We hear how you feel that Sponge will be superior to alternatives, and how do you expect other projects to get DMCA-ed. But many projects flourished without any DMCA notice even if they were illegal. Reverse engineering Minecraft is probably illegal in itself, but it is required for all mod support. Probably Mojang didn’t sue because they don’t want to sue those developers. Mojang wanted to see mod community flourish, and Microsoft stated it is one of their goals as well.
And if Microsoft said they want to support modding community, etc they won’t be trigger happy either. Bukkit got DMCAed by a former Bukkit / CraftBukkit developer. And probably any project that isn’t a fork of craftbukkit is sefe from that threat. And if MS doesn’t want to release a MOD API soon they can protect existing APIs easily. But if some people doesn’t want to contribute they can’t change that. And even the promises for Sponge won’t help there.
And sadly Sponge is vulnerable to GPL Zealots. They can easily create a GPLed fork. And a GPLed fork could attract many GPL zealot developers. They can take everything you make, and would give nothing back so they would have a chance to become technically superior. If several plug in devs and others would move to their side, we would see a dangerous situation. So you are vulnerable to one GPL takeover tactics. And a GPL fork can take away some of the community as well…
But claiming certain other alternatives are vulnerable to DMCA as they are using Minecraft code isn’t a strong claim. Even Sponge is creating a derivative work based on Minecraft without permission, even Sponge can get DMCA notices. And even your coders can illegally submit copyrighted code. Your agreement would prevent them from suing you, but wouldn’t prevent anyone else showing some code was borrowed from them. The question is: Who would face the same risk as Bukkit?
To me the legal battle between Wolverness and Mojang / Microsoft seems to be a complex matter. On one hand it destroyed Bukkit. On other hand it is hard not to notice who owns Bukkit now. Why is that an issue? Behind GPL there is the GNU project. And GNU is Not Unix… Because they had an issue with Unix. How maintainers of Unix ran away with the code from contributors and turned it into an expensive product. GPL fans (including zealots) would contribute a lot to GPL licensed projects, but it comes at a price. The moment you turn away from GPL you lose these people and their skills and experience, so it is hard to replace them.
Now when it became clear that Mojang bought out Bukkit, hired several of its developers and plan to release their official API some of the contributors of the Bukkit projects had a reason to worry if their code would be used in commercial product (vanilla Minecraft). And even if it wouldn’t be the case the project was sold without even telling them about it. GPL zealots had good reasons to be frustrated, angry and aggressive.
The problem is: Reverse engineering Minecraft and creating derivative works was mostly illegal to begin with, but Mojang and Microsoft are okay with such projects for good reasons. These mod developers actually help them to sell more copies of the game. Mojang / Microsoft has no reason to even tolerate any developer who tries to force them to GPL their own code. You don’t need an EULA to make it illegal to reverse engineer code and make derivative works. Copyright law itself is enough for that.
The problem is: You don’t have to use written contract, written EULA to give a license, saying something, or acting in one way or other can create a binding contract. And Mojang even supported some projects, so it can be claimed they had an unwritten contract, an unwritten authorization. But Mojang made it clear, they don’t want anyone else to own a project, but modding the game for yourself and the community is okay by them as long as it doesn’t hurt their interests and helps to promote the game. Any GPL tricks that would hurt their interests is against this policy. And if we see this policy as an unwritten contract… You know GPL was a bad choice.
Mojang made a big mistake when they didn’t immediately told Bukkit project to stop releasing GPL stuff. If they would have DMCAed Bukkit in time and tell them: GPL, LGPL is not ok, BSD, MIT, Apache, etc. non copyleft licences and Public Domain is ok, we wouldn’t have this mess. Yes, without GPL Zealots contributing Bukkit would have been a different project, but we wouldn’t face this incident. So far the big decisions leading to the issue:
- Bukkit going GPL. If they would have stay away from GPL and would have fought against GPL and gnutards… We wouldn’t have this problem.
- Mojang not stopping GPLed projects. Sometimes it is better for the community if the copyright owned of a game sues certain community projects. But Mojang didn’t want the conflict or bad PR from that.
- Wolverness acting in bad faith when contributing.
Now if you look at the debate about proper licence for Bukkit some said GPL would attract some kinds of developers. Namely zealots, who wouldn’t agree with the above unwritten deal, they want to get rid of most commercial software. And those zealots had more than enough reason to act.
And while Wolverness wants to enforce his copyright to protect himself from repeating the Unix incident, Mojang had to buy out Bukkit project for a good reason: To make sure there is no conflict of interest because some of their newly hired devs are part of Bukkit project since the begining, and without taking down Bukkit project. Letting Bukkit grow was in their interest. Keeping it independent was their motive.
And Wolverness claiming he offered another alternative is simple: Mojang had an option to GPL their code. But what would that mean? On PC and mobile markets there would be countless Minecraft forks, as many people would try to make money on it, and developers of Minecraft wouldn’t have any means to expect any ROI so would have no reason to create any new official version. With this Minecraft community would be fragmented and lost.
It is a “die or I will kill you” type of option, so it isn’t a real other option. And when Wolverness claims that the other side wants to prosecute him, I feel little sympathy for him. What he done was illegal, and his actions have several victims and he didn’t care about you, he didn’t care about the developers of Minecraft, he didn’t care about anyone else, all he care about was his Zealotry. If he wants to care only about that, he is welcome to martyrdom, and Mojang / MS should sue him, and take away his house, his car, his ownership of any code he created, and after that should prosecute him, and for his numerous copyright infringements should get numerous years in prison, as he acted in bad faith,
But this incident won’t touch a lot of independent projects and some of them would stay. The timing of the issue is bad on the other hand. Why? Because Mojang is bought out by Microsoft, so there is a time for transition, and it makes it harder for them to act. But they could defuse a bomb with a licence that allows certain derivative work, and recognizes that work created in good faith before the licence, expecting to see this licence should be okay if they accept this licence. If they don’t, they are illegal. If they just make sure community projects should be available for the community without licensing restrictions (no copyleft) then a such requirement wouldn’t hurt anyone except GPL zealots.
It is up to Mojang / Microsoft to defuse the GPL bomb. But I doubt if that would revive CraftBukkit. And I am sure new project stay away from GPL. Their success is determined by 3 factors:
- Can they stay away long enough from GPL and maintain independence?
- Can they release their API before the official API is released? Would it be used in time?
- Will the plugins that use their API continue to work when Official API gets released (Will it be feasible to develop for that API?)
We don’t know when 1.9 is coming out. But we know that Microsoft has enough money and enough experience with APIs, developer tools, etc. to speed up development of an official API and it might come out in a few months. Sponge has long term plans, but its development can be slow, if Microsoft would have a release before you do, then why would people switch to your API? Small projects that lets you play 1.8 now on the other hand serve a purpose right now. And their simple API can be easily reimplemented for future version, so they might have the compatibility as long as they have to maintain that.