Going Wide Open

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BuildCraft 2.2.5 is on the way. Bug fixes are slowly reaching the “minor” category. There’s a couple of SMP fixes to go, plus some minor tweaks here and there. This version will be the first of the 2.x branch flagged as stable – and 1.x is now officially discontinued. Note that SMP will remain shaky on large and complex systems. This is due to current Minecraft limitation, but things are likely to improve over time.

For those who have been following the development on SourceForge, you may be interested in knowing that I’m slowly moving BuildCraft development to a codesion forge. Thanks to your generous donations, as well as sponsored adfly links, I am now in position to purchase this kind of service which will help greatly the work. But don’t worry, the development is still public, you will still have access to the Subversion repository, and you will still be able to browse through the tickets.

As a matter of fact, BuildCraft is getting even more open. Some may have noticed that, though the sources are available, BuildCraft was not completely Open-Source according to the OSI definition. This has been brought to my attention, and SourceForge has made the (fair) request to fix this matter or remove the project from their environment.

While considering various options, and deciding to re-host BuildCraft on Codesion, I choose to fulfill Open-Source requirements anyway – the two decisions being uncorrelated. In short, the BuildCraft distributions rights which were closed are now opened, under certain restrictions.

This will open the door in particular to various mods packs. I would like to stress the fact that until now, there is no mod pack that is allowed to contain BuildCraft (except Arrgh’s one who asked permission very early on). Making BuildCraft OSI-Open-Source does not make any of this pack any more allowed. There are specific conditions to redistribute these mods. If you’re intending to make such a pack, or would like to make your non-allowed pack allowed, please make sure that you fully understand BuildCraft License (http://www.mod-buildcraft.com/MMPL-1.0.txt), and post on the forums if you have questions.

Note that the distributions conditions affect not only mod packs, but anyone modifying or copying parts of the BuildCraft code. If you intend to make a BuildCraft sub-mod, and already have one, please check the license as well. In short, if you never ever copied parts of the BuildCraft sources, if you did not modify any source, of if you’re just including non-modified versions of the API, you don’t have to worry. Otherwise there are requirements to fulfill that may or may not make your work possible if you don’t want to fulfill the license terms.

I hope opening up the BuildCraft community will bring some new enjoyable game into play!

17 thoughts on “Going Wide Open”

  1. Great news! :D Can’t wait to see what the future holds in store for BuildCraft, and from other modders! Keep up the good work SpaceToad!

  3. I’m liking it. Is it ok use and link to http://www.mod-buildcraft.com/MMPL-1.0.txt for any mods I might make? Basicly release my mods as MMPL?

    But this section of the license is a bit weird

    “Dependencies to this mod must be licensed under conditions comparable to this
    version of MMPL, with the exception of the Minecraft code and the
    well as the mod loading framework (e.g. ModLoader, ModLoaderMP or Bukkit).”

    “Dependencies to this mod” – I’m (by far) no English expert, but I assume that you mean mods that require buildcraft to function, not mods that buildcraft requires.

    “and the well as the ” seems like a typo.

    • Definite typo, thanks for reporting it!

      I do mean mods that BuildCraft requires to work has to be using a comparable license. The idea is to avoid people having MMPL content depending on code that they’re developing with a closed license, rendering the MMPL content useless without the licensed stuff. The other way around is fine though, you can use MMPL content without having to be MMPL yourself, a bit like for the LGPL. This is not to force BuildCraft sub mods to be MMPL themselves (except if they start to do copy / paste). I’ve clarified this section in the license, let me know if it’s more clear now.

      You can definitely use that for your own work. I’m thinking of adding a section of MMPL mods somewhere on this site – let me know when you use it!

  5. Spacetoad, please email me your email. My account email will do. I’d like to talk, your forum software has no PM feature that I can find ;(

    • I mean email my account email… no point actually emailing me your email… :p

      /me wishes these comments were editable

  6. Do i need to do something to post a ticket or in which direction i have to go report a bug, Builders wont seem to work properly with Energy Pipes. Generally Not at all =(

    What i was planning to do for worlds didnt work cause of the time it’d take to build the factory building =/

  7. Was this license written by a lawyer? Have you discussed the implications of its language with laywers in all the different countries that you are distributing Buildcraft to? Are you sure it is OK to use a trademark of another company (“Minecraft”) in your license text?

    Why not just use one of the already-approved licenses available at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/category – or, if you just like the word “open” and don’t actually want to be “open source”, one of the ones at http://creativecommons.org/ – rather than invent your own and contribute to the legal swamp of open source license proliferation?