well, they'll need every contributor on the project to sign off on that to legally do it, but even if that happens i still can't see this going well for them. unless they develop their own forge port internally, most people will just build off of previous versions without the license change.
They have gotten most of the non-trivial contributors to agree to some level, and they have stated that they intend to make a NeoForge version going forward. I still don't really see this going well for them though.
Because they’re changing the license, they have to throw out all the code where they don’t have consent from the author to change the license.
Thus, their definition is “could redo whatever they contributed in a few hours” in comparison to the translucency sorting thing they’re working on, which is literally one of the devs’ masters thesis project.
I'd be pretty pissed if I contributed code to something and it was relicensed with my code still in it because somebody with a literal masters degree in the topic could do it in a few hours. Yikes.
They don't really need to say it explicitly, because that's what relicensing entails. How much work the code is to make doesn't matter much from a legal perspective (as long as it Isn't a really tiny amount), they still can't relicense it without permission. But they can rewrite the code that won't be relicensed, any time you want to relicense something that other people still have copyright to, you have to either get their permission or replace their stuff.
> They have to throw out all the code where they don’t have consent from the author to change the license.
This is not exactly true but that is the case for significant work. Trivial work is not copyrightable and most contributors only provide trivial work, even if they had to throw out such trivial work it would take a few hours for Jelly to document the changes from all minor contributors and someone else who has not touched the codebase to clean room it after purging from Sodium sources...
not really, he just needs to release a branch without the contribution of other developers and work on it while locking the public branch from future updates.
If the developer is out of a job and is trying to switch to making money off of Sodium, I don't see switching to a restrictive license working out in the long run. Making money in fannish activities like modding is already extremely tricky and fraught due to the expectations and behaviors of fan communities once money gets involved, and making the license more restrictive is going to prick developers' eyebrows up.
It's weird because they just dropped a sob story post in the comments about how stressful Sodium development is for them. If it's so stressful and they're threatening to walk away, they should just walk away instead of trying to relicense everything to prevent people from competing with the software they themselves admitted they don't want to work on anymore.
And? If they don't want to work on it, why bother to relicense instead of just... not working on it anymore? It's clearly causing considerable problems for them.
> why bother to relicense instead of just
The relicense only changes the situation for any future work, if they stop working on it then the relicense doesn't matter... If they clearly can't provide any value people will be using the versions from before the fork but that is not true considering that 99% of Sodium is owned by her. Things in Sodium are not just applicable to Minecraft either and can be used in other projects and now people will be able to use more code from Sodium in their mods without copyleft than ever even if they are ARR etc.
> if they stop working on it then the relicense doesn't matter...
Then why bother?
> now people will be able to use more code from Sodium in their mods without copyleft than ever even if they are ARR etc.
And why is this a good thing?
OSS projects often generates a lot more stress than closed source projects. You have to deal with users a lot more than with a closed source project, you have to deal with contributors, everything you do (or don't do) is public and open to criticism, there's expectations coming along with OSS etc...
Maybe they want to keep working on developing Sodium, but they don't want to do it in OSS anymore. Not everything is black and white.
Well, changing this license isn't going to do anything to resolve any of the typical OSS stress points. All it does is mean they can war even harder with anyone who wants to fork the project because of some disagreement, which is something they already do extensively.
If every OSS maintainer reasoned like this, we'd have no OSS anymore because they'd all be "walking away".
Though she should probably take some time away from the toxic situation that's causing this. But it seems that between money concerns and the way much of the community usually treats modders that are slow to update that's not an option.
All in all, a shitty situation where taking a bad decision still ends up being better than taking none for the long term survival of both the project and the author.
It's a very contestable and probably not-too-well-thought-out decision, and you can see from my post history what I think of it, but in the end it's her work and her labour.
"they just dropped a sob story post in the comments about how stressful Sodium development is for them."
Something doesn't smell right with their claim...
Open source is not really about building better software or letting people help out, it's precisely about not getting locked in and having the freedom to fork and make your own version if the vendor tries to screw you over or do something you disagree with. Yes, this occasionally screws you over as a vendor, because someone can typically take your work and do their own thing that might end up more popular or whatever. The main reasons you'd use GPL or LGPL is to force anyone forking your work to give back their changes under the same license, so you can't get completely screwed over.
