Mojang and the Bukkit Project


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    If the github repo was still up I'd show you commits of his with the Mojang code he modified/used.
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    I disagree. The way I see it, Wesley stood up for what he believed in, and he had every right do so as warranted by the Bukkit project licensing.

    However, arguing incessantly will get us nowhere. I have my opinion, you have yours. While I disagree with yours, I respect it and I truly hope you see my perspective and respect mine. I want Bukkit project to continue until the day I die but I don't think Mojang is approaching this matter the right way. Wesley is obviously angry at Mojang for taking over this project. I think it has merit to it.

    I am not saying you are wrong. I am just saying my philosophy about this does not line with yours. :3

    How is it copyright infringement, exactly? Bukkit is using code given freely. Are all mods illegal because they modify Mojang code? Mojang has effectively endorsed it by their policy of salutary neglect. The project doesn't hurt their business model, therefore they turn a blind eye.
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    I don't see where he ever said he had a 1.8 server?? Every since it was announced that bukkit wasn't going to be cancelled. Dinnerbone has said that he was going to take charge of 1.8 himself. They fully planned to put out a 1.8 dev.
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    It's quite alright, I'll take your word for it. In this case I'm no lawyer, but I would see this as two separate court cases.
    By ownership of copyright under the copyright law in a collaborative setting.
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    Actually, I'm very curious about the "Bukkit" organization. I've been unable to find anything that lists what this organization is - is it a legal entity, a nonprofit, a what? Or is it just a name attached to a set of files or a github project?

    I did look at their organization page on github, and I've looked around here as well. I would appreciate it if you could point at some webpage that describes the organization. I've already seen the various posts about them being acquired by Mojang so I'm not looking for that. I'm looking to get a more definitive definition on just what type of separate entity they are.
    asofold likes this.
  6. That's an interesting standpoint, given that Mojang hired a team of Bukkit developers who'd all infringed at least as much copyright as Wolv ever did.

    The only difference between Wolvereness and any of the other Bukkit developers that have been and gone is that he's made it known that he doesn't want his GPL-licensed contributions distributed under licenses that aren't the GPL. He's no more a criminal than Dinnerbone is, he's just sent more DMCA notices.

    Edit: having looked at your earlier posts in this thread again, it's apparent that you just don't understand Wolv's claim at all. I don't blame you because neither does Vu, but just to spell things out: Wolv's own code that his DMCA notice refers to is not “infringing” anything, it's just licensed under the GPL (and the GPL only). What's infringing is when that code (or compiled forms of it, yadda yadda) is distributed along with code that is not or cannot be licensed under the GPL. Mojang insists that the Minecraft server is not GPL'd. That's fine, but if it's not GPL'd, it's illegal to distribute CraftBukkit—because that contains both Bukkit and the Minecraft server. That doesn't make the contributions Wolv mentions illegal, only the distribution in combination with the Minecraft server is illegal.
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    They could have... but Wolvereness was the one that refused to work with the developers of Forge. If Wolvereness wasn't involved, the licensing issues could have been resolved.
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    You might want to follow your own advice. Owning a separate property may protect them from being liable for a number of actions, but it doesn't change their awareness of and intent to distribute a modified version of their software through a site they own.

    I don't even know why I bother responding to you because judging from your post history, one would think your only objective is to stir up trouble. If I wanted Bukkit to die, I'd stop visiting.
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    all i know is that im a dad who runs small server for my 12 year old and her internet friends i dont charge any one for ranks or perks, the kids are asking me when will the server updated to 1.8 and i explained what has happen and they were sad. They love the plugins plotme, faction mcmmo and lots of other ones which you cant play on a normal minecraft server.
    Mojang has made a lot of money from minecraft community

    So far 16,595,756 people bought the PC/Mac version of the game. Phew. = 298730322 plus other format sales

    I cant beleive hiring 2 or 3 people to continue the Bukkit project will make Mojang bankrupted, it can be independent but funded by Mojang and you could even change the lience so people who used it cant rip off kids with Rank or Perks

    where there's a will there's a way

    Please Mojang save the bukkit project do it for the kids who play your game and made you rich
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    Just wanted to mention that Mojang does not own Bukkit, because they did not buy out everybody who worked on it, just a core team of 4 people.

    The GPL still works, and as a result, the people who worked on Bukkit all have to be bought out. Many of us never did get bought out, and the fact of that was that it made a lot of us leave the bukkit community because we felt that we had been taken advantage of when we saw 4 people get all the glory for our work, however minimal.

