Hey guys,
In this thread i'm going to be explaining some events that have arised in the past couple months in regards to Minecraft, and Mojang. Many of you are already aware of what's been going on, for those who aren't I strongly recommend you read this.
The EULA
"EULA" stands for End User Liscense Agreement. You agree to this when you purchase Minecraft. You can read the EULA here: https://account.mojang.com/documents/minecraft_eula
Here is a snip from the above.
"You must not:
This has been in effect since 2012, however Mojang has been relaxed, and never enforced it. As of June 2014, Mojang stated that they would be enforcing this part of the EULA starting August 1st. This implied that Servers were not able to give out ranks for money that granted an in-game advantage over someone else.
This would kill off innovation in Minecrafts Progress (IE: New minigames, Youtube videos, plugins, maps, ect. ) Resulting in a huge decline in the Multiplayer community. Why did Mojang do this you ask? Many servers are taking advantage of younger kids by charging $1000+ ranks. Mojang receives tonnes of complaints from this, even though that it is not there doing. As you may probably know, Mojang has contacted many larger networks such as Mineplex, Hypixel and HiveMC, and they have condoned changes in order to meet these requirements.
MineVast has arranged changes in order to meet these requirements if it becomes absolutely necessary ( Which we doubt ). There has been no legal action or any action at all for that matter taken on servers who do not follow the strict EULA.
I suppose Mojang has realized they should re-think this after all, or maybe not. Who knows.
I recommend you read this well thought out letter in regards to the EULA
http://sterlingplays.com/
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The Bukkit Crisis - DMCA Takedowns
On August 21st, EvilSeph (Bukkit Team Lead/Developer) announced that Bukkit would be discontinuing. This decision was many reasons, most importanly because of the EULA. You can read the whole news post here:
Instead of my trying to explain what all happened this day, I encourage you to visit: https://storify.com/lukegb/the-tale-of-bukkit-for-minecraft-1-8
After news came out that Mojang owned Bukkit for over 2 years, over 70% of the Bukkit Team resigned, including Wolvereness.
You can view all the resigned Bukkit Team members here:
http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/an-independent-goodbye.310086/
On September 2nd, CraftBukkit and Spigot were removed due to a DMCA request from former Bukkit developer Wesley Wolfe (Wolvereness).
"The GPL is a copyleft license, which means that derived works can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses and the MIT License are the standard examples. GPL was the first copyleft license for general use." - Wikepedia
Spigots Legal Team has came to the conclusion that they will not fight against it.
Here is md_5, Lead Spigot Administrator/Developer initial response to the DMCA.
Here is Spigot's response to the community regarding the DMCA.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So all in all, there have been no builds since September 3rd, and there will most likely be no more builds for a while. HOWEVER, md_5 announced a new mechanism for Spigot. Updates will now come in the form of binary patches based on the build #1649. I'm sure you've hear a lot about that build x]. The only way to get this build is through other people privately. You can read about binary patches and how Spigot updates will take place here:
http://www.spigotmc.org/threads/spigot-update-20140909a.29091/
Hopefully this can soon be all resolved.
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Microsoft to acquire Minecraft for 2 billion dollars?
Last night breaking news hit all sorts of websites proclaiming that Microsoft would be buying Minecraft for over 2 billion dollars. This news is not yet confirmed, however there have been no official statements from either Microsoft or Mojang. This is odd, as both companies usually make a statement in regards to news related to this... but not this time.
There has been a lot of controversial topics and discussion going around these past 48 hours. Some say this is Mojang selling out due to realizing they messed up. That Minecraft is hanging by a thread and Microsoft will cut it.
If this deal is valid, and Mojang accepts, there are many possible outcomes. More than likely, the current Mojangstas will continue working on the game, as well as possibly more. Microsoft has IMO the best legal team in the world, and could crush this DMCA drama in a blink. Although the idea of Microsoft to own Minecraft does not put me, as well as many others at ease. Just thinking of what could come out of this frightens me. ( Memberships, DLC's, Strict monetization, only putting attention towards the Xbox version of Minecraft, making minecraft xbox/windows exclusive only, ect. ) These of course are all just theories, and this whole deal is not even official yet.
Here is a popular thread discussing this topic: http://www.spigotmc.org/threads/microsoft-buying-minecraft-for-2-billion.29207/
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Hopefully this has given you a better understanding on what's been going on recently. No matter what happens, MineVast will always be here till the end <3.
Some other news:
In this thread i'm going to be explaining some events that have arised in the past couple months in regards to Minecraft, and Mojang. Many of you are already aware of what's been going on, for those who aren't I strongly recommend you read this.