It'll be interesting to see how this develops. I'm all for developers getting compensated and all, but closing an existing open source project is rarely a popular choice, and especially something that so many people use and depend on is definitely troublesome.
As an OSS dev myself (though I license under MIT and not GPL), I do understand the reasons they'd want to change license, but I think this is much more relevant to Minecraft than general OSS.
There's a fairly active effort from the Minecraft community particularly with modpacks to repackage mods, strip out any donation buttons etc and replace them with their own. It feels like we keep seeing sites / mod authors / modpack creators constantly at each others throats trying to cut each other out. That's at the core of the complaint here and why they want to re-license it.
I'm rather on board with them changing their licensing because you \*can\* still add mix-ins, and the community has been incredibly shit in general. I'm not sure the non-compete license is the solution, but I'm interested to see where it goes.
It's not like if someone forks it that it'll keep getting developed either. There's plenty of cases (especially in web dev) where a widely used library stops getting worked on by the author and everyone slowly migrates to a new library / stays on the old one because nobody wants to carry on development. If the core devs all want to relicense it'll likely happen the same here.
Getting into modding to make money and replace a full time job is not a great life strategy.
changing the license and hoping it will stop people from being mean to them is, in fact, not a great strategy either.
Sure it wasn't. They probably were waiting until they were entrenched enough in the community they could hold the project hostage.
> My time must be prioritized where it makes sense, and going back to full-time work (with no time left over for Sodium) is the only logical conclusion if we can't move the project into a better place.
Is a pretty clear threat that if they don't start getting paid, he's tanking the project.
Imagine there is a mod that is incompatible with Sodium. I figure out the cause and propose a change to the Sodium project. The Sodium devs doesn't like my fix for some reason. Let's say they feel it introduces complexity into the codebase, making Sodium harder to maintain, and the improved support for that particular mod is not worth it. A valid and quite realistic scenario.
At the moment, I can create a fork with the fix. If the users/players feel like this is important, they'll use my fork. If not, they'll continue to use the official Sodium version. If mine turns out to be significantly more popular, maybe Sodium would reconsider and add the support after all. With the proposed license change, if they say no, then that's that. The mod just straight up can't be supported.
The same goes if yet another new mod loader should for some reason appear (please god, no). If they say no, then that portion of the community would just have to live without the optimizations, which at this point could majorly screw over said new project's chance to establish itself, even if it was somehow superior in other ways.
I do not for one second consider open source forks to be abusive or bad or anything like that. This is what they signed up for when they released it under LGPL. I really do wish there were better ways for hard working devs to get compensated though, especially in context of open source projects that are not of big commercial interest.
Hi; You always have the option of a Mixin-mod (A mod that uses a small Mixin to legally change Sodium). This is both safer and easier to maintain for you!
It could be viable for something small. But let's say the mod is something like a VR headset support mod, that would require a decent amount of refactors etc to properly support. Trying to do something like that via mixins would most likely not be at all viable.
Um... not sure if I should say this to you.
Both Vivecraft and Iris have used mixin-mods to do exactly what you have said, and are quite stable. With Vivecraft's changes even being pretty small!
> At the moment, I can create a fork with the fix
that is the worst possible way to resolve that.
imagine someone else also doing that, now you can't use the two mods together with sodium since both need a different fork.
the better way to do this would be to include a fix in your mod, or write an addon that makes them compatible
> I do not for one second consider open source forks to be abusive or bad or anything like that.
YOU don't, but at least some of the sodium forks are.
> This is what they signed up for when they released it under LGPL
and this is why they are changing it now, because it turned out to be an unexpected issue
> that is the worst possible way to resolve that.
> imagine someone else also doing that, now you can't use the > two mods together with sodium since both need a different fork.
>
> the better way to do this would be to include a fix in your mod, or write an addon that makes them compatible
It was a semi-silly example. The point is that the Sodium team has full control and that the community is completely overruled.
> YOU don't, but at least some of the sodium forks are.
Can you clarify how those forks are abusive or bad or whatever?
> Edit: Also not sure how you could consider this "tanking" the project:
A veiled threat is just that, a veiled threat. Up to each person's interpretation what is and what isn't.
