Input wanted: The History of Sponge and Spongie

[Tzk]

Hi all,
i’m currently trying to gather information about the history of Sponge and our mascot Spongie to create a new page on the Docs. I joined the Forums in january and thus don’t know much of the things that happened before that date. That’s where you (people on the forums) come in. I’m seeking help to get everything sorted and finally commited to GitHub!

History of Sponge itself (i’m trying to be unbiased):

• Aug 21: EvilSeph announced the halt of development of Bukkit on behalf of the Bukkit staff
• Aug 21: jeb_ states that Mojang owns Bukkit.
  ( https://twitter.com/jeb_/status/502380018216206336 )
• Between Aug22 and Sept12 almost all Bukkit Staff quit, later Curse took over with new staff
• Sept 3: DMCA to CraftBukkit and all forks that share a similar first commit (Spigot. Cauldron, MCPC+) by Wolvereness
  ( https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-09-05-CraftBukkit.md )
• Sept 6: [09:27:20] Firehead94 suggests Sponge as the name for the new API (irc log provided in post#4)
• Devs of Couldron, Bukkit, Spout and ??? (help me out here) decide to create a new “better” API in #nextstep on irc.esper.net
• the SpoutAPI is suggested as a base to create the SpongeAPI
  ( https://spoutcraft.org/threads/spoutcraft-read-about-the-future.8660/ )
• Sept 7: First commit to sponge API by Zidane
  ( Initial commit · SpongePowered/SpongeAPI@5a96c64 · GitHub )
• Sept 7: Initial commit to Granite (will become SpongeVanilla later)
  ( Initial commit · SpongePowered/SpongeVanilla@47d23d1 · GitHub)
• Sept 8: First commit to Sponge Coremod by Zidane
  ( Initial commit · SpongePowered/Sponge@9b1d2c8 · GitHub )
• Sept 10: spongepowered.org is born
  ( https://twitter.com/SpongePowered/status/509505604390768641 )
• Sept 14: Logo Design Contest is started
  ( Submit your logo design )

…
(need help here too)
…

• Dec 1: API 1.0 is released
• Dec 26: Granite switches to SpongeAPI only
• Mar 26: Granit developers join Sponge; Granite → SpongeVanilla
  ( Restart Development using FG w/ Vanilla. · SpongePowered/SpongeVanilla@a32a3fd · GitHub)
• April 20: unification of Granite/Coremod codebase in SpongeCommon begins
  ( Initial Commit for unified project · SpongePowered/Sponge@83b2bf7 · GitHub)
• unification in SpongeCommon is done ???
• April 21: API 2.0 is released
• April 26: Dev builds of Sponge Coremod are available
  ( Repository - Nexus Repository Manager )

History of Spongie (the mascot):
need further input here

• Old Spongie mascot was first posted in Sponge on Esper.net and on Reddit
  ( Reddit - Dive into anything )
• The user strad removed the Bukket, replaced Spigot with Spout and Cauldron with Forge plus added an antenna
• an anonymous user removed all labels and setup spongie as the default reddit icon
• (old) Spongie wasn’t vector art, thus Sponge staff decided to create a new mascot
• the first draft of new Spongie was posted
  ( NEED LINK! )
• a second friendlier version was created
• both versions were posted in State of Spongie:

State of Spongie [WIP]

Greetings, and welcome to the State of Spongie We have been working on getting a new vector art version of Spongie, mostly behind-the-scenes. This is due to a lack of quality versions of the original, and a desire to show the Sponge project independent of other modding works. The original Spongie is a fine work, and encompasses many of the features that helped to draw the Sponge project together in the first place. Spongie carries a Cauldron, a Spigot, and has a Bukkit on their head. They look…

ToDo:
Look up exact dates and content of the SoS1 to 4.
Look up API Version releasedates

Note:
PLEASE keep this thread to facts. i don’t want drama in here, just unbiased information!
Thank you !

Relevant Issue on the Docs: Add Spongie page · Issue #262 · SpongePowered/SpongeDocs · GitHub

[TBotV63]

The announcements category could be of quite some use there.

@Tzk

Devs of Couldron, Bukkit and ???

…people from the Forge modding scene, afaik we have spigot people here aswell.

