Editorial: Is Mojang slowly killing off Bukkit?

You have probably played on a Minecraft server with factions, or multiple worlds, or one that has different-colored text in the game chat. Those servers are likely using Bukkit - a server software created by the Minecraft community that is much more powerful than Mojang's dedicated server jar. By itself it's almost identical to Mojang's software - but it supports thousands of plugins ranging from blocking TNT to managing multiple Minecraft worlds. Almost every major Minecraft server is powered by Bukkit, but it looks like Mojang is slowly killing it off.

The leading developer for Bukkit over the years, known in the Minecraft community as EvilSeph, announced earlier this month he planned to shut Bukkit down. He cited disagreements in Mojang's enforced EULA as the reason the Bukkit project was going to be shut down. He posted on the Bukkit project blog:

Mojang have made the abrupt and sudden decision to start enforcing their EULA in an effort to quell the outlook of Minecraft being pay to win. While I can completely understand where they are coming from and support their mission to shut down pay to win servers, it's difficult to be supportive of their abrupt turn-around with enforcing rules they consciously decided not to enforce since the start of Minecraft. On top of this, there are also clauses - which it would be irresponsible of us not to be aware of - within the now suddenly enforced EULA that directly affect the Bukkit project.

But here's the catch - it wasn't his decision to make. Mojang quietly bought the Bukkit project over two years ago, and one of the major Minecraft developers Nathan Adams came over to Mojang during that move. Mojang intervened shortly after the announcement with the intention of continuing development. Jens Bergensten said on his Twitter account:

That means bukkit always had a special relationship in regards to things such as the EULA, and if Warren is bored, we need to do something.

Now the question remains - what is Mojang doing with Bukkit? For the time being, it seems like Bukkit is on life support. It's unlikely any major features will be added to the project in the near future, besides maintaining compatibility with Minecraft and fixing bugs. Bukkit uses something called the Bukkit API, which allows people to make mods for Bukkit easily.

Mojang has their own API, called the Mod API, which will be added to Minecraft in the future to enable official mod support (no more opening the jar file!). It seems likely that Mojang will eventually move Bukkit to the Mod API, or simply replace Bukkit with an improved version of their own server.

What does all this mean for players? Not much right now. But when Mojang makes the switch, thousands of plugins for Bukkit will not work anymore. I guess we will have to see what happens.