2016/04/19: We’re officially discontinuing the project. Read more here.
Introducing Pore! Pore is a Sponge plugin that will load Bukkit plugins and serve as an intermediate so as to allow them to interface with the server. In simpler terms, it’s a Bukkit emulator. The goal of this project is to make the transition as painless as possible for server owners and developers alike.
Once completed, it will ideally support all Bukkit plugins which don’t use NMS/OBC, as it implements the unmodified Bukkit API as it currently stands. We’re also accepting contributions in the form of pull requests, so you can hop over to the repo if you’re interested. Also, we have our own subreddit which contains some more in-depth info about the project.
Edit #1: Pore has merged with the Lapis Blue project! It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.
Also, a brief status report (as of July 3 2015): Pore is currently not in a very usable state, as it’s still under very heavy development. A large portion of the Bukkit API is still unimplemented, and additionally, at this stage our focus is somewhat shifted away from finding and squashing bugs. That being said, we’re still working hard and hope to move closer toward stability once we have more core functionality implemented. (:
I would really like to contribute but the project seemingly contains code from the Bukkit API and legal issues may arise which I am afraid of. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Edit: The Bukkit repo is still up, I’m confused.
@CosmoConsole got me thinking, will it be ilegal to use plugins that are licensed GPL in a server softwere licensed MIT?“Pore” will be licensed MIT since it is a Sponge plugin but since Bukkit plugins are GPL maybe it would be ilegal?
MIT is compatible with the GPL, but if you redistribute the combination then the GPL’s virality overrides the MIT license. As long as the Sponge code doesn’t know about Pore/Bukkit you should be fine. That said, it’s still illegal to distribute a combination of GPL code and proprietary Mojang code, so that point is moot.
Although this is amazing and I’m glad you’re working on that, I don’t think this is going to be a long-term solution. Think about a plugin having critical bugs or just needed to be updated due to new functionality. How are the developers supposed to update an old Bukkit plugin to work with some new Sponge stuff?
There is nothing preventing updating plugins that are still using Pore while still keeping the Pore dependency, and it’s far less work than effectively rewriting it for Sponge.
The Bukkit API is under GPL, so why should it be illegal to create a new Plugin that contains the Bukkit API, if the Plugin is also GPL?!
The only problem is that Pore cannot be included in the Sponge download.
If a plugin like this was illegal, why is Nvidia legally making proprietary drivers for the GPL’d linux kernel?! It’s basically the same thing…
The Bukkit API is GPL and doesn’t require mojang code to load plugins.
As long as Pore doesn’t violate the GPL by including Mojang code it can’t be issued a DMCA, and as long as spongeAPI is MIT, it should be possible to build a plugin that bridges the API, otherwise stuff like GlowKit wouldn’t be allowed either.
I’ll summarize what I said in the thread that @Mr0Redmen created:
I believe Pore is legal because in this case, it serves as the plugin loader, and is released under an MIT (GPL-compatible) license. Sponge’s legal status is irrelevant becuase it never directly loads or interfaces with the Bukkit plugins. The only situation that would cause an issue is if a non-free plugin were loaded with Pore, in which case I’m not entirely sure who the blame would fall upon.
, Good idea!