The EULA
"EULA" stands for End User Liscense Agreement. You agree to this when you purchase Minecraft. You can read the EULA here: https://account.mojang.com/documents/minecraft_eula
Here is a snip from the above.
"You must not:
- make commercial use of anything we‘ve made;
- try to make money from anything we‘ve made; or
- let other people get access to anything we‘ve made in a way that is unfair or unreasonable."
This has been in effect since 2012, however Mojang has been relaxed, and never enforced it. As of June 2014, Mojang stated that they would be enforcing this part of the EULA starting August 1st. This implied that Servers were not able to give out ranks for money that granted an in-game advantage over someone else.
This would kill off innovation in Minecrafts Progress (IE: New minigames, Youtube videos, plugins, maps, ect. ) Resulting in a huge decline in the Multiplayer community. Why did Mojang do this you ask? Many servers are taking advantage of younger kids by charging $1000+ ranks. Mojang receives tonnes of complaints from this, even though that it is not there doing. As you may probably know, Mojang has contacted many larger networks such as Mineplex, Hypixel and HiveMC, and they have condoned changes in order to meet these requirements.
MineVast has arranged changes in order to meet these requirements if it becomes absolutely necessary ( Which we doubt ). There has been no legal action or any action at all for that matter taken on servers who do not follow the strict EULA.
I suppose Mojang has realized they should re-think this after all, or maybe not. Who knows.
I recommend you read this well thought out letter in regards to the EULA
http://sterlingplays.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bukkit Crisis - DMCA Takedowns
On August 21st, EvilSeph (Bukkit Team Lead/Developer) announced that Bukkit would be discontinuing. This decision was many reasons, most importanly because of the EULA. You can read the whole news post here:
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.comfor 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 asAllGamer 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 :)
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.comfor 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 asAllGamer 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 :)
Instead of my trying to explain what all happened this day, I encourage you to visit: https://storify.com/lukegb/the-tale-of-bukkit-for-minecraft-1-8
After news came out that Mojang owned Bukkit for over 2 years, over 70% of the Bukkit Team resigned, including Wolvereness.
You can view all the resigned Bukkit Team members here:
http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/an-independent-goodbye.310086/
On September 2nd, CraftBukkit and Spigot were removed due to a DMCA request from former Bukkit developer Wesley Wolfe (Wolvereness).
"The GPL is a copyleft license, which means that derived works can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses and the MIT License are the standard examples. GPL was the first copyleft license for general use." - Wikepedia
Spigots Legal Team has came to the conclusion that they will not fight against it.
Here is md_5, Lead Spigot Administrator/Developer initial response to the DMCA.
Normally a great deal of time and planning goes into posting front page notices, however this notice represents news which is currently breaking and as such we have had little time to review it. That being said we feel that making public our initial thoughts and intentions is far more beneficial than allowing speculation or other conclusions to be drawn. This is a brain dump of what has happened and what we intend to do, and is not indicative of anything else, nor should it be taken as gospel.
When I woke up just 30 minutes ago, I was alerted to the fact that downloads to CraftBukkit had been removed due to a DMCA request from former CraftBukkit developer Wesley Wolfe (Wolvereness). Upon scrolling through emails on my phone I found that approx 2:21AM (AEST) we received a similar DMCA report from the same user. It is attached below with personal information and contact details removed”
Since we opened to donations about 11 months ago, the Spigot Team has set aside all the remaining funds which were not spent during the Minecon period, as well as a portion of all donations into a savings account. This account has been reserved for emergencies and other big ticket items (Minecon 2014 was the idea), and insofar we have not had to make use of it. As lawyers are expensive (upwards of $200/hour), we will be making full use of these donations set aside in order to fight this to the best of our ability and ensure that Spigot remains accessible to all. We are also hoping to get in contact with some legal professionals who specialize in licensing disputes such as those to do with GPL.
I’ve got to leave for the day now, however I will do my best to update this post when I can with whatever developments we receive.
~Spigot Team
Edit: please read the takedown notice before responding, the takedown was filed by Wesley Wolfe, however Mojang's chief operating officer Vu Bui has supported it on Mojang's behalf.
Edit 2: our legal team has begun work on a DMCA counter notice. Also thanks to all those who have made donations. They will be set aside from the normal pool.
Edit 3: We are currently in contact with Mojang on this matter, and also I'm going to bed.
Edit 4: We wish to clarify that at this point it appears that Mojang does not support the takedown claim issued by Mr Wolfe.
Edit 5: our counter notice has been prepared. We will be reviewing and hopefully issuing it tomorrow.
