Dammit

[Ian25]

I was checking the spout page and well yeah... Link to the thread

With the new year approaching rapidly, many people create resolutions, or commitments, for the upcoming year, hoping to have a better year. I am here to inform you of Spout's 2012 new year's resolutions.

To start things off...
The SpoutDev team wants to thank the Bukkit Development Team for their hard work and dedication to the Bukkit project. They have created a friendly community and have benefited the Minecraft Server modding community in very positive ways.

What is the future of Spout?
The Spout that many of you are familiar with is being deprecated/phased out. In its place is a fork of Glowstone, a open-source Minecraft server written from scratch. Our fork of Glowstone was renamed Spout and will replace the CraftBukkit plugin known as Spout, which has been renamed SpoutPlugin. However, we will maintain SpoutPlugin until the new Spout is ready. Currently Glowstone has native support for Bukkit, but we will be removing Bukkit as a dependency for many reasons (which I will expand on in the next section). Instead, we will be rewriting the API and it will be named SpoutAPI. Some people have mentioned that this is the biggest example of plugin copying, however, while our general API and code structure might be quite similar, our goal definitely doesn't involve a copy and paste of Bukkit.

Wait, leaving Bukkit? Why?!?
Yes, we will have a different API and Bukkit plugins will not directly be compatible, we will provide a compatibility plugin that can serve as an interface for any Bukkit plugin(s) that haven't been ported to Spout. The decision to leave Bukkit was not an easy one and was discussed and debated for several months. Contrary to popular belief, this is not something that we decided overnight. There are a few things that brought us to this decision.

First of all, many members in the community have been disappointed by the lack of acceptance of new API or pull requests. A month or so ago, Bukkit rolled out their plans for Bleeding, but it seems to be ineffective so far. Every API that is considered for being added has to have a use that the Bukkit team agrees with. This is where we begin to have disagreements. We would rather add the API and then see what the plugin developers do with it. We feel that Bukkit's current philosophy only slows down innovation rather than contribute to its growth and creativity.

Secondly, we, like many other members of the Bukkit community, find that a cloud of secrecy floats around the team. Many believe that this is a very unhealthy state for an open source community project. A project should be driven by its community and users. It seems that the team writes grandiose posts about what is in store for the future, but don't fully follow through or do so in a very private manner. Many were excited for the bleeding concept, however, some have been disappointed with its progress. While in two months it might start turning into what we'd had hoped for, we can't wait for Bukkit forever.

As I stated earlier, we are very grateful for what Bukkit has contributed to the Minecraft community and we wish them good luck with their current and future endeavors. While the things said above may seem very anti-Bukkit, this was not our intention. We just want to thoroughly explain why we made such a hard decision and be very honest about it. We don't intend to offend anyone, but know that it is probable that we will.

Will my Bukkit plugins work with the new Spout?
As I briefly stated earlier, we plan to create a compatibility plugin. One of the big issues with switching to a new server and API is that old and sometimes popular plugins are not compatible with it, if you decide to switch, we want the transition to be smooth and as stress free as possible. Most, if not all plugins will be just fine. The exceptions to this are ones that require core CraftBukkit classes. Once Spout and SpoutAPI begin to become more stable and usable, we will begin work on the compatibility plugin.

What are the benefits of the new Spout?
Well for one, no notch code on the server! Contrary to popular belief that not having notch-code on the server will cause differences between the client and the server. However this is not the case, Spout will support everything that vanilla has to offer, while adding more for those who have Spoutcraft. Also, having complete control over the server makes it much easier to add things such as custom entities API. One thing that developers will like is that the new SpoutAPI will be the API for the client and the server! This means you don't have to code multiple plugins for the client and server. Our goal is to make the server and client as user-friendly and customizable as possible.

A clean start allows us to avoid some of the licensing issues Bukkit ran in to. One of the problems with open source projects is that the license must be decided at the very start. Once the license is decided, it is very hard to change. In addition, Bukkit made the decision to license the Bukkit API using the GPL. This means that, in theory, the Bukkit team could insist that a plugin's author release his source code. Normally, an API or library would not use the full GPL.

Our choice of license took both of these considerations into account. It is our intention to release the 3 projects under the SpoutDev license. We still have to ensure that we have removed all Bukkit derived code from the 3 projects, before we can fully release the projects using that license.

The license consists of two parts. First, all code is released under the LGPL, as soon as it is published. The LGPL means that plugin authors will be able to use the API without having to open source their plugins. However, if someone changes the software itself, then the updated software would need to be released.

Secondly, we added a clause where all changes are converted to the MIT license after 6 months. The MIT license is pretty much completely open. The thoughts behind this decision was that it allows us to change our license in the future. If we insist that all new pull requests use whatever new license we choose, then after 6 months, the project will be converted to the new license.

This gives us license flexibility and allows other teams take over, or fork, the project and, after 6 months, use whatever license they wish.

When will everything be stable and usable?
Development takes time, but we do intend to keep you as updated as possible. Keep an eye on the Developers' Club forum and our GitHub to watch development or drop by and chat with us on IRC. This is a big jump for us, but also a very exciting one.

What are the Spout team's goals for the future?
I believe our development goals are laid out pretty plainly above, for more specifics check out Developers' Club. Some of our non-development goals are being as open as possible, building a friendly and positive community, being approachable (definitely don't be afraid to ask questions or give your opinions), and improving the Minecraft modding community as a whole.

How can I help?
If you are a developer or interested in the development, don't hesitate to provide comments and feedback. We appreciate our community and all the help, support, and contributions that have been provided so far. Don't be afraid to submit pull requests on GitHub either!

A big thanks!
I want to say thanks to our community on behalf of the whole Spout team. We are very happy and thankful for the support that you have given to us so far. This is a very big change for us and we are amazed out how the community has stepped up and helped in many different ways. We look forward to see what the Spout community creates in the near future.

We are very excited for the future and can't wait as this new era of Minecraft modding becomes a reality!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!