    The fact is from a legal standpoint, bukkit is a GPL project and as a result, everybody who ever checked in code has to eb bought out for you to get all rights to it. Any attempt to claim ownership of bukkit without buying out EVERYBODY WHO EVER WORKED ON IT is a violation of the GPL.

    And since as you claim Mojang owned Bukkit, that means they granted rights to MC code by allowing it to continue; these defacto rights allow Bukkit to exist and mean in this case that Bukkit did nothing wrong, because all code used was ok'ed by Mojang.
    jorisk322 likes this.
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    Suddenly, Credit cards.
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    Ah, finally someone with a mind that asks a question that matters. You got it right with your second question in the first paragraph.

    According to the beginning stories published by evilseph and dinnerbone on separate blogs, bukkit was started by 4 guys who purchased a domain name and got a github and started writing code. That would be a non defined partnership, because they did not create a legal partnership.

    So what does mojang own and what did they get when they acquired bukkit in 2012. Since I am not privy to the actual contract if there was one, I can only surmise by certain public relevant information. Curse has all the slots for the domain, in other words curse is listed as the registrant, admin and tech. Mojang does not control that. Based on public statements on twitter, any ownership interest in bukkit for the original 4 guys was transferred to mojang as part of their employment. What that means only they know, did they sign over their copyrights or just any undefined interest in bukkit? So mojang owns an interest of some sort, in an undefined partnership which only has a code base, the names are not even trademarked. Curse may have an agreement with mojang that mojang actually owns the domain but curse controls it for convenience. Mojang also supposedly bought out what ever interest curse had for a token sum.

    To sum it up, mojang owns nothing, because there is nothing to own except some potential codebase and some records, oh they may own the forums and the information stored on the curse servers having to do with the forums. In other words they own almost nothing and have no responsibility beyond the potential of copyrights the original 4 may have turned over to them under the terms of the GPL and LGPL.

    Who and what is bukkit? The world wonders.

    Ah but I do not want bukkit to die, never have, but never mind you win.

    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 14, 2016
    Enzer likes this.
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    Okay, so being a tiny server owner, I'm worried for the future of Bukkit and Spigot, as well as the general future of MC since it is mainly run off of Multiplayer. What will happen to Bukkit? What is the worse the DMCA can do to it? Will it completely destroy the Multiplayer community, ultimately destroying Minecraft? I love Minecraft and wouldn't like this to happen to it, since it is an amazing game anyone can enjoy. I am very disappointed (More enraged) at the actions of Wolvereness. What would be the consequences if the DMCA notice is not accepted (What ever the correct terminology is there)? Would Bukkit and Spigot stay up?
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    As others have pointed out the GPL code in question is owned by multiple people, not just the 4 people who got sacks of money for helping steal it from the community, and so if anybody has a copy of the git repro they can use that to show that people outside of the 4 developers worked on it and as such, can prove that Mojang does not have the ownership they want the public to think they have now.
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    Clearly most people here have never actually read the GPL. The GPL does not make any mention about what happens when two pieces of software are linked together. All it says is that derivative works of GPL licensed software must be distributed under the terms of the GPL. There is some debate on whether linking to another piece of software always creates a derivative work vs it being an aggregate work (notably, Richard Stallman believes that it always creates a derivative work; Linus Torvalds believes that it creates an aggregate work most of the time which is why you can have proprietary drivers on Linux), but that is largely irrelevant because CraftBukkit is a derivative of the official Minecraft Sever, not the other way around. There is no legal basis to demand that Minecraft be released as open source because as a completely original work, Minecraft can not be in violation of the GPL.

    It's possible that CraftBukkit infringes on Bukkit if the former is a derivative of the latter, since CraftBukkit definitely does not comply with the terms of the GPL, but that all depends on whether Bukkit is entitled to copyright protection at all. According to the FAQ on the Wiki, Bukkit is the mod API (and if this is inaccurate, someone who knows better should go fix it). Most software developers consider APIs to be public domain, and in 2012, that was confirmed in Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc.

    It's also possible that Wesley contributed GPL code to CraftBukkit even though there was no way to legally use it under those terms (did he know this?!), and thus it should have never been accepted. In that case there is little that can be done other than remove and replace it with non GPL code. Wesley can also just relicense it. If he won't do that, well he's just being mean for seemingly no reason other than to kill the project.
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    Which would be useful...
    If such a person existed.
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    Lets just face it. Without bukkit, minecraft is just boring and not worth playing.
    Vanilla is just way too bad to even think about playing it.
    Craftbukkit is what got me into minecraft.