When I woke up just 30 minutes ago, I was alerted to the fact that downloads to CraftBukkit had been removed due to a DMCA request from former CraftBukkit developer Wesley Wolfe (Wolvereness). Upon scrolling through emails on my phone I found that approx 2:21AM (AEST) we received a similar DMCA report from the same user. It is attached below with personal information and contact details removed”
Obviously any surprise takedown of our software is no small matter, and we do intend to fight it to the best of our ability. Our primary goal at this point in time is to ensure that downloads of Spigot, and all previous Spigot builds remain available for public consumption. Our secondary goal is to ensure that we can continue distributing Spigot in its current form, and ensure that past versions will always be accessible. How we will do this is currently uncertain, however our first port of call is to get in contact with our legal team (which we are already doing) and attempting to issue a counter-notice to ensure that Spigot remains accessible for enough time in order to investigate and implement slightly more long term measures.Since we opened to donations about 11 months ago, the Spigot Team has set aside all the remaining funds which were not spent during the Minecon period, as well as a portion of all donations into a savings account. This account has been reserved for emergencies and other big ticket items (Minecon 2014 was the idea), and insofar we have not had to make use of it. As lawyers are expensive (upwards of $200/hour), we will be making full use of these donations set aside in order to fight this to the best of our ability and ensure that Spigot remains accessible to all. We are also hoping to get in contact with some legal professionals who specialize in licensing disputes such as those to do with GPL.
I’ve got to leave for the day now, however I will do my best to update this post when I can with whatever developments we receive.
~Spigot Team
Edit: please read the takedown notice before responding, the takedown was filed by Wesley Wolfe, however Mojang's chief operating officer Vu Bui has supported it on Mojang's behalf.
Edit 2: our legal team has begun work on a DMCA counter notice. Also thanks to all those who have made donations. They will be set aside from the normal pool.
Edit 3: We are currently in contact with Mojang on this matter, and also I'm going to bed.
Edit 4: We wish to clarify that at this point it appears that Mojang does not support the takedown claim issued by Mr Wolfe.
Edit 5: our counter notice has been prepared. We will be reviewing and hopefully issuing it tomorrow.
Here is Spigot's response to the community regarding the DMCA.
Edit: I wish to make clear this is not the end for Spigot. We will keep on developing and we will keep on fighting. It is only a short matter of time before things will be sorted out. The Minecraft server community has not come this far over this many years to be killed by a single blow from a disgruntled developer.
It is with a heavy heart this morning that I announce that in response to the DMCA takedown notices issued by Wesley Wolfe (Wolvereness), a current [Craft]Bukkit developer, that we have removed downloads to Spigot from our public Jenkins build server located at http://ci.md-5.net/job/Spigot. Additionally access to the Spigot source code repository (formerly located at https://github.com/SpigotMC/) has been forcibly removed from GitHub following a similar DMCA takedown.
This decision is not one that has been made lightly, but is one which has been made based on a number of factors. Following extensive legal counsel and advice from our attorney we were presented with a number of options we could take, including issuing a series of DMCA counter notices which had been prepared. This morning an assembly of the extended Spigot team, including our forum moderators, developers and IRC staff took part in a vote to decide the appropriate course of action. I abstained from this vote, however the outcome was unanimous and we have decided not to issue this counter notice, and instead take down the allegedly infringing material. It is by taking these steps, we believe, that the Spigot project stands the best chance of continuing to operate long into the future.
Fighting a legal battle is all about risk, and no matter how solid we or our legal counsel believe our case to be, there is always the element of risk. A copyright lawsuit within the United States of America must be conducted within a Federal District Court, an activity which results in the potential for extreme risk and expense to all parties involved. A number of factors have gone into play here, and ultimately we have decided that if we wish to resume business as usual, this could indeed prove extremely counter productive to our cause.
If there is one thing which has been observed by server owners and players alike, it is that the game which we all love, Minecraft, is best played with others and best played with friends. To this end, we have been in contact with Mojang, whose copyrighted material Mr Wolfe alleges is infringed upon, and they have come to the conclusion that these “allegations are therefore wholly unfounded”, and furthermore “we [Mojang] do not support people asserting rights which they do not have, against us or others”. This is a sentiment which you can find publicly expressed in the following statement by Vu Bui, the Chief Operating Officer of Mojang AB: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/mojang-and-the-bukkit-project.309715/.
Ultimately it is not just ourselves who are affected by this disappointing behaviour from Mr Wolfe, but also the other developers who have poured their heart and soul into these projects, the server owners who have built their livelihoods around them, the hundreds of thousands of players who enjoy our work every single day, and of course Mojang, the company which created this game. It is clear that Mojang believes Mr Wolfe “has mischaracterized and misrepresented the[ir] position”, and in the hope that they do what is right, for them and the greater community, we call upon them, and offer our full support in battling these claims.