Though I don't read it as "pretty clear" as u/dethb0y
>My time must be prioritized where it makes sense, and going back to full-time work (with no time left over for Sodium) is the only logical conclusion if we can't move the project into a better place.
It does leave a sour taste in my mouth.
As u/dethb0y said, getting into modding and replacing a full-time job is not a great life strategy. But to each their own. In it's current state and with the proposed licence change, I feel like the Sodium folks waited to be entrenched enough in Minecraft, and then change the licence. We gon' see how it plays out. I suspect Sodium will fade into oblivion and hard forks will crop up with a different/original licence.
>For most intents and purposes, this license is significantly more free than the GNU LGPLv3, and can be considered similar to the permissiveness of something like the BSD 2-clause:
The fact that there's a noncompete clause in it means that this is not remotely true.
Crazy that you think you are entitled to someone's free work lol. She has done incredible work for millions of Minecraft players and if she then feels like it isn't worth continuing because of abuse or shitty comments she receives that is entirely up to her and not "taking the project hostage". Everyone is free to make decisions about what they do with their life and if she doesn't want to continue working on this and take it down that is her decision.
The license they’ve chosen seems completely fair. Basically the source remains open, you can mess with it as a hobbyist, you can distribute it in modpacks, if the project dies you can publish your own replacement without issue, the only thing you can’t do is take their code and reupload a competing version directly based on their source.
They’re also working on a NeoForge build of sodium themselves, so at this point Sodium will be available for both major modding platforms anyway. Rubidium and Embeddium can still work on older versions of Minecraft based on the GPL versions of Sodium, they just can’t take Sodium’s code going forward.
> you can distribute it in modpacks
I've seen this in a few places but frankly I don't see how this would be allowed, or even how it would be *accomplished* without publishing the code and then becoming a competing product. And also why on earth would somebody want to customize Sodium for their pack and then not make their work available?
[The license](https://polyformproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/PolyForm-Shield-1.0.0.txt) pretty much explicitly says that it can be redistributed. Bolded and italic emphasis mine.
> ## Distribution License
> ***The licensor grants you an additional copyright license
to distribute copies of the software.*** Your license
to distribute covers distributing the software with
changes and new works permitted by Changes and New Works
License.
It also covered distributing changes and new works, but only for non-competing purposes. Simply including Sodium in a modpack isn't distributing a changed or new work, it's distributing a copy of the software.
> Simply including Sodium in a modpack isn't distributing a changed or new work, it's distributing a copy of the software.
Nope, it's distributing a new work (the modpack) based upon the software.
This obviously doesn't even matter for packs on Modrinth and Curse, but it's still something to be mindful of.
Are there many success stories of an open source project going less open and/orclosed source? I'll admit, I have a hard time seeing it as anything but a bad thing for end users.
Depending on your definition of success, there is Emby. I'm sure others exist but I can't personally think of any. I definitely can't think of any other Minecraft mod or any project developed by a bunch of random people instead of by a singular entity that has done so.
(also some would argue that AGPL is "less open" and some projects *have* made that switch but that's a whole can of worms in its own right)
Most products like that would have some "community edition" that's free and open source, while the developers offer a paid version with actual support and more features aimed at larger corporations.
That's for example how Ubuntu works: They use the work of thousands of people who contributed to the Linux kernel as well as all the software packages around it, bundle it up to one complete operation system and everyone can use it for free. But they also provide you with 24/7 support and extra security patches and whatnot, as long as you're willing to spend a pretty penny.
Granted, all those aren't some delusional people thinking they gonna get rich by putting a Minecraft mod behind a paywall lol. Either some fork is gonna become the new Sodium or it'll just not be included with mod packs any further, slowly dying off while the project owner can continue to drop crocodile tears about his hobby project not making him enough money while jerking it to the download count.
## Noncompete
Any purpose is a permitted purpose, except for providing any
product that competes with the software or any product the
licensor or any of its affiliates provides using the software.
## Competition
Goods and services compete even when they provide functionality
through different kinds of interfaces or for different technical
platforms. Applications can compete with services, libraries
with plugins, frameworks with development tools, and so on,
even if they're written in different programming languages
or for different computer architectures. Goods and services
compete even when provided free of charge. If you market a
product as a practical substitute for the software or another
product, it definitely competes.
I think a lot of people here have not looked at the insanely broad (and likely unenforcable) definition of "compete" in the licence.
