DMCA Claim Over GPL Non-Compliance Shuts Off Minecraft Plug-Ins

New submitter Maxo-Texas writes One of the primary programmers, Wesley Wolfe (Wolvereness), who contributed over 23,000 lines of code to the Bukkit project (which enhances Minecraft server performance and allows others to write mods and plugins) submitted a DMCA request September 5th, preventing use of his code in the popular Bukkit or Spigot (and numerous other Minecraft plugins, mods, and other open source enhancements that depend on them). This has the effect of freezing all further development for multi-player server Minecraft based on these add-ons until the issue is resolved.

The programmer says that Mojang must release the Minecraft server code to the public domain since decompiled, deobfuscated versions of the Java code are included in the Bukkit project before he will withdraw the DMCA. Mojang has never released the real source code and has stated they will not open source the server code to meet the GPL and LGPL licensing requirements. This approach might be a risk for other GPL and LGPL projects out there which are derivative of or enhance non GPL programs or products. Mojang COO Vu Bui writes in a post at the Bukkit forums The official Minecraft Server software that we have made available is not included in CraftBukkit. Therefore there is no obligation for us to provide the original code or any source code to the Minecraft Server, nor any obligation to authorize its use. Our refusal to make available or authorize the use of the original / source code of the Minecraft Server software cannot therefore be considered to give rise to an infringement of any copyright of Wesley, nor any other person. Wesley’s allegations are therefore wholly unfounded.

Comments

What the heck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I read the articles, and I cannot keep the parties straight. Who did what and who is claiming what? Can this be expressed as a simple bulleted list. Too much lawyer. Many nomenclature.

Re: What the heck?

[Solozerk]

The Minecraft modders are using some of the Minecraft code (as a result of decompilation and related techniques).

If the source code in question has been obtained by decompilation, is it really the "original" Minecraft source code (the one that is covered by the original license) ? I mean, you're basically looking at a non human-readable binary, freely distributed, and deducing a source code that would produce the same binary. At this point the resulting source code is your work IMHO.

Then again, things may seem a little different here since it's Java and I think using "decompilation" on the byte code produces code that is likely to be extremely close to the original. But it doesn't really seem that different.

At any rate, this specific case seems a lot more straightforward since if I understand correctly the bukkit guys sold their project without getting permission from all their contributors - the fact that the bukkit people used decompiled Java bytecode appears to have little relevance to the case itself.

Re: What the heck?

[pcolaman]

You moronic asshole (see, I can do it too). You are not understanding the fact that there is ZERO GPL violations in the Minecraft server. The whole issue of GPL violations is with Bukkit and CraftBukkit, which this guy did work on. And the irony here is that they had to reverse engineer the Minecraft Server software in order to make Bukkit/CraftBukkit work. In short, not only does Wolfe have no ground to stand on in terms of the Minecraft Server software being open sourced but also he's basically torpedoing the software that he helped to create. I'm guessing the dude is going to have trouble finding friends in the Minecraft Development Community before long.

Re:What the heck?

[mark-t]

The problem with this, you realize, is that Wolfe's contributions are highly in demand in the Minecraft community, and if Mojang does this, the community as a whole will probably just turn on Mojang, even if Mojang isn't actually legally in the wrong here, because the party who *IS* in the wrong happens to control something that a lot of people really want.

In a nutshell, Wolfe is risking it all on the notion that his contributions have given him a controlling mindshare over Minecraft. This is going to end ugly.

Re: What the heck?

[bwcbwc]

So they're blackmailing Mojang...

Bad move when Mojang is finally making progress on their own Mod API.

The other way to make this legal is to change the license on Bukkit/CraftBukkit to something more liberal. They won't be able to do this retroactively, so someone may decide to pursue this idiocy on a back-level GPL-based fork, but at least the main project could legally license under CC by-sa, BSD, Apache or possibly even LGPL.

My understanding of the issue

[MrWHO]

My understanding of the issue makes things look better for Wolfe.

    He contributed code to the project - licensed as LGPL - before the Bukkit team was aquired by Mojang. At that time the server code - decompiled and deobfuscated - included in the releases was not falling under the LGPL license because it was not owned by the releasing team.

    Forward to when the Bukkit team is aquired by Mojang - who owns the copyrights to the server code - and a new release is made. At this point the server code included in the release, which is copyrighted by Mojang, falls under the LGPL.

    I am not saying that this is what's the legal reality of the case, but I think this is what Wolfe thinks and why he issued th DMCA takedown notice.

Uh... decompiled and deobfuscated?

[mark-t]

Okay, I totally get how you can decompile java code, but I do not see how, after obfuscating, one is *EVER* going to get back to something that resembles the original source code from the binary. It was my understanding that once you have obfuscated a java program, all of the identifiers from the original source code which might otherwise be visible in an ordinary java decompile are irreversibly mangled... it becomes intractable to even identify general pattern use, let alone any actual source code copying.

I call shenanigans... I don't see how any alleged deobfuscation tool could be used to see what they are talking about.

Re:Uh... decompiled and deobfuscated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I totally get how you can decompile java code, but I do not see how, after obfuscating, one is *EVER* going to get back to something that resembles the original source code from the binary. It was my understanding that once you have obfuscated a java program, all of the identifiers from the original source code which might otherwise be visible in an ordinary java decompile are irreversibly mangled... it becomes intractable to even identify general pattern use, let alone any actual source code copying.

I call shenanigans... I don't see how any alleged deobfuscation tool could be used to see what they are talking about.

Obfuscation is reversible. It just takes a good eye and a lot of work. Some of it can be recognized more easily by usage of standard library calls.

Re:Mod AC parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, mod up a comment which calls an author of a significant part of the mod that people want an "asshole". As someone who has previously had the "joy" of dealing with people who treat everything open source like public domain and blame the developer whose work they're appropriating if they're called out on it, this is exactly the kind of event that changed my attitude and made me contributing only trivial bug fixes to open source while keeping anything more substantial proprietary.

Re: ELI5 please

[Ronin Developer]

Wait...you are saying that decompiling minecraft's proprietary code isn't a violation of copyright? The java byte code is THEIR product. Just like using reflector to reverse compiled .net code to C# - is still represents the original owner's intellectual property.

If this guy linked to their proprietary, non-gpl'd code and then declares that code GPL, I call bullshit. The fact that Mojang chose to ignore the violation doesn't mean he is in the right. They chose to ignore the violation because it benefited them to do so. It doesn't mean they can be compelled to release their source code.

Frankly, this mod should be declared public domain and user beware since it was never licensed legitimately in the first place. The guy is being a jerk.

Mojang should refactor their code, make a compatible API that can be released that can be compiled by developers which they release under GPL, MIT or some other compatible license. If they do it right, it won't break existing mods or they can provide a tool to help with the conversion process and screw the guy completely out of the equation.

It may be an unpopular viewpoint, but this is why business is leery of the GPL and 3rd party contributions. Mojang should have been a little smarter before they acquired the toolkits and developers so they knew the ramifications of their purchase. At this point, it sounds like Mojang is being extorted since the code was never properly license in the first place.