In the last few days we have been busier than ever in order to provide our full transparency into these matters, and coordinate with legal counsel all over the globe to give ourselves the best shot at winning this. For the support which you have provided as a community, I personally, and the whole staff team, are truly grateful for. I would like to give special thanks to all those who have donated to our legal fund, much of it has been put to good use already. We have taken all donations received within the last two days, matched every dollar donated with fifty cents from our savings, and deposited it into our newly established legal fund. This money will be used solely for legal matters, and we see it as being sufficient to guide us through the uncertain times ahead.
Obviously with the removal of many of our resources, there is going to be all sorts of stuff floating around on the internet. As such we would like to provide some verification of several crucial items provided by our project in the hopes that server owners will be safe, should they manage to find alternate download sources.
We thank you for your understanding thus far, and hope that you understand that these decisions have been made first and foremost with the continuity of the project in mind.
Thanks and long live Spigot
~ Spigot Developers
~ Spigot Staff
~ Spigot IRC Staff
It is with a heavy heart this morning that I announce that in response to the DMCA takedown notices issued by Wesley Wolfe (Wolvereness), a current [Craft]Bukkit developer, that we have removed downloads to Spigot from our public Jenkins build server located at http://ci.md-5.net/job/Spigot. Additionally access to the Spigot source code repository (formerly located at https://github.com/SpigotMC/) has been forcibly removed from GitHub following a similar DMCA takedown.
This decision is not one that has been made lightly, but is one which has been made based on a number of factors. Following extensive legal counsel and advice from our attorney we were presented with a number of options we could take, including issuing a series of DMCA counter notices which had been prepared. This morning an assembly of the extended Spigot team, including our forum moderators, developers and IRC staff took part in a vote to decide the appropriate course of action. I abstained from this vote, however the outcome was unanimous and we have decided not to issue this counter notice, and instead take down the allegedly infringing material. It is by taking these steps, we believe, that the Spigot project stands the best chance of continuing to operate long into the future.
Fighting a legal battle is all about risk, and no matter how solid we or our legal counsel believe our case to be, there is always the element of risk. A copyright lawsuit within the United States of America must be conducted within a Federal District Court, an activity which results in the potential for extreme risk and expense to all parties involved. A number of factors have gone into play here, and ultimately we have decided that if we wish to resume business as usual, this could indeed prove extremely counter productive to our cause.
If there is one thing which has been observed by server owners and players alike, it is that the game which we all love, Minecraft, is best played with others and best played with friends. To this end, we have been in contact with Mojang, whose copyrighted material Mr Wolfe alleges is infringed upon, and they have come to the conclusion that these “allegations are therefore wholly unfounded”, and furthermore “we [Mojang] do not support people asserting rights which they do not have, against us or others”. This is a sentiment which you can find publicly expressed in the following statement by Vu Bui, the Chief Operating Officer of Mojang AB: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/mojang-and-the-bukkit-project.309715/.
Ultimately it is not just ourselves who are affected by this disappointing behaviour from Mr Wolfe, but also the other developers who have poured their heart and soul into these projects, the server owners who have built their livelihoods around them, the hundreds of thousands of players who enjoy our work every single day, and of course Mojang, the company which created this game. It is clear that Mojang believes Mr Wolfe “has mischaracterized and misrepresented the[ir] position”, and in the hope that they do what is right, for them and the greater community, we call upon them, and offer our full support in battling these claims.
In the last few days we have been busier than ever in order to provide our full transparency into these matters, and coordinate with legal counsel all over the globe to give ourselves the best shot at winning this. For the support which you have provided as a community, I personally, and the whole staff team, are truly grateful for. I would like to give special thanks to all those who have donated to our legal fund, much of it has been put to good use already. We have taken all donations received within the last two days, matched every dollar donated with fifty cents from our savings, and deposited it into our newly established legal fund. This money will be used solely for legal matters, and we see it as being sufficient to guide us through the uncertain times ahead.
Obviously with the removal of many of our resources, there is going to be all sorts of stuff floating around on the internet. As such we would like to provide some verification of several crucial items provided by our project in the hopes that server owners will be safe, should they manage to find alternate download sources.