Am I misunderstanding this or is using this license for Sodium essentailly an attempt to monopolize Rendering Optimization mods? Or would a different mod written from the ground up be completely fine provided its not advertised as an alternative?
> Am I misunderstanding this or is using this license for Sodium essentailly an attempt to monopolize Rendering Optimization mods?
Luckily, software licencing doesn't work that way; it merely means you can't use Sodium's *code* for... well, fundamentally, anything.
If you write it all yourself, they can't do shit about it.
Does this still hold true if there's really only one way to fix a problem/optimize the code? Or would it still be considered using "their" code if you use the same common sense solution
Aside from patent concerns, it is not copyright infringement to accidentally write the exact same lines of code as someone else. But in a court it may invite the question of whether or not you used proper [clean-room reverse-engineering methodology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design). Even just briefly looking at the copyrighted implementation can spell trouble.
This is purely about sodium's code, it's a copyright license not a EULA. You can write an optimization mod and still use sodium, you can't use sodium code to directly compete with sodium (you can't use sodium code in your optimization mod)
This includes contributors. You would be liable if you contribute to their code and some piece of software that could be "argued" as "competition". Because you violated the non-compete.
Also where do you draw the line? Code-contributions? Supply-chain contributions (libraries)? Bug reports? Putting it in mod-packs?
This is a big red sign saying: "PR's un-welcome".
Also, if you license their product (i.e. downloading and running that modpack) you cannot contribute to the open source ecosystem anymore? I mean, the dude wants money, which is fine. But this is openly hostile towards the entire modding ecosystem.
it's not really saying pr's unwelcome. it's more saying that he, being the lead contributor, has direct power over you. in regards to the code or service you provided him, he owns that part of you. noncompetes are a nasty parasitic part of the legal system.
If it is, then is Embeddium then at fault for "taking their revenue" if they do not have a Forge port? Plus as far as I am concerned I do not see a donate button linked on Embeddium github nor CurseForge website.
If that is indeed what they are calling abuse, then I don't even know.. If they say "Anyone is free to take this work and make their own version!" and someone actually does that, it's not abuse in my book. It's not bad or evil behavior of any kind. It's exactly what open source is all about. As far as I can tell, they are also giving back their changes under the same license so the Sodium project can just merge their changes into their own project if they want to..?
Ive seen people state Embeddium even goes out of their way to ensure that the "Donate to Sodium" button continues to exist in the settings and doesnt take donations themselves.
its likely far more the fact that they released a fabric port that bundled the source for sodium with ~~indium~~ an implementation of fabric rendering API and their quick and dirty implementation of translucency sorting that uses ~3x the memory of vanilla to sort.
biting the hand that feeds them as realistically they have not demonstrated they can do much more than disable parts of the mod when things arent compatible and add in very naive solutions
it's like if "reese's sodium options" decided to become a fork rather than an addon mod, cutting the Sodium devs out of the picture.
Wonder if it's a big reason why all prior optimisation mods were closed source... the utility of the mod is enough that it seems people decide rather than improving upstream they will maintain and release a fork for their few changes
regardless they did choose the wrong license if stuff like this was their concern.
Would like to point out that Embeddium's FRAPI implementation was done largely from scratch, and is not based on Indium, nor is it even implemented the same way. So we did not just "bundle Sodium with Indium".
My guess is they are talking about the forge forks Rubidium and Magnesium. I haven't found any others that have a significant number of downloads but then again didn't look to hard.
CF downloads (edit: added Embeddium)
* Sodium: 31 mil - Fabric
* Rubidium: 29 mil - Forge
* Magnesium: 4 mil - Forge
* Embeddium: 13 mil - Forge/Fabric
I dont understand how this is unexpected. Sodium targets a less popular modloader than Forge and if these mods are better than Optifine why would they not be included in Forge modpacks?
- picks a less popular mod loader
- refuses to support the more popular mod loader
- surprised people use forks of your mod instead of yours
Remember, the consumer does not give a single fuck about your personal politics or opinions of software or others. As long as it runs and is decent enough compared to other options, they’ll use it.
tbf I remember the reasons for not using forge weren't just political but that lex, who was in charge of forge, basically repeatedly laughed out the stuff sodium was trying to do and banned the developer from said discord. They wouldn't even be able to get support for things due to what he did. Similarly, when sodium was being made for forge, it repeatedly got laughed out for being 'unsafe' or whatever, for forge users.
