Breaking Copyright

I'd go and ask him myself but I feel it should be done by someone on the Bukkit team.

 

5 internets to the person who successfully contacts Notch and gets either his ok, or his wrath, for bukkit to exist.

 

I'll go ask him. Where would be the best place to find him?
--- merged: Jan 8, 2011 5:10 PM ---
http://twitter.com/#!/naosia/status/23787165024518145

Edit: Still no response.

 

@Kekec852: The real question on whether Bukkit could be licensed under GPL is whether Bukkit could survive without any interaction with the Minecraft Server; this would include sharing data structures or functions. CraftBukkit obviously cannot do this.

@jmlsteele: I disagree my previous post is extremely relevant when you look at it from Bukkit and CraftBukkit's perspective. If one or both cannot exist without sharing info with MC than it cannot be licensed under any GNU license (GPL and LGPL).

-Edit-

I looked into CC and found this

found at: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ

 

@Arrorn: Bukkit is framework that could wrap around any MC server implementations. So it "COULD" survive.

 

It may actually be a moot point because if Craftbukkit can't use that code at all, then the project is illegal, nevermind unlicensable under the GPL. If Notch says the project can continue but only in a closed source form then yeah, the license is an issue.
--- merged: Jan 8, 2011 8:04 PM ---

I may have missed some details. What other server implementations are there? Would it even be feasible to write another compatible one?

 

They exist but most of them are written in c# or python, but it would be posible to interface bukkit with them.

http://mc.kev009.com/wiki/Server_List
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Beta_custom_server_list

 

Consider me surprised! The Bukkit/Craftbukkit separation makes sense to me now.

 

There are still several more software licenses to look at:

Most Common:

GNU GPL - X (Still Possible for Bukkit if uses no Data Structures or Functions of MC)
GNU LGPL - X (Still Possible for Bukkit if uses no Data Structures or Functions of MC)
CC - X
BSD - ?
Apache - ?
MIT - ?
Mozilla Public License 1.1 - ?
Common Development and Distribution License - ?
Eclipse Public License - ?

...Several trillion others...

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/category

 

I dont know how to say this respectfully, so out of respect, I'm just going to be blunt.

What I dont understand is why are people are making such a big deal of the license if the software itself is illegal due to core parts of it being stolen property in the firm of decompiled source code?

Its not like a permissive, open source license will legitimize or make good the fact that its stolen, and at least in my country, criminal. I know this may seem like a hard stance to take but its sort of forced in me by the fact that earlier today, I read that the code is being used and distributed in violation of Notches request, and that opens any server running Bukkit up to being raided by the police, with the admins of the server in question thrown in jail, at least under my not-an-expert understanding of the law as it was explained to me by an intellectual property lawyer for a software company I work for.

So knowing this, So why is the license an issue? Shouldnt the "bukkit team" be working on making bukkit legit first?

I'm really surprised that nobody has grown some balls and just ASKED Notch; I just sent him an email myself, but I find it sort of sad that they has been no public attempts to get this sorted out. Especially since due to these facts, pretty much anybody can have craftbukkit shut down at any time by simply letting the host/github know these facts, and I highly doubt that people want to work on something for months only to have Notch send a single email and have it all deleted at the 11th hour.

 

Let me make this very clear:

now, notch did said he was fine with server mods, the reasoning behind this, is that they still require the original server to work.

 

No notch said he was ok with mod wrappers.. not things that use his source.

 

I had mentioned it to him, and Naosia has now as well, but apparently he's too busy answering whether he likes cats or dogs more (probably waiting for legal is my guess).

The only reason I said it was unrelevent is because that isn't the issue we are discussing in this thread, and as such is off topic. Like I said in my previous post, your post DOES have merit in it's own right, but not as part of this discussion. This discussion is about the legality of CraftBukkit (and other things on the Bukkit Repository such as mc-dev). I apologize for confusing the argument by using "Bukkit" previously in places I should have used "CraftBukkit", this was an error on my part.

And besides, as feverdream put it discussing the license of CraftBukkit is a completely moot point.

 

This thread is just causing un-needed confusion. We know that what we're doing falls within a grey area and hope to address that soon. I've tried and am trying to get into contact with notch but until then, this topic is pointless as it is just filled with fear mongering by people who aren't clued in as to exactly what we're doing behind the scenes.

I thank you for your concern, but we'll handle it. Evidence of lack of insight into everything surrounding this issue is the increase of pretend-lawyers posting in threads like these. hMod was under the same boat and no one brought up this issue - they just let it slip because hMod provided their servers with things that honestly make Minecraft just that much better. So why now? I just find it really strange.

The future of the project is not up in the air. We can easily work around this issue but we'd prefer not to. If it comes to that, though, we'll have no choice - but then we'd be as "legal" as hMod is and was.

That being said, until we've resolved this, this thread is closed. If anyone would like to discuss licensing and you have a firm grasp on the topic, start a Personal Conversation with me.