Also:

State of Spongie [WIP]

Greetings, and welcome to the State of Spongie We have been working on getting a new vector art version of Spongie, mostly behind-the-scenes. This is due to a lack of quality versions of the original, and a desire to show the Sponge project independent of other modding works. The original Spongie is a fine work, and encompasses many of the features that helped to draw the Sponge project together in the first place. Spongie carries a Cauldron, a Spigot, and has a Bukkit on their head. They look…

Bardic Extrapolation (Rime of the Ancient Sponge)

For better or worse, I seem to have become Sponge Poet Laureate. William McGonagall, eat your heart out. This thread will be frequently updated with new original works of creative Spongification. These works may vary from bad to abominable, striving to be less than awful. You have been warned. Feel free to quote, misquote, use or misuse, as long as attribution is given Disclaimer: Any resemblance between anything and anything else is unintentional and a product of your imaginatio…

Status update - 11 September, 2014

Here’s what’s going on: We are in the process of applying for an open source license of YouTrack and setting it up. YouTrack is an issue tracker which we will use to track what’s on the project and community’s todo list. Until we setup the issue tracker, we will not be very well able to organize the development effort, so it’s currently a top priority issue. For pull requests, we plan to have them managed on the issue tracker using the process outlined below (this process also happens to be a …

Status update - 16 September, 2014

Here’s the lowdown on what’s happening. Planning the API To plan out the API, we are currently using two resources: A list of Java packages that should end up in Sponge Our issue tracker Our procedure is as follows: Find something on the package list that needs development. Create a swimlane for the agile board for our first release. Add some “cards” for the most immediate tasks. For example, for the command API, there needs to be first be some command interfaces. Implement the code. (For …

[Tzk]

Such posts are exactly what i’m looking for. Thank you!
Just throw links at me, i’m absolutely fine with that

Will browse the announcements category and read DotDash’s SoakedUp! too.

–
I’ll add everything to the first post to keep all information in one place.

[simon816]

The first ever mention of naming the project ‘Sponge’

[09:27:20] Firehead94 Sponge

IRC log IRC Channel log for nextstep

Also

Random Questions

Initial creation: 6th September 2014 Things started to come along within a few days after that, e.g. forums were created on the 10th

First SpongeAPI commit (7^th Sept 2014)

Initial commit

First Sponge commit (8^th Sept 2014)

Initial commit

[Tzk]

Added the above. Thank you too!

[12AwsomeMan34]

@Tzk

• Between Aug22 and Sept12 almost all Bukkit Staff quit, later Course took over with new staff

Should be spelled curse not course.

[Necrodoom]

Aug 21: EvilSeph announced the halt of development of Bukkit

Annouces on the behalf of bukkit team.

Between Aug22 and Sept12 almost all Bukkit Staff quit, later Curse took over with new staff

Keep in mind that Evilseph did not quit, but was removed by Curse without annoucement.

EDIT:

jeb_ states that Mojang owns Bukkit. Bukkit was bought when the BukkitDevs where accuired by Mojang

Nothing states how Bukkit was bought. It wasnt bought with the bukkit developers. The bukkit.org problems are attributed to Curse.

[Feuerstern_]

I don’t think you should mention so much of the Bukkit history as Sponge should be a replacement but has nothing else to do with it. You should better write something about the histories of Spout and Forge: The Forge recode in 1.8, for example. C[A]uldron might be interesting as well, because even though it has a totally different structure, it did the same as Sponge without support for Vanilla clients (a plugin API and support for Forge mods).

[Tzk]

I’m not sure wether i should include the Bukkit story or parts of it or not. This is definitely a point that should be discussed in here. I’m currently just collecting and sorting information. I think the decision what should stay and what will be left out should be made at a later state. I appreciate your opinion nontheless

As said above im collecting this to create a history page on the docs. So the final decision on the content of the final page belongs to the Sponge staff anyways.

I’ll think about Spout and Forge. Forge breaking from 1.7 to 1.8 is definitely a valid point.

[Waterpicker]

@Tzk

Spout

The Spout and Forge histories will probably be a pretty big undertaking. Both projects histories span atleast over 3+ years.

[Tzk]

i don’t want to gather the whole story of Spout and Forge here (we’re still on Sponge forums), but i think the things that lead to the creation of sponge are important… As Spout was shut down and the devs came here to help that should probably get included. And Forge with the Forge API breaking from 1.7.10 to 1.8 and the wish for a non-breaking API across versions too.

[Tzk]

EvilSeph announced on behalf of bukkit team, yes. will correct that.

I’m not sure when/if and most important what Mojang bought. If you could provide links/sources or even further thoughts on that topic feel free to do so

Corrected the mentioned faults for now.