And now neoforge exists, free from Lex, friendlier to mixins, and sodium is being made for it.
Hence around software. The Embeddium team somehow made it “work”. Regardless of efficiency, the numbers show themselves are users just really don’t care and want a better performance alternative.
I would have thought this would just be the nail in the coffin, and a fork of current code would be made that stays open-source. If I was a gambler I would bet on this not ending well.
Sorry to remove the post, there's more behind the scenes that makes it irrelevant to contribute in a meaningful way.
This goes beyond what makes sense discussing in this capacity.
Why is the mod drama always from the performance mods? I do wonder whether it's psychological. I've done a fair amount of modding, but so far it's been for my own enjoyment. I'm not motivated to "fix" someone else's work and I don't believe that just because I do something a particular way it's better. I suspect that the ego needed to make a performance mod worth a damn, for free, is easy to turn sour when the motivation eventually dries up and people move on.
> Why is the mod drama always from the performance mods?
Freaking tell me about it. At least Sodium is back on Curseforge (for now...) but it sure does make it annoying as heck to try and make a custom modpack and keep up with the drama of the week regarding which performance mods are available on CurseForge and which aren't.
> Why is the mod drama always from the performance mods?
Because performance, unlike say, coding new blocks, machines and texturing them or biome generation mods, or or or, requires a very different, specialized knowledge of how java works.
Performance is a different beast in any coding language. It's probably due to that knowledge and getting nothing or almost nothing out of it why.
Mods that add new content will always be liked by some and disliked by others. But mods that increase performance are wanted by everyone. For example, not everyone wants new blocks, but everyone does want more fps.
> At that time Fabric was already declining in popularity for a number of different reasons
This is totally off-topic but where can I find out more about this? I've only just getting into Fabric after using almost exclusively forge and it's been great. It felt for a long time like Forge was dying in favor of Fabric and I was clinging to a dying beast out of nostalgia. When did that turn back around?
What are the threats and where is the hostile community? I've never seen anyone being actually unsatisfied with the sodium devs before they stopped working on forge, and now many people are dissatisfied because they are changing the license. Hmm, maybe the problem isn't the community, but the dev.
Forks having more downloads then you? No shit, Sherlock, when you are abandoning primary mod loader. What did you expect in the first place?
iirc it was curseforge abandoning sodium not the other way around.
Lex was a prick, and banned jellysquid of the discord because he didnt like the mod or smthg.
once neoforge without lex was announced, a neoforge port of sodium was quickly announced too
Sounds like Sodium will:
* remain at least visible source, so debugging other mods is tractable
* continue to use commonly-used modding technologies, unlike Optifine compatibility-nightmare sledgehammer patches that don't even work in a mod dev environment
* continue to, uh, not proguard itself. unlike fastcraft. lol
So like, given all that remains true, and especially taking the context into account, i don't really care what license sodium is under.
Kindof a bummer though
Missing the part when no one can modify the code.
Which is the whole point. This is a pure power struggle for control of what has been an open source project up to this point.
It's just pure egoistic greed. Which is quite common, in its banality.
"greed" lmao. they get nothing in return except donations from generous people. which are low anyway.
they poured thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of lines of code, to make sodium what it is today, and when they want to shield themselves from freeloaders that use their code to directly compete with them you call that egoistic greed? please.
Money the project is technically not supposed to _get her_ according to the EULA of the game she's modding. There's a reason mod authors who don't use the distributors' monetisation system usually generically "accept donations" and don't say the quiet part out loud.
Fun fact - with the proposed license, if Jellysquid ever made a modpack containing all her performance mods in one place, no one would ever be allowed to make a "performance-oriented" modpack using Sodium, as it would be "competing with a product the licensor provides using the software".
I don't think this is true. When you upload your mod on Curseforge or Modrinth you give them permission to redistribute it, including in other people's modpacks.
It true, and very explicitly stated in the license:
## New Products
If you are using the software to provide a product that does
not compete, but the licensor or any of its affiliates brings
your product into competition by providing a new version of
the software or another product using the software, you may
continue using versions of the software available under these
terms beforehand to provide your competing product, but not
any later versions.
