I keep hearing rumors about Pore being illegal to distribute, is this true?
None of us are lawyers, so we canāt say for sure. However, Wolverness sent a tweet about Pore being illegal and somehow deserving of a DMCA. We disagreed and couldnāt find a way how that was true.
Pore has no direct reference to unfree software, the only way it can run on proprietary software is though a Sponge implementation, which Pore has no direct dependency on.
So far no one except Wolfe has questioned Poreās legality, so I donāt know what you mean by rumors. We have not gotten anything close to a DMCA, so for now the project is essentially sound.
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Well I didnāt ask for lawyers, I just want to know if Pore is going to continue production.
Yes, absolutely. We have had several PRs recently and continue making commits, because we believe that Pore has a stable legal foundation. The reason why commits to Pore have not been as frequent is because all of its developers have outside commitments or other projects, not because we are expecting a DMCA.
Your original question is actually very much a legal question, so you kind of did ask for lawyers. As for
itās answered here
Sorry if I came out as rude, thank you all for your help.
No worries. Always happy to help 
Correct me if Iām wrong, but I think the Pore team did a mistake. It says Pore is licensed under MIT license. Bukkit is licensed under GPL. You are not allowed to use GPL licensed code in a project that is licensed under a less strict license like MIT, because GPL contains a so called copyleft rule.
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Does Pore even use GPLād code? Noting that implementing an API may be a separate issue and be fine.
Well, presumably a copy of Bukkit sits in the Pore repo (although Iāve not looked recently).
[ā¦] General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or apps incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same anti-proprietary terms as GNU stuff.
[ā¦] the āinfectionā is not passed on to third parties unless actual GNU source is transmitted.[Nope, I canāt read. This section doesnāt apply.]
It appears that distributing GPL source (Bukkit) is indeed not allowed by something that isnāt copyleft.
Iām not your lawyer though.
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They handle both their distribution and their bukkit patches under GPL.
The MIT License is GPL-compatible, and Porekit, Poreās fork of Bukkit, is under the GPL. To my knowledge, the Pore distribution is also GPL.
This has been discussed to death. Here is a very good Stack Overflow answer discussing GPL libraries in an MIT project, and just GPL/MIT mixture in general.
As far as I, and many many others, have been able to discern, Pore is legally sound and the only one who wants to DMCA it is Wolvereness, because heās (still) butthurt about Mojang buying Bukkit.
Pore development will continue for the forseeable future.
N.B: I am not a lawyer.
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Before we start, I am not a lawyer either.
For those of you who hadnāt seen it, it was discussed here: Question about Pore - though bear in mind my responses to that are biased to the earlier days where Pore was simply marketed as MIT licensed.
I would argue that @gratimax and @Aesen are correct here, Pore is doing nothing wrong by saying itās code is MIT - because as itās been said, the MIT licenced code can be sublicensed to be GPL code. They just have to be clear that the distribution with Bukkit, or indeed, linked against Bukkit (the Bukkit licence AFAIK does not have a linking or classpath exception) will automatically turn it into a GPLād distribution . Otherwise, itās perfectly valid here, itās only linking against GPL and MIT code, the API does not reference Mojang code in any way, and any implementation does not have to either - for example, Glowstone.
As long as Pore is not distributed with anything that requires a Mojang server to run (i.e. the Sponge Forge mod), it should be fine.
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The Pore distribution is licensed under MIT as I said: Pore/LICENSE at master Ā· LapisBlue/Pore Ā· GitHub
Assuming that implementing Bukkit to a Sponge plugin without any Mojang code is legal doesnāt mean that you are allowed to use a license without a copyleft rule. These are two completely different questions. What Iād like to know is not whether Pore is legal but if the team has to change its license.
I read the explanation you linked, it doesnāt seem to be something official, too, but appears to be consistent. Just one thing is striking (to me): If you are able to bypass copyleft like this, what is it good for?
Wikipedia says:
āCopyleft (a play of the word copyright) is the practice of offering people the right to freely distribute copies and modified versions of a work with the stipulation that the same rights be preserved in derivative works down the line.ā
If I was a Pore team leader - what I gladly am not 'cause Iām far too stupid to manage such a great project - Iād just use GPL for it to be more sure. I donāt even get why you use MIT just to be a littlebit friendlier to those who want to fork it. Does MIT even have a benefit when it needs a strictly GPL licensed part as well? What should Pore be good for without Bukkit? So why is there a need for a license that is friendlier?
Code reuse.
In practice, Pore as a distribution is always going to be GPL licensed, because it links against the GPLd Bukkit. However, by saying that the Pore code itself is MIT means that if I wanted to make another API translator using Poreās code, for the sake of argument, translating from Canary, I can use that code from Pore under the MIT (without the bukkit parts, obviously), and not under the GPL if I so choose.
That would be why I would argue that maintaining Poreās core code itself as MIT is not a bad idea. It can be sublicensed as GPL anyway so there is no problem with linking it to Bukkit.
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That is not the Pore distribution, that is the Pore source code. The distribution would be the compiled .jar you put in the mods folder.
Thank you @dualspiral for being another voice of reason in this insane thread full of half-baked ideas and misinterpretations.
This topic has been discussed a plethora of times and it is even stupider every time. I would ask that a moderator lock this thread as itās derailing into misguided legal advice and a mini war about how you interpret the GPL and MIT licenses.
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Unfortunately, we do not lock topics because people disagree with each other. Regardless of how black/white the conversation may seem, itās everyoneās right to discuss their opinion.
I would recommend, however, that as this topic continues, people attempt to remain civilized.
Congrats, achievement get! Turn a polite discussion about an important and easily misinterpretable topic into āa mini warā. Well doneā¦
Iām sorry for your disappointment regarding to our āhalf-baked ideasā. Here is an official GNU website statement declaring MIT to be GPL compatible, so youāre definitely right. But this fact doesnāt make questions about why and in how far youāre allowed to use MIT to bypass copyleft stupid. If youāre not able to stand our next discussion, neither (for whatever reason), feel free to let me die without having experienced the privilege to understand you.
This topic was finished when gratimax replied and the OP thanked him for the information, and it has in fact become an argument over whether or not Pore is legal, which we have already determined earlier in this thread, and in many previous discussions.
Yes, I am a bit pissy at the moment because of some server issues and having to frantically release new versions of software, but that doesnāt change the fact that this topic has been discussed a large number of times and thereās always the same misunderstandings, thereās always the same misguided advice, and thereās always the same fear-mongering.
In any case, Iām going to be untracking this thread and leave you to your āpolite discussionā about a topic that has already been discussed many many times.