[Necrodoom]

The thing is other than the bukkit team hire, there has been no annoucement of what mojang bought. Curse doesnt seem to care either, as they stated that they would let mojang change stuff in MCF, even though mojang owns nothing on said forums.

[IndustryRevolution]

Wrong. Typical propaganda.

[Tzk]

@Necrodoom
Yes you’re absolutely right. removed that point as there are no known facts about it afaik.

@IndustryRevolution

Elaborate please?!

[Necrodoom]

Apparently user created just to reply to me. Heh.

[Inscrutable]

I agree that the other projects (Bukkit/Craftbukkit, Spout, Forge, Cauldron) are all relevant to the origin of the Sponge Project, we should include only a basic summary of each - what it is, what it’s for, how old, who was involved. It is probably also important to mention what became of them (in the case of Spout, Craftbukkit and Cauldron), but that needs to be as uncontroversial as possible.
The real importance of these other projects to Sponge is in the personnel (and in the case of Forge, and to a lesser extent Spout, the existing codebase). Several former devs from each group are now indispensable to Sponge, in various ways. The community that has developed around the project has also had a role to play in keeping things going, and many of them are from the same places.

[Tzk]

I came up with a first draft on the docs. Read it here:
Further input (here and/or on github) is appreciated!

The history of Sponge and Spongie. Fixes #262

[sk89q]

Here’s actually the full start of the log from the very first line:

[23:29:39] *** Joins: sk89q ([email protected])
[23:29:39] *** anarchy.esper.net sets mode: +nt
[23:29:40] *** sk89q sets mode: +s
[23:30:35] *** Joins: luacs1998 ([email protected])
[23:30:57] * luacs1998 shall take the debate position of the forge supremacist
[23:31:03] *** Joins: TabletCube ([email protected])
[23:31:11] <sk89q> lel
[23:31:11] <sk89q> hi
[23:31:14] *** Joins: Dark_Arc ([email protected])
[23:31:25] <Dark_Arc> oh hai
[23:31:30] *** Joins: blood ([email protected])
[23:31:34] *** Joins: Johnson ([email protected])
[23:31:39] * luacs1998 shall take the debate position of the forge supremacist
[23:31:47] <luacs1998> :P
[23:31:51] <blood> good name sk89q
[23:31:52] <blood> =)
[23:32:07] <luacs1998> heh, that steve jobs cube computer
[23:32:12] <sk89q> haha
[23:32:15] <sk89q> I should probably op some people
[23:32:17] <sk89q> I am pretty bad at that
[23:32:24] <sk89q> #sk89q has like the same 6 ops for 3 years
[23:32:44] *** Joins: cindylo|laptop ([email protected])
[23:33:11] *** Joins: Dpa1991 ([email protected])
[23:33:13] <luacs1998> lol
[23:33:19] <Dark_Arc> what's that have to do w/ anything?
[23:33:19] <Dark_Arc> lol
[23:33:47] <sk89q> appears blood is not registered
[23:34:07] <luacs1998> sk, have you /cs register 'ed this channel?
[23:34:09] <sk89q> yes
[23:35:29] *** Joins: AbrarSyed ([email protected])

Frankly, Sponge wasn’t really started in an organized matter at all. I created #nextstep and then advertised it in #sk89q and #cauldron.

People came in… a lot of people. Something like 700-900 people in the channel.

Then I made this document. This document was the most important document of #nextstep. I actually gave pretty much everyone that asked access to edit it.

Everything was essentially via consensus as I asked questions, took opinions, and then put them on the document. Eventually there was a lot of support for a new project, and then people asked me to be leader of this new project. I personally asked blood to help as co-leader, and both of us created the IRC channels and registered the appropriate social media accounts after people seemed to like the name ‘Sponge’.

At this point, I invited all the devs of the major projects (I’m talking like literally everyone – people from Canary, Spigot, Sponge, Bukkit, Forge, Essentials, etc.) into a private developer channel. At this point, no one had officially signed up to work on Sponge… within the next few weeks, people left and stayed, and we ended up with people from Forge, Spout, Bukkit, Essentials, and some other projects staying on.

tl;dr Sponge was created by a mob and put blood and I as leader. A few people from some of the major projects became committed to the project through the course of the next few weeks after I personally invited them all into Sponge’s private developer channel.

I also still have all the IRC logs from the time, including from all private channels, if you have a question.

[Tzk]

I’d like to thank everybody who participated in here, on irc and on github.
I created a PR which was merged today.

Read the result here:
https://docs.spongepowered.org/en/about/history.html