Last commit to SpigotMC/Spigot: 25b4191f0ff904b2c413f16a09a156f7973221b4
Build #1649 (1.7 to 1.8 protocol, based on 1.7.10): f2edc09c45b1f80237602dc0d1b05969
Build #1627 (1.7.10): 4cced3f71de1bf4c6caccd74e1186f35
Build #1543 (1.7.9): 291669acb4eb8626e0341a988a6ee1e3
Build #1433 (1.7.8): 7e2e6bb626013368b134212a5ec76aa1
Build #1387 (1.7.8 protocol, based on 1.7.5): 76ad1a9809a014d3adc70ad39fb8e610
Build #1371 (1.7.5): a20dcdaf01017fbd4203f9595c813110
Build #1339 (1.7.2): 6685f2f76bf77e4db785fb32edbd313c
Last commit to Bukkit/Bukkit: f210234e59275330f83b994e199c76f6abd41ee7
Last commit to Bukkit/CraftBukkit: 07d4558b48d0717cb7f9e07015c76599b9fe9697
In order to verify any git repository downloads, the current HEAD should match the sha1sum provided. This can be verified with the “git rev-parse HEAD” command. For all other jar downloads, the md5 checksum of the jar should match that provided. This can be verified with the “md5sum” command on Linux.
More detailed instructions can be found here: http://www.spigotmc.org/threads/28772/#post-322175
Build #1649 (1.7 to 1.8 protocol, based on 1.7.10): f2edc09c45b1f80237602dc0d1b05969
Build #1627 (1.7.10): 4cced3f71de1bf4c6caccd74e1186f35
Build #1543 (1.7.9): 291669acb4eb8626e0341a988a6ee1e3
Build #1433 (1.7.8): 7e2e6bb626013368b134212a5ec76aa1
Build #1387 (1.7.8 protocol, based on 1.7.5): 76ad1a9809a014d3adc70ad39fb8e610
Build #1371 (1.7.5): a20dcdaf01017fbd4203f9595c813110
Build #1339 (1.7.2): 6685f2f76bf77e4db785fb32edbd313c
Last commit to Bukkit/Bukkit: f210234e59275330f83b994e199c76f6abd41ee7
Last commit to Bukkit/CraftBukkit: 07d4558b48d0717cb7f9e07015c76599b9fe9697
In order to verify any git repository downloads, the current HEAD should match the sha1sum provided. This can be verified with the “git rev-parse HEAD” command. For all other jar downloads, the md5 checksum of the jar should match that provided. This can be verified with the “md5sum” command on Linux.
More detailed instructions can be found here: http://www.spigotmc.org/threads/28772/#post-322175
We thank you for your understanding thus far, and hope that you understand that these decisions have been made first and foremost with the continuity of the project in mind.
Thanks and long live Spigot
~ Spigot Developers
~ Spigot Staff
~ Spigot IRC Staff
So all in all, there have been no builds since September 3rd, and there will most likely be no more builds for a while. HOWEVER, md_5 announced a new mechanism for Spigot. Updates will now come in the form of binary patches based on the build #1649. I'm sure you've hear a lot about that build x]. The only way to get this build is through other people privately. You can read about binary patches and how Spigot updates will take place here:
http://www.spigotmc.org/threads/spigot-update-20140909a.29091/
Hopefully this can soon be all resolved.
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Microsoft to acquire Minecraft for 2 billion dollars?
Last night breaking news hit all sorts of websites proclaiming that Microsoft would be buying Minecraft for over 2 billion dollars. This news is not yet confirmed, however there have been no official statements from either Microsoft or Mojang. This is odd, as both companies usually make a statement in regards to news related to this... but not this time.
There has been a lot of controversial topics and discussion going around these past 48 hours. Some say this is Mojang selling out due to realizing they messed up. That Minecraft is hanging by a thread and Microsoft will cut it.
If this deal is valid, and Mojang accepts, there are many possible outcomes. More than likely, the current Mojangstas will continue working on the game, as well as possibly more. Microsoft has IMO the best legal team in the world, and could crush this DMCA drama in a blink. Although the idea of Microsoft to own Minecraft does not put me, as well as many others at ease. Just thinking of what could come out of this frightens me. ( Memberships, DLC's, Strict monetization, only putting attention towards the Xbox version of Minecraft, making minecraft xbox/windows exclusive only, ect. ) These of course are all just theories, and this whole deal is not even official yet.
Here is a popular thread discussing this topic: http://www.spigotmc.org/threads/microsoft-buying-minecraft-for-2-billion.29207/
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Hopefully this has given you a better understanding on what's been going on recently. No matter what happens, MineVast will always be here till the end <3.
Some other news:
- Congratulations to BaconBoy2015 on becoming a Creative Administrator
- Check out our new trailer @ http://bit.ly/minevast-trailer
- Began development on the new Faction update.
