Many people claim that all Spigot plugins have to follow the GPL license. This is a common false statement made by people who have not studied the basics of contract law.
Disclaimer
The following text only represents the opinion of the author, who has studied law and is an approved lawyer in Germany as the time of writing this article. Under no circumstances is it guaranteed that the information given here is valid for every country, nor for every time in the future. If you actually need proper legal advice, contact an approved lawyer in your country.
What is the GPL?
To describe it in non-technical terms: The GPL is a special license that allows or disallows a certain party (“the user”) by the the author (“the rightholder”) of such software to use the software under certain conditions using a contract between those two parties.
Small example
You, “xX_PussySlayer69_Xx” has “purchased” a copy of the operating system “Doors 98”. You are “the user”, while the manufacturer of “Doors 98” is “the rightholder” of such mentioned software.
The rightholder of such software will probably have listed a ton of things you are allowed to do with that software, which will typically include stuff like using it.
This is exactly what the GPL does, too. The GPL defines what rights and obligations the usage of such software is given to you by the manufactorer of that software.
What is a contract?
Now it gets a bit more complicated: you have to understand the difference between a law and a mere contract. A contract, in most countries, is nothing more but an agreement between two parties that both promised to stick to. A contract creates, defines and governs mutual rights and obligations among its parties, and to noone else.
“But Bukkit requires plugins to be released under GPL”
While the statement in the above headline might be true, I have to tell you about the privitiy of contracts. While it MIGHT be true, that Bukkit/SpigotMC could enforce the clauses specified in the GPL license, it doesn’t mean that anyone else besides Bukkit/SpigotMC could do so too. A contract is nothing more than an agreement between two or more parties who all agreed to the same clauses. Under no circumstances can someone unrelated else deduce any rights from a contract between other, unrelated parties.
TL;DR
Even if SpigotMC has a contract with Mojang/Microsoft that states that all Bukkit/Spigot plugins must be released under GPL, and even if any plugin author has a contract between themselves and Bukkit/SpigotMC that states that their plugins must be released under the GPL, it does not mean anything to the users of that plugin in question. They do not have any entitlements against the plugin author to release the source of the plugin, or similar things.
“So what can I, as a user of a GPL-violating plugin, can do?”
Sorry, but, let’s be honest – you cannot do anything.
If you have bought a valid license to play Minecraft, you can sue the vendor of that license (probably Microsoft/Mojang) to allow you to play Minecraft. That’s it.
If you bought a Spigot/Bukkit plugin on SpigotMC, you can sue SpigotMC (and/or their representatives) to give you access to that plugin, according to their terms. Which SpigotMC probably did.
What you cannot do is to request the source code of a plugin that you have bought from SpigotMC, unless the author of that plugin told you otherwise.
You are free to report the plugin author to Microsoft/Mojang and/or to SpigotMC, but, and this is the important part:
- The plugin author MIGHT have to provide their source code to SpigotMC
- The plugin author MIGHT have to provide their source code even to Microsoft/Mojang
- But they do not have to provide the source code to you.
TL;DR
If you are person “A”, you can enforce contracts made between person “X” and person “A” and vice versa. But you cannot enforce contracts made between person “X” and person “B” or contracts made between person “X” and person “Z”.
> “So what can I, as a user of a GPL-violating plugin, can do?”
> Sorry, but, let’s be honest – you cannot do anything.
That’s a bit dishonest. A user can (and should) inform the rights holder(s) about the violation of their copyright so they can decide whether or not to take extra steps.
And your statement at the end that “they do not have to provide the source code to you.” is even more dishonest: They could only not do that if they stopped distributing, if they want to continue legally distributing their GPLv3 licensed binaries then they are going to have to provide source to the end user too, not just to the platform that is used to distribute. (or ensure that the platform itself handles that part of the license agreement)
As for if the GPLv3 even applies to plugins I suggest reading this part in the GNU FAQ on plugins and decide for yourself if that applies in this case (In my opinion it does): https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugins
As I said, it totally depends on your country’s laws. I am from Germany and what I stated above may only true for my country, but – and that’s my opinion as someone who studied law for years – that there isn’t even any contract between the two parties so neither of those can enforce any license on the other one. As said, it might be totally different in other countries. I merely wanted to say that the GPL does not magically apply to everyone but only to people who have actually agreed to do so, using a proper legal act like having concluded a contract.
> Many people claim that all Spigot plugins have to follow the GPL license.
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#OOPLang
Extending JavaPlugins means you are GPL
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPlugins
Creating a plugin creates a combined work, which must follow GPL
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#LinkingWithGPL
Bukkit is a dependency that you need to build your program, so you must follow GPL
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLStaticVsDynamic
Even if you don’t shade bukkit, you are dynamically linking it and must follow GPL
Hopefully this is enough information to establish that bukkit plugins must be GPL…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#License_versus_contract
GPL is a license rather than a contract. This means it is covered under copyright law and not contract law. It’s the general public LICENSE. It’s in the name. Not the general public contract. Please stop calling it a contract.
GPL-breaking plugins are illegal software and should be treated as such in this community. We should be treating authors who distribute this illegal software the same as we treat pirates as it is the same thing, shunned from the community.
Most of your statements simply are not true, and above I described why this is the case. At least how it works in Germany. Other country’s laws could be different, of course. In Germany you can’t just make up any license and force third parties to obey it. There simply is no legal basis for this besides contracts.
The Problem of course, that if you believe that linking to a GPLv3 library makes you GPLv3, then CraftBukkit is invalid, making the DMCA on the craftbukkit repo enforceable.
The easiest situation is to acknowledge that the entire Minecraft modding scene relies on the good graces of copyright holders to ‘do the right thing’ and not implode this for any other person, and most things are dubious in a legal sense license wise.
If this means that Premium plugins get a pass, because let’s face it, making good quality plugins is hard work that should be rewarded, and if the plugins aren’t harming the ecosystem, they should be left alone.
People are going to do what they like, and frankly if they aren’t hurting anyone else, we should let them be.
fuck propertiary software
I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#License_versus_contract might be important and maybe double check on that. GPL states that it is important that it is not seen as a contract.
Yes, that’s about Common Law countries. In Germany we don’t use Common Law 🙂
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True, no one is enforcing. But that doesn’t mean that the license itself is invalidated.
However, it’s important to note that the absence of enforcement does not invalidate the license Any additional terms that extend to a software that is licensed through GPLv3 are invalidated. This means that if you are selling a plugin with a term like ‘do not distribute’ included, that specific term will be rendered invalid. Consequently, if someone chooses to redistribute it, there will be no legal action that can be taken.
True, no one is enforcing. However, it’s important to note that the absence of enforcement does not invalidate the license.
Any additional terms that extend to a software that is licensed through GPLv3 are invalidated. This means that if you are selling a plugin with a term like ‘do not distribute’ included, that specific term will be rendered invalid. Consequently, if someone chooses to redistribute it, there will be no legal action that can be taken.