    So i guess all that pretty much means bukkit is done for? Which will mean a big dump on mojangs player base.
    I feel like mojang is on the way to become EA 2.0.

    My main language isn't english so i'm not 100% understanding the mojang persons text.
    Europia79 likes this.
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    Robert Pendell

    Just want to point out that GPL code linking to non-GPL code doesn't void the GPL. It just means they can't provide that part of the code since it wasn't theirs to provide in the first place.
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    Deathmarine Retired Staff

    The interesting aspect here is that this "truth" has been misrepresented for quite a while, so it is understandable to be confused and distraught.

    How? The success of this project was behind the people maintaining it. There were quite a few that dedicated quite a bit of time, sacrificed for, and even donated to a project that was owned by mojang.

    Craftbukkit has been successful by injecting hooks into the source code. So distributing this portion is the only way it works. Everyone that has pretty much made a plugin knew this and contributors know this. If anything people are excited about finding the best place to inject or call an event within your software.

    With this in mind I have a solution, how about getting those guys you paid, to actually do the job for which you hired them...
    jorisk322 and ZeusAllMighty11 like this.
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    Everybody who has worked on Bukkit has rights to MC code. Thats what th GPL does. And Mojang allowed this for over 2 years so that is 2 years worth of people they need to track down and pay off to keep this from spreading, because that is how the GPL works.
    KevinABC96 likes this.
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    Copyright is never clear with modification. It depends on the amount of modification.
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    Wesley Wolfe, if you are reading this, I hope you are happy with the drama and stress you are causing. The EULA was enough as it was.
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    I want to add here, as a warning note to Mojang, having watched the EULA debacle unfold and now this: I cannot say what the company's motives are for squeezing down on servers and now Bukkit but if one takes a big step back, and asks oneself for motive, it looks very obvious to me. Most other MP games provide the servers on which players play, and sell modifications for more cash, which they can do because they own the servers and do not release any code to modify.
    The beauty of the Minecraft game has always been its expanding community, made possible only by Mojang's allowing modifications to be made; Mojang should go down on its knees to thank all of you at Bukkit and Technic and elsewhere for making their initial game so worth buying, at no cost to themselves.
    I used to praise Mojang for this. Now I see a reversal occurring.
    With squeezing of server owners and set up of Realms, the only thing standing in the way of Mojang selling modifications to its game are the developers hitherto able to do so. The main thing preventing Realms from being used by everyone, is the fact that they can set up servers using Bukkit plugins instead, which currently is far more desirable to players. Bukkit stands in the way, as do other modifiers, of a direction that Mojang might well want to take; to sell expansions to its game via Realms.
    My warning to you all is this:
    Watch for signs of this. If the screws keep tightening, then you know this is the motive. And the biggest weapon Bukkit has BY FAR is its think tank. This is an enormous community of brilliant coders and creative minds; I'm sure a FAR larger community than Mojang's staff level. If the screws keep tightening and plugins begin to be claimed by Mojang and coding being held tightly to Mojang's chest, then it's time for Bukkit to create their own game.
    Why not? You have the ability, and together you could create something amazing. Sales of that game would be income that you've so far not enjoyed; and you could set up a democratic community as Minecraft has been to date, allowing modifications of your coding.
    I am not a developer but I will help all I can. I'm a digital artist and graphic designer, and a damn good one. If you want my help with any project like this, please call on me. But KEEP TOGETHER! Do not let Mojang fracture Bukkit; it would serve the purpose of removing its main obstacle to control, if selling plugins is the intention. Mojang would regret such a move; the community and the possibilities with this game is the reason it's so popular with all ages. And with parents too, who do not have to pay more all the time.
    Keep watch for signs of tightening control.
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    mojang should not have done this to the community!
    krisdestruction likes this.
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    Alright, time to use nms code in my own projects… thanks vubui
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    From what I can tell it's not Mojang doing anything to the community... I see it as the core developers (who happen to be employed by Mojang, specifically Dinnerbone who contributed a yottaton of code to the project prior to being hired by Mojang) trying to save the project. Maybe it was wrong wording to say Mojang itself owned the project but much rather Dinnerbone is the original owner of the project. I don't know how things are in the background however I do think I have a solution if possible.

    The issue is the interconnection of Mojang's proprietary code (the server.jar) and Craftbukket using a decompiled/deobfusicated chunk of that code to allow folks to modify server stuff. Am I right in this.