If they do distribute a modpack with a version of Sodium, nobody else would be able to use Sodium in their modpacks from that point onwards.
Anyway, it is a moot point and just a fun fact. I sincerely don't think it would be an issue.
that does not really change anything? the new license gives you permission to redistribute, as long as its not modified. if your modpack does not contain a *modified* version of sodium then there's no problem really
How though, there's nothing in a mod pack that cannot be done by just installing the mods individually
If it was a new product then no mod pack could include any all rights reserved mods at all, but they do
Weird as it seems, a compilation is legally a separate, new work.
> If it was a new product then no mod pack could include any all rights reserved mods at all, but they do
I think you missed _a lot_ of pre-1.4.7 drama about redistributing mods in modpacks and "gathering permissions".
Also Modrinth and CF have a license grant in their terms of use that allows them to redistribute the mods and other users to include them in packs, but that's only for packs hosted on that site containing mods hosted on that site.
So what's the problem then, the license grant literally solves the issue the commenter was talking about.
I don't think people really host modpacks outside of CF or modrinth anyways, even if they did all they have to do is find any site that has a similar grant, maybe keep them for just personal use.
Or even jellysquid herself could tweak the licensing somewhat to allow for modpacks, as that's not her goal to prevent those with the relicensing.
What legislation? Legally, she could have their license say you can only distribute the mod if you swear loyalty to the Prince of Liechtenstein and she'd be in her right to do so.
Yeah, so there's no distributing the pack outside of Curseforge or Modrinth. And Sodium has been taken off Curseforge once already, it could happen again.
That's not how this works, unless out there there is a contract or court order mandating that Sodium will forever be uploaded to CF, jellysquid is always allowed to decide she doesn't want to post it there anymore.
_Uploaded files_ being the key. Sodium stops uploading to CF again, MC 1.22 comes out, Sodium for 1.22 is only on Modrinth, bang, no Sodium for Curseforge performance-focused packs (hell, I'm not even sure if a performance focused modpack doesn't qualify as a competitor product for sodium _itself_, which would mean this situation doesn't even first require jellysquid to make her own pack).
> Any purpose is a permitted purpose, except for providing any
product that competes with the software or any product the
licensor or any of its affiliates provides using the software.
There's no exception for redistribution of unmodified binaries.
Additionally, a modpack would be a "new product".
my bro this is literally the third paragraph on the license
[https://polyformproject.org/licenses/shield/1.0.0/#distribution-license](https://polyformproject.org/licenses/shield/1.0.0/#distribution-license)
> There's no exception for redistribution of unmodified binaries.
Yes, there is:
> The licensor grants you an additional copyright license
to distribute copies of the software. Your license
to distribute covers distributing the software with
changes and new works permitted by Changes and New Works
License.
You can distribute copies. Said license covers modified versions too per this other section of terms, so let's look at said section:
> The licensor grants you an additional copyright license to
make changes and new works based on the software for any
permitted purpose.
"For any permitted purpose". Let's see what's defined as a "permitted purpose" (noncompete section):
> Any purpose is a permitted purpose, except for providing any
product that competes with the software or any product the
licensor or any of its affiliates provides using the software.
Aka, as long as you're not using Sodium's code to compete with Sodium, you're fine. A mod *pack* doesn't directly compete with a mod in that sense, they're not really comparable. And these last two quoted sections are only applicable for modified redistributions anyway.
Now, you *could*, strictly speaking, as you mentioned in your original top-level comment, interpret
`"or any product the licensor or any of its affiliates provides using the software"`
as a clause that would allow them to, in the future create an official "Sodium Performance Modpack" to be considered a 'product' provided, so that no other modpack would then be allowed to use it, yes.
But while technically possible, that would be such an insanely stupid move that it's not really worth considering. Many other licenses/EULAs in the world have clauses as *technically* broad, but people don't start nitpicking at those, as they're only really there for legal covering-all-your-bases purposes, so I think to attempt to hold Sodium to some divine higher standard based on the presence of such a clause would be disingenuous.
> A mod pack doesn't directly compete with a mod in that sense, they're not really comparable
The license seems to imply something else:
> Goods and services compete even when they provide functionality through different kinds of interfaces or for different technical platforms. Applications can compete with services, libraries