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

    Donny

    feildmaster Skye Seems like Bukkit has been updated appropriately ever since that team left. Also when I watched the commits it doesn't seem like any of them have been from the "original team" since they left for Mojang. Meaning Bukkit has done without the mapping for 2 years now. Which makes the whole Mojang pulls support points irrelevant as it was "pulled" 2 years ago.
     
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  3. Offline

    Skye

    Donny You're responding to someone who was involved with that process. I'm pretty sure he finds it relevant.
     
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  4. Offline

    Donny

    Skye He wasn't the one who made the "they cant maintain bukkit without the mappings" point. That was you. And, it was a miserably pointless argument as Bukkit hasn't had mappings for more than 2 years.

    He is proof that you are incorrect. He maintained Bukkit without the mappings...
     
  5. Offline

    Skye

    Donny It can be maintained, but obviously you lack the knowledge and experience to know how big a difference it makes.
     
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  6. Offline

    Donny

    Skye
    The fact that Mojang's withdrawal of support was two years before all of this shows it is not causation for the Bukkit staff quitting.


    I have never said it wasn't much harder to produce CraftBukkit with out the mapping. I'm just saying its not relevant to the Bukkit staff step down and discontinue of Bukkit.

    Your continued attempts to discredit me by asserting I'm lacking knowledge, or just do not know, is sad. You keep placing words in my mouth, or absurdly take my words out of context. In a written dialog it is easy to provide my original context.
     
  7. So all downloads are down. How the heck am I supposed to get my hands on cb 1.7.9 or 1.7.10 now? Anyone have it saved and can send me? :S
     
  8. Offline

    Skye

    Donny It's relevant in that it made Bukkit so much harder to maintain; Bukkit being too difficult to maintain is the reason EvilSeph wanted to shut the project down. The staff was overworked and he was the public figurehead to relay what they decided. But your words,
    If you're not a native speaker of English, "dropped the ball" usually implies incompetence. And yet he's one of the reasons Bukkit lasted as long as it did. He did what he did because he cares about the people he works with, not because he wanted to sabotage his own project.

    And what exactly are you implying when you say he sold Bukkit without telling the community? Clearly it was a secret Mojang wanted to keep, so there was likely a non-disclosure agreement in his hiring contract. I doubt any of the four thought making Bukkit's replacement would take as long as it is taking, but at least EvilSeph stuck with the project when Mojang didn't want to.
     
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    robotnikthingy

    To bad it cant be found on google last time I checked, unless they dont even have an official website up yet

    I just hope we will have a nice place to organize and publish plugins like bukkitdev was
     
  10. Offline

    Donny

    Skye He is the one that wanted to end the project. Mojang said "We own Bukkit so that isn't your call." Tell me more about how he kept it going when they didn't want it to.
    Mojang knows Bukkit is important to Minecraft. They want it to survive.

    All this talk of non-disclosure, do you have facts or are you making it up? You keep bringing up false facts or irrelevant information.

    No-one forced him to sign the evil contract/non-disclosure agreement. Either way he stabbed this community in the back. Secretly selling it away in a cloud of mystery.
     
  11. Offline

    Padeius Etoh

    hey donny, although quite a few of us agree with you, there are those like skye that just will not let it go and actually either admit the truth or face the actual facts that confront them.

    I loved the "when did mojang pull the support" part, oh that happened over 2 years ago, ya, ok, that is really relevant to today's situation. Over 2 years of development with no apparent issues, wow, lets shut down development its just too hard.

    Any way, you are not alone.
     
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    darkside2205

    Spigot is Bukkit. It's just an optimized version of bukkit for people who loved the plugin system but didn't like how slow/laggy it was. Without Bukkit, there is no spigot.

    So Mojang is the badguy here? They had nothing to do with taking bukkit down. They said they wanted it to keep going and remain in community control. Also who the heck says there's no minecraft without bukkit? The plugins are very limited in what they can accomplish anyway, I played vanilla minecraft for 2 years now with only basic mods and I still prefer it over heavily modded servers. I guess that means I'm a 'kiddie' but oh wait, I'm 22.

    EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 9, 2016
  13. lol, a new definition of vanilla! minecraft with mods!
     
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  14. Offline

    darkside2205

    Why does everyone seem to think that Minecraft is for kids and only kids play minecraft without bukkit. Minecraft has only been out a couple years and its primary audience has been adults and college kids since before multiplayer was even added much less bukkit.

    And why does everyone also seem to think that its so expensive and time consuming running a server? It's really not. I have a spigot server that costs me no money to run or maintain. It doesn't even eat up alot of time, I'm 22 with a full time job and in college full time for computer science, and I still have more than enough free time to keep my server up to date and running efficiently.

