For those of you that are unaware of all the drama going on these past few weeks with Bukkit and the DMCA issued, I will explain as best I can. First off, I fully expect the 1.8 update to take as long, if not longer than the 1.7 update. When Bukkit released the server version 1.7, the 1.7 update had already been released for a couple months. Previous to that, it would only take a couple weeks. Why the difference? From what I heard it was content and optimizations in the game that had to be updated for Bukkit. Who knows if that really was the reason back then, but we’re in for another long road for a 1.8 update.

I want to explain first that for a vanilla server owner there are 3 server types you can run. 1) The “Minecraft Server” software from Mojang that currently doesn’t allow for plugins. We cant run plugins that give us grief prevention, colored names, block logging and Dynmap. 2) “Bukkit” which is a type of Minecraft Server that does not utilize Mojang’s server code but implements an API to allow for plugins. However its poorly optimized for larger server installations. 3) “Spigot” which uses Bukkit’s open source code with added java libraries that optimize almost every aspect of a server to allow a server owner to control what gets processed on a Minecraft server. Spigot relies on the Bukkit project. The default configuration of Spigot is pretty far away from what vanilla is in regards to spawning and such. We run Spigot, except I’ve done my best to configure it to be as close to vanilla as possible.

1. A couple weeks ago the main developer of Bukkit, Evilseph, announced that he was done with Bukkit and will be halting the project.
http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/bukkit-its-time-to-say.305106/ (click button for original posting)
2. Jeb at Mojang announced that Bukkit was not his to discontinue as Mojang owns the Bukkit project as of a few years ago.
https://storify.com/lukegb/the-tale-of-bukkit-for-minecraft-1-8
3. The fact that Mojang owned Bukkit was not made clear to the community.
http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish.305350/ (4th paragraph)
4. Bukkit’s primary forum moderator quit. (his link above)
5. Mojang announced on twitter that they are taking over the Bukkit project.
https://storify.com/lukegb/the-tale-of-bukkit-for-minecraft-1-8
6. An ex-developer of the Bukkit project crawled out from under a rock and issued a DMCA takedown notice of both Bukkit and Spigot.
http://dl.bukkit.org/dmca/notification.txt
7. Bukkit downloads were taken offline by curse. Spigot responds publicly to DMCA takedown notice.
http://www.spigotmc.org/threads/dmcad.28536/
8. COO of Mojang steps up and makes a formal announcement that the takedown has no merit.
http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/mojang-and-the-bukkit-project.309715/
9. Spigot decides not to counter the DMCA and comply with removing downloads from their site as well.
http://www.spigotmc.org/threads/our-dmca-response.28772/

Currently you cannot download Spigot or Bukkit in any official fashion. This DMCA takedown, in my opinion, is equal to somebody running a denial of service attack on a community project. The Minecraft community has so much heart and drive that they created Bukkit, Spigot and many Plugins because it was fun and exciting. Similar to myself. I have no financial interest in running a server, it is for the community. To be up late having fun with friends you meet online is what I enjoy. But this guy that did this DMCA takedown probably heard that Mojang owns Bukkit and wants some financial compensation for his work on a project driven by the “General Public License” or GPL. Between now and whenever Bukkit / Spigot has settled DMCA and releases a good copy of 1.8 we are left with being on 1.7.10. This can be problematic as you’ll notice that we’ll lose a lot of members because people want to have the update when it’s released.

Now, we could switch to the Minecraft Server software provided by Mojang. However that is a huge decision. What gain may not be worth what we lose. People attracted to our plugins may feel cheated and leave. We lose:
– Creative world & UHC the way we play it
– Dynmap
– Grief Prevention
– Block logging and other Admin tools
– Colored names.
– Less control over how the server runs.

Anyway, this is getting lengthy. I wanted everyone to just be aware that there more than likely will be a long delay in 1.8. Lets hope I’m wrong and things are resolved over a beer.

Take it easy,
~Jack

If you ask me, everything should resolve itself within the timeframe that it took for 1.7 bukkit to release, or much less.

There’s way too many people in the Minecraft PC community that rely on Bukkit and Spigot, not to mention the amount of existing content in the form of plugins is so substantial that something would give if it would cease to exist.

We just have to ride out the waves a bit, and hope there ain’t sharks.

That’s a nice summary of events. I think you are right about this being a lengthy one. From a legal perspective, it is a complex matter due the number of people involved, the lack of comprehensive precedent and the vagueness of the licensing/contractual ownership. Not to mention the confusion added by a corporate entity owning a community project unbeknownst to most of the contributors to that project. Unless everybody involved puts their toys back in the pram and agrees to move forward, I don’t see it being resolved soon. And then there’s still the development time, which nobody is going to start until this is resolved.

The more people that keep adding their spanners into this mess, the more I am wondering if we will be seeing a replacement rather than a resolution, but hopefully that is not the case.

Like most people here I/we are more than happy to wait as long as it takes. Whilst there are some great features in 1.8, Minecraft was already a great game before that and it will continue to be so. You might not attract so many new entrants in the interim, but you have a good core group of people on here that will continue to keep the server a fun place to be in the meantime. What you offer as a whole package here is worth more than just being on the latest version, in my opinion. Plus, every bukkit server owner is going to be in the same boat as you. So people looking for a server will be faced with the choice of a 1.7 server or a potential grief fest, so the impact on footfall may not actually turn out to be that much.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts. Thanks for the detailed update on the situation! 😀

Quote from thechessfiend on September 6, 2014, 10:46<br />
I’m agreeing with Giffca on this one. Bukkit and Spigot are too used by the Minecraft community for them to go down completely. If official updates stop happening, someone else will create something almost identical. The only question is how long it would take.

You are correct that eventually someone will create something, and this isn’t the end of all APIs for Minecraft, and servers are not going to die. However, it very well could end up being the end of the Bukkit/Spigot projects, specifically, unless Mojang finds a way to placate the entire Bukkit community (who are feeling a bit duped at the moment because they thought they were contributing to an open-source, community project, but just learned last week that it had been sold out from under them years ago by a handful of core Bukkit members who probably got paid a significant amount of money whilst leaving the rest of the community out in the cold).

Meanwhile, with regard to the licenses to use the existing code, there are very real, and novel, legal questions to be resolved. Mojang’s purchase was a not-well-known (but not secret, either) deal made with just those core members. Those four people could not transfer ownership of something that wasn’t theirs, so any bukkit contributor who didn’t sign a contract with Mojang still owns the copyright to whatever code he/she wrote. The size of the project and the number of servers who have relied on it over the last several years has no bearing on how the legal ramifications of the projects’ contributor structures were managed in the past or how this will all be resolved.

[b]Quote from Jackalmen on September 6, 2014, 14:21
I’m glad this sparked some interesting conversations.

Also one point I’d like to make is that if Mojang hadn’t have acquired Bukkit, then when Evilseph decided to close the project we would be in even more of a dilema than we are in now. It would seem Mojang wanted to prepare for something like this. Its just silly though that it had to happen during a critical update and not months ago where all this could have blown over.

It is certainly an interesting affair, like you say, it’s just a shame about the timing. Unless people back down then I don’t really see the incentive for Mojang to fight this. Even starting the new api from scratch at this point would seem more appealing than trying to wade through the legal quagmire that bukkit is fast becoming. I guess that sometimes the great thing about community builds is also the downside to community builds, the community.