[oldkinglog]

Paper can't provide binaries as it would infringe Mojang's copyright. Users must "build" the server by downloading the official binary and applying local patches. This is well-automated for users.

Licensing wasn't so much a problem in the early days of Minecraft. The first really popular server mod (CraftBukkit) not only provided binaries, but deopfuscated server code on a GitHub repo (since DMCA'd): http://github.com/bukkit/craftbukkit. That repository was ostensibly licensed as LGPL, but no one really believed that, given it was derived from Mojang's proprietary binaries.

Mojang eventually acquired CraftBukkit and hired their devs. And there's an interesting footnote: for several months, Mojang didn't tell anyone they'd acquired CraftBukkit, and they kept making releases to the public GitHub repository. Given it was Mojang making these pushes, I believe (IANAL) that they are officially-licensed LGPL versions of the Minecraft server, albeit ~10 years out-of-date now.

[ro_bit]

Interestingly enough, CB wasn't DMCAed by Mojang, but actually from one of its contributors, who was angry that he had been contributing free labor to a project that was secretly owned by Mojang (there was no CLA so he was legally able to take down the project by not authorizing his contributions to be used). There was a whole lot of drama and conflicting viewpoints around about this, but here's a post about it that I think stays pretty close to just the facts. https://blog.jwf.io/2020/04/open-source-minecraft-bukkit-gpl... (not associated with the author)

[piperswe]

> not authorizing his contributions to be used

Actually, it's a lot more interesting than that. My understanding was that said contributor realized that since Bukkit is GPL, it can't be legally distributed combined with proprietary Mojang code. His takedown notices were based on GPL violation, not just revoking authorization (which he probably can't do with the GPL?)

[LelouBil]

Today Mojang publishes deobfuscation mappings for each Minecraft Java release.

[1231232131231]

What's the point of obfuscation then?

[voxic11]

apparently its all about the message https://twitter.com/Dinnerbone/status/1169242801508376582?re...

[teaearlgraycold]

> they are officially-licensed LGPL versions of the Minecraft server

Oh this is an interesting legal area to explore. I wonder what you could do with that?

[apfsx]

I remember before CraftBukkit there was hMod, I think that team went on to make CraftBukkit.

[me4502]

hMod was made and developed by hey0, who dropped the project after a while and a new group took over, mostly comprised of hMod plugin developers. That group gave up on hMod pretty quickly and went on to make Bukkit/CraftBukkit instead as it didn’t fit the needs of the community