    And why is everyone attacking Mojang? They got the rights when they hired the original staff 2 years ago, they didn't buy it under the table, and they certainly didn't use it for free labor. They've owned it for 2 years and the reason nobody found out about it until now was because they wanted to leave it alone, they didn't (and still don't) want to exercise ownership or control over the project. The only reason people are now finding out is because they stepped out of the shadows to SAVE the project from wolvereness absurd claims, stating that they own the rights to assure people that he can't shut the project down.

    Bukkit was in no danger what so ever. Builds and plugins were released days ago, and now suddenly the whole project is dead? It's not because of Mojang or even wolvereness. The only reason Bukkit is now in danger is because all the staff decided to get all whiny and quit. I'm sorry you weren't being paid for something you volunteered for. I make games, and I don't sell them. Why? Because it's a hobby. I enjoy it. Do I expect to suddenly get paid for it? No.

    Just because Mojang technically owns the rights to bukkit doesn't mean anything. They decided not to exercise those rights and just leave it the way it was, under community control. If they were to start paying the developers, then they would have to step in and take control, and then people would be just as pissed at them as they are now.
     
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    DestinyHaveNZ

    On behalf of my server team, we thank you bukkit, for all you did. Thank you for giving us an insight as to what owning a server feels like. As we are now most likely closing, it has been fun, developing a server, playing with the plugins, we had loads of fun and made great memories with our friends. Its very much unfortunate that things like these happen but all good things come to an end. Once again, Thank you very much Bukkit, it has been wonderful :.)
     
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    khamseen_air

    I am so confused, there seems to be so much conflicting information. One place says Bukkit will continue, but then the Bukkit download pages are gone and have been replaced with a copyright infringement notice.

    I'm very sad to see the end of Bukkit (if this is indeed the end) as we've only ever played Bukkit on Multiplayer and without it then our server is pretty much pointless because none of us enjoy the 'vanilla' multiplayer experience. :(
     
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    MetalGearDaner

    Oh, I see haha. You're the one along with Zuxelus who maintain NC addon, cool. Well, it would be great to help the API development. I personally don't have enought coding knowledge to have the requirements to help into it... :(

    They are working hardly on it. Just be patient. The site is already up, but no forum software have been installed yet. Let just give them some time. Also, the github repos are now available.
     
  18. Offline

    Vasileff

    Back in the days I bought Minecraft because of Bukkit. Now I deeply regret that I've supported such greedy bastards!

    I will never, EVER, buy a Mojang product again!

    Bukkit team, thanks for all your hard work. You provided us with countless hours of joyful gameplay (something Minecraft itself never did).
    Love ya!
    Peace!
     
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  19. Offline

    ThePixelPony

    Vasileff Umm, Mojang supported Bukkit? They could have shut it down at any time but instead, they let it past the EULA and even provided mappings to speed up de-obfuscation.
     
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  20. Some claim that providing the mappings by Mojang was "ended by Mojang", at least implicitly. Somewhere someone stated that they reached out for Mojang multiple times without getting actual help. I find that hard to judge, since it's pretty silent around details of communication between the "two".

    The amount of changed code must be huge, if they work towards the plugin API, so i understand people are tired, but not this whole "ending".
     
  21. Offline

    durzanult

    What the heck is going on? I thought this issue was solved already... and now I come back to find that some frustrated coder decided to get all whiny and basically force Bukkit into decline?

    REALLY?
     
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  22. Offline

    Vasileff

    No, no. I meant that I supported Mojang by buying Mincraft. Sorry for the missunderstanding, my english sucks..
     
  23. Offline

    ThePixelPony

    Oh okay! :)
    Either way, over the past few hours my opinion has swung the other way. I now agree with Wolverness and every member of the Bukkit team.
     
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    DrPyroCupcake

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    feildmaster

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  26. Um, do you realise that the content of that page isn't going to magically become true if you somehow convince 100 people to sign it?
     
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    Rachel2560

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    Rexel

  29. Offline

    Formula350

    I just wanted to step in and say: No, that is NOT what "dropped the ball" means. A more fitting example for "dropped the ball" is Mojang and the Mod API, as one could say they dropped the ball with releasing it in any semblance of a timely fashion. It has nothing to do with incompetence or even intellect, not directly at least, but you could say "Stupid decisions" were the cause of a situation in which someone "dropped the ball". The most accurate and thorough definition can be found on Wiktionary, and states:
    Verb
    drop the ball
    (idiomatic) To fail in one's responsibilities or duties, or to make a mistake, especially at a critical point or when the result is very negative.


    Sorry for not contributing to the topic at hand, but given their debate touched on the "spread of misinformation", it seemed right to step in and prevent that very thing from happening.
     
  30. Offline

    Donny

    feildmaster
    If a new Minecraft Mod is created, sponge, Glowstone, so on, would you think about assisting with it? Maybe not as an important role as you played with Bukkit, but possible helping them get things rolling?
     
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