![[E] Dragoness](https://mc-heads.net/avatar/Steve/128)
Summary:
I don't like the recent events involving Bukkit. (feel free to insert a "duh" here)
Rant:
The DMCA against Craftbukkit and the leaving of the Bukkit staff doesn't hurt Mojang, but it negatively impacts server owners and server members. Because of the rash actions of a small handful, it will be more difficult for servers to update fully to 1.8 and that means it will be longer before members will be able to enjoy the new features on their favorite servers. That negative impact, is what makes me angry.
The Bukkit staff has worked hard on providing updates, I understand and respect that. At the same time, I work the equivalent of a full-time job on my servers. I don't remember the last day that I've gotten online and had no negative news. There's always some drama happening or some thing broken or some challenging decisions to be made about making sure things keep moving forward for the community. I'm not a queen on a throne, I'm a system administrator, a moderator, a developer, and anything else that means I can progress in taking care of things. Why should I and other server owners get shafted like we haven't worked just as hard as the Bukkit developers to take multiplayer further for other players? Why should our members get punished because the people owners thought they could trust have given us a "screw you all"?
There is currently discussion happening between several developers and server owners about making a new server implementation. One that is "safe" from facing legal action. In theory, it sounds interesting, and if it becomes a reality as good as hoped, kudos to it. Though, I have reasons to not count on things going well, and would rather be pleasantly surprised than invest myself into a project more dream than realistic.
Bukkit still has a chance to survive, but if it does not, I am already familiar with a different server implementation that is as old as Bukkit (a little older actually), relatively stable, and has recently regained momentum in development (even before the Bukkit shit hit the fan).
TL;DR: I don't know if we'll have an opportunity to update to Craftbukkit 1.8 and if we do, it might be longer to arrive than it should have been.
Some further explanations for people who haven't a clue what I'm talking about.
A couple weeks ago, one of the lead Bukkit developers tried to call an end to Bukkit. Mojang at that point revealed that they have ownership over the Bukkit project and intend to keep it alive. This has made a lot of people uncomfortable because they feel deceived (I don't fault anybody for feeling this).
Last week, a different developer issued a DMCA notice against Craftbukkit. Bukkit is a development api (and still available), but Craftbukkit is the actual server software, what server owners download and run to host a server. A DMCA notice is a claim by a content creator that their work has been used without authorization, to put this simply. Regardless of what anybody feels about the DMCA notice, Mojang made a smart decision to halt the availability of Craftbukkit downloads. Smart because leaving the downloads available would have placed Mojang in hotter water than what they might be in now. It still sucks for the rest of us though.
Spigot is also impacted, as the founding developer md_5 also received a DMCA notice. Officially and with consultation of other parties, md_5 has opted to skip fighting the DMCA, but still intends to find way forward with the Spigot project. Unofficially, it's still possibly to acquire Spigot builds.
A little over a day ago, most of the Bukkit developers/admins posted "goodbye" threads on Bukkit. At least several have now (finally) been set to "Retired" ranks.
The 'community' project involving developers and server owners is called "Sponge" and it was initiated by sk89q. sk89q is the developer of WorldEdit, WorldGuard, and Commandbook. Sponge is expected to be inspired by several other projects that already exist, to shorten development, but still be a project of its own. Several of the developers that left Bukkit are involved with Sponge. Even though a lot of people are involved in the discussion and expressing interest to help, it could be months before anything production-ready is available.
Meanwhile, there is already a stable alternative to Bukkit called CanaryMod. This was rewritten in the last year, but the project overall was started shortly after hmod died (the grandpa of non-vanilla servers). It's approach to being a server wrapper is a little different from Bukkit, but working with the developer api is familiar and CanaryMod has several good features in-built (including a ready permissions system).
While I've long wanted to nudge more attention onto it, because it really does have a lot of potential, I've up to this point had to focus my attention on Bukkit development with having every reason to think Bukkit and its plugins would last longer than 1.8. With the possibility that there will be no 1.8 Bukkit or that CanaryMod may finally regain ground and surpass Bukkit first, I'm now seriously considering what kind of work would be needed to convert servers.
---
Some final notes...
I don't blame the EULA for this mess. It's just a scapegoat .
Currently we're waiting to see if things cool down enough that "normal" business can return on Bukkit and hopefully, we can go back to simultaneously enjoying and complaining about an update with "Bukkit" servers. Technically, we use Spigot, but chances are decent that if Bukkit overcomes this mess, Spigot will still be a patched fork of Bukkit.
There is a reason I'm calling this an unofficial post. Taking it as absolute indication of what's going to happen is not a good idea. I have opted to post on the forums instead of my personal spaces though, because this drama will definitely impact members, even if the worst is already through and things cool off.