    If so, would it be possible to make something similar to what like the work by Kahr in his MCPatcher to make Bukkit put in injectable alterations that keep Mojang's code out of the equation thus nullifying this Wesley's issue. This may involve a bit of work I'd suspect... I am no coder I'm just a simple resource pack artist.
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    So, do you have an estimated time when CraftBukkit will open to the public?
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    Let me also add: the warning signs to now watch for are:
    Mojang offering plugins developed by Bukkit or any other developers via Realms FOR COST. That would then be a violation of the intellectual property of the developer. Mojang owns the initial code; but it does not own the modifications. Ergo, it cannot sell them. Mojang would be allowed to use said plugins/mods for Realms ON AGREEMENT from the developers. You have rights too, people, despite the fact that you use Mojang coding as so far allowed by Mojang. But you own YOUR PART of those alterations. Mojang cannot steal from you any more than you can steal from Mojang. You cannot sell the plugins; but nor can Mojang.
    The smart thing to do would be to agree to who owns which part; you all seem to think that having used Mojang code, you therefore own nothing. That is just not true. If Mojang does not have the staff level to do what Bukkit does, then it should appreciate your contributions as a major asset to its game and perhaps use your plugins FOR A FEE on its Realms servers. Then everybody wins. But if this turns into a battle and Mojang refuses to allow modifications in future, there then is the goose laying the golden eggs dead and we all lose. THEN it's time for a new game... If Mojang were smart as a company, they would realise the danger they are headed for.
    KevinABC96 likes this.
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    I'm not sure if there are any other contributors who released under GPL. If they did, then they would have the same rights as Wolverness.
    Sadly if I understand Mojang's EULA's correctly, everyone who has a copy of MC agrees to the EULA and gives exclusive permission for Mojang to use their content as Mojang wishes (so technically yes, they can steal from you). Now arguably, you can ask Mojang to show you what proof they have of you having an account assuming they don't know your username :p It might not have the staff level, but it definitely has the resources to get the staff level.

    It boils down to: are you allowed to modify? and if so, how do you distribute?
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    Hey Everybody,

    I'm an experienced software engineer who's had experience in the past with open-source GPL projects (as well as the use of GPL software in a corporate environment) and so I wanted to put in my two bits. And hopefully I can clarify some stuff for some people and also offer my opinion about all this.

    It's important to understand that the GPL is a license, not a contract. It might sound like a tiny distinction but there's hugely different legal machinery that goes into enforcing a contract versus a license. When software is released under the GPL license, in a round-about way it basically ensures that the software (and its modifications), if it is distributed, the source code for it will always be available. If you privately make modifications, and you do not distribute the software, you don't have to make the source available. If the terms of the license are breached, then the party in violation gets to decide if they want to get on the right side of the license or cease distribution of the software. When you obtain a license to distribute the software, the license follows the software and you cannot revoke or withdraw it. The same is true for any one else who receives the GPL software.

    Now let's look at some of the facts about Bukkit:

    When Mojang acquired the rights to Bukkit, they also acquired the right to withdraw the GPL license on FUTURE VERSIONS of the source code (remember the GPL is not a contract). However, they cannot withdraw your right to exercise the GPL license for the software you've already received. Legally there is nothing anyone can do about this. In my opinion, Bukkit is "technically" in violation of the DMCA but does not violate it in spirit. It's a bit disconcerting that the bukkit source was taken down under the DMCA.

    Now, for my professional opinion:

    There's some merit to the idea that Mojang is using the EULA to edge out Bukkit. Nobody should dismiss this out-of-hand. I believe that internally, Mojang sees Realms as under-performing and is eyeing Bukkit as a primary competitor. I think the acquisition of Bukkit was likely part of their long-term Realms strategy. Mojang would be well advised to treat their modding community delicately and with respect because vanilla Minecraft has been long-overshadowed by its mod community. One of the biggest mistakes at Mojang was to postpone the modding API as long as they have. The modding API should be front-burner and 1.8 should've been (or included) the mod API release and thus bring the Bukkit, Forge, other communities under one umbrella. It's clear from what the COO has already admitted that Mojang is a small team and they can't keep up with demand for the game. This is why they'd be best to foster the mod community.

    Regarding the GPL license, I believe the original Bukkit contributors meant well but it's important to understand that the GPL license is a very, very dangerous license when it's wielded by people who don't understand its implications. The GPL can stifle innovation and can effectively kill projects when the GPL license that the software is under becomes a bigger point of focus than the software itself.
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