

    Yeah... with the edit I'm quite confused. But with EvilSeph gone, I doubt everyone will stay.
     
  12. Minecraft Multiplayer and the overall game is going to sh*t after the latest updates adding pointless things. And this new EULA killing server owners, ruining the fun I have in purchasing ranks on servers and such for an advantage. I haven't played Minecraft once this summer, because I got bored of it because of the changes. I will continue to not play and most likely won't play again, and won't touch java again either. Mojang is a pretty sneaky company, they probably had something to do with Bukkit all along. This is just part of a plan to enforce the new EULA.
     
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    MysteryManX

    WHAT?!

    Please someone tell me this is a dream.... :'(
     
  14. Offline

    Jaaakee224

    Will all the Bukkit services stay up? (Bukkit Forums, BukkitDev)
     
  15. Offline

    Kainzo

    Glad to see things moving along by Mojang, a new age begins?
     
    viper_monster, NinjaZidane and Jozeth like this.
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    NinjaZidane

    Dinnerbone taking over CraftBukkit is the best thing to happen to Bukkit in the two years since he departed to Minecraft development.

    What CraftBukkit or rather Bukkit itself needs is not a figurehead but someone who really understands the code inside and out. People like Grum or Dinnerbone, not the current team (I really don't care to hear otherwise, its the truth...just look at the current CraftBukkit code and some of the design decisions of the last two years).
     
    ElgarL, sablednah and dockter like this.
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    ONI Ricky

    Well this is terrible news, hopefully this won't spell the end of the Bukkit we know and love but I have a feeling it will :(
     
  18. Offline

    Skye

    So Mojang has owned Bukkit for two years already? They clearly recognize the significance of the project, so why have they provided such limited support for their own product?
     
    Gamecube762 likes this.
  19. Offline

    bloodless2010

    Goodnight sweet prince.
     
  20. Offline

    dockter

    If Mojang has own this for that long why did they wait this long to step in?
     
  21. Offline

    railguy_

    Well.. thanks to everyone who has kept the project going for over 3 years.
     
  22. Offline

    Enzer

    Why would they need to? Bukkit was running, up to this point, fine on its own. They only stepped in because EvilSeph attempted to shut down the project when he didn't have the rights to do so.

    From my understanding, Mojang's main reasoning for purchasing Bukkit probably had to do with getting rid of any legal gray area that Bukkit might have been in. This could of course have been done with giving out a license to Bukkit, but that sets a precedent which could have major drama if say Mojang gives a license to one group, but not another (For example, there has been for some time now already been a group that complained about Bukkit's apparent special treatment in regards to the EULA, well now we know the reason is because it was officially an asset of Mojang all along and thus has different circumstances). The added benefit is that it allows Mojang to step in in situations like this with people who are very familiar with Bukkit's code (Grum and Dinnerbone) in order to keep the project running.

    Similarly, when Curse owned Bukkit, it kept a very hands off approach and only gave the benefit of helping keep the site and servers running, in that regard Mojang acted hands off until this situation forced their hand, but was giving Bukkit various brand protections.
     
    AnorZaken likes this.
  23. One quesion. Just WHY? What happened?
     
  24. Offline

    Dragonphase

    This situation could have been handled a whole lot better than it has been. So many misunderstandings, confusion and then some. Let's hope that if Mojang do take over when 1.8 is released, they do it right.
     
  25. I have never felt so betrayed.
     
  26. Offline

    durand1w

    Searge who works on MCP will also be helping out with some of the initial work since the mappings are a base task between the platforms.

    We will have to wait and see what the official word is from Mojang, but I would anticipate Bukkit to continue to be updated until the official API is on it's feet. Then they may provide a method to transition to that platform. Support beyond that is anybody's guess right now. In the short-term, I would expect development to be faster for Bukkit since there are more people engaged who know the changes, but the 1.9 snapshots will likely be delayed. That is my guess though, and nothing more.
     
    Enzer likes this.
  27. Offline

    Blue_Blaze72

    1. Twitter leads to horrible publicity issues.
    2. Mojang needs to be faster about providing real statements about what's going on rather than little snippets that everyone loves to provide 17 interpretations for.
    3. While bukkit is continuing, it will gradually change into what is best for Mojang... take that as you will.
     
    daboross likes this.
  28. Offline

    Enzer

    EvilSeph decided to step down from the project, but also decided in doing so he was going to shut down Bukkit for whatever reason (no one is sure at this point, but there is apparently contradictions in his OP as he states things about the EULA that he knew would be false such as claiming the EULA would shut down Bukkit when the EULA doesn't effect Bukkit to begin within, but that is all besides the point).

    Jeb stepped forward and made an announcement that Mojang has had ownership of the Bukkit name and code for about two and a half years, they bought it from Curse who were the owners of it at the time (see Dinnerbone's blog from last year where he talks about the merger with Curse when Bukkit was about to fall apart because of expenses: At some point here, Curse had offered to support Bukkit and that couldn't have come at a better time. Our servers were buckling under load, and we couldn't afford to do anything about it on our own. I acquired a job at Curse (in which my role was literally, "keep doing what you do and don't mind us". They were good people!) and they also helped kick off an old dream that we had when we started Bukkit; an easy to search plugin repository! They also offered to fly us all to Blizzcon, of which I was planning to attend anyway, so that we can all meet up and say hi. And so for the first time ever, the Bukkit team was united together in person! A month or two after that, Curse also flew us out to the first Minecon and we did a panel there. That was both incredibly scary but also incredibly awesome.), Jeb clarified that since Mojang was the owners of Bukkit, EvilSeph did not have the right to shut down the project and that if EvilSeph wanted to step down from the project, as is his right, Mojang would step in to make sure Bukkit continued.

    Dinnerbone then stated on his twitter "I started Bukkit, I'm going to personally see it through for 1.8. Updating it now :)", but reafirmed that this would not mean that Bukkit was the Plugin API.

    Grum then posted on his twitter "We took ownership of the Bukkit github repos & project. We'll see what happens from here."

    So where we are currently standing is that Mojang has officially announced that they have owned Bukkit for some time and do not intend for Bukkit to shut down any time soon. That Dinnerbone will be guaranteeing that Bukkit updates to 1.8. The future is still up there, I assume that Mojang will look to see if anyone will volunteer to be a replacement for EvilSeph, if not Mojang will probably support Bukkit through Dinnerbone till such a time that their PluginAPI is finished which Dinnerbone indicates will supplement the need for Bukkit. It really depends if the other Bukkit devs will continue to work on Bukkit from here on or after the Plugin API is out.

    Regardless, as 1.8 took over 200 days to produce and if 1.9 takes a similar time to come out, we will have an up-to-date version of Bukkit for some time.

    Short version of it: No need to fret, everything is fine. :)
     
  29. Offline

    Skye

    Enzer Forgive me for saying this, but I don't think many people here are going to respect your white knighting on a low-activity account.

    The fact that Mojang withdrew support it formerly provided (something easy for them to provide, but which makes a huge difference) to its secretly owned product says that there's probably more to this story that the public doesn't know about.

    Also to consider, people were committing to a project that they had no idea already belonged to Mojang.
     
  30. Awh bukkiht.
    Here's a cake for the great work [cake]
    Thanks for all <3
     
  31. I'm just amazed Mojang had bukkit for two years and I still cannot change a god damn inventory title.
     
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