I don't like the recent events involving Bukkit. (feel free to insert a "duh" here)
Rant:
The DMCA against Craftbukkit and the leaving of the Bukkit staff doesn't hurt Mojang, but it negatively impacts server owners and server members. Because of the rash actions of a small handful, it will be more difficult for servers to update fully to 1.8 and that means it will be longer before members will be able to enjoy the new features on their favorite servers. That negative impact, is what makes me angry.
The Bukkit staff has worked hard on providing updates, I understand and respect that. At the same time, I work the equivalent of a full-time job on my servers. I don't remember the last day that I've gotten online and had no negative news. There's always some drama happening or some thing broken or some challenging decisions to be made about making sure things keep moving forward for the community. I'm not a queen on a throne, I'm a system administrator, a moderator, a developer, and anything else that means I can progress in taking care of things. Why should I and other server owners get shafted like we haven't worked just as hard as the Bukkit developers to take multiplayer further for other players? Why should our members get punished because the people owners thought they could trust have given us a "screw you all"?
There is currently discussion happening between several developers and server owners about making a new server implementation. One that is "safe" from facing legal action. In theory, it sounds interesting, and if it becomes a reality as good as hoped, kudos to it. Though, I have reasons to not count on things going well, and would rather be pleasantly surprised than invest myself into a project more dream than realistic.
Bukkit still has a chance to survive, but if it does not, I am already familiar with a different server implementation that is as old as Bukkit (a little older actually), relatively stable, and has recently regained momentum in development (even before the Bukkit shit hit the fan).
TL;DR: I don't know if we'll have an opportunity to update to Craftbukkit 1.8 and if we do, it might be longer to arrive than it should have been.
Some further explanations for people who haven't a clue what I'm talking about.
A couple weeks ago, one of the lead Bukkit developers tried to call an end to Bukkit. Mojang at that point revealed that they have ownership over the Bukkit project and intend to keep it alive. This has made a lot of people uncomfortable because they feel deceived (I don't fault anybody for feeling this).
Last week, a different developer issued a DMCA notice against Craftbukkit. Bukkit is a development api (and still available), but Craftbukkit is the actual server software, what server owners download and run to host a server. A DMCA notice is a claim by a content creator that their work has been used without authorization, to put this simply. Regardless of what anybody feels about the DMCA notice, Mojang made a smart decision to halt the availability of Craftbukkit downloads. Smart because leaving the downloads available would have placed Mojang in hotter water than what they might be in now. It still sucks for the rest of us though.
Spigot is also impacted, as the founding developer md_5 also received a DMCA notice. Officially and with consultation of other parties, md_5 has opted to skip fighting the DMCA, but still intends to find way forward with the Spigot project. Unofficially, it's still possibly to acquire Spigot builds.
A little over a day ago, most of the Bukkit developers/admins posted "goodbye" threads on Bukkit. At least several have now (finally) been set to "Retired" ranks.
The 'community' project involving developers and server owners is called "Sponge" and it was initiated by sk89q. sk89q is the developer of WorldEdit, WorldGuard, and Commandbook. Sponge is expected to be inspired by several other projects that already exist, to shorten development, but still be a project of its own. Several of the developers that left Bukkit are involved with Sponge. Even though a lot of people are involved in the discussion and expressing interest to help, it could be months before anything production-ready is available.
Meanwhile, there is already a stable alternative to Bukkit called CanaryMod. This was rewritten in the last year, but the project overall was started shortly after hmod died (the grandpa of non-vanilla servers). It's approach to being a server wrapper is a little different from Bukkit, but working with the developer api is familiar and CanaryMod has several good features in-built (including a ready permissions system).
While I've long wanted to nudge more attention onto it, because it really does have a lot of potential, I've up to this point had to focus my attention on Bukkit development with having every reason to think Bukkit and its plugins would last longer than 1.8. With the possibility that there will be no 1.8 Bukkit or that CanaryMod may finally regain ground and surpass Bukkit first, I'm now seriously considering what kind of work would be needed to convert servers.
---
Some final notes...
I don't blame the EULA for this mess. It's just a scapegoat .
Currently we're waiting to see if things cool down enough that "normal" business can return on Bukkit and hopefully, we can go back to simultaneously enjoying and complaining about an update with "Bukkit" servers. Technically, we use Spigot, but chances are decent that if Bukkit overcomes this mess, Spigot will still be a patched fork of Bukkit.
There is a reason I'm calling this an unofficial post. Taking it as absolute indication of what's going to happen is not a good idea. I have opted to post on the forums instead of my personal spaces though, because this drama will definitely impact members, even if the worst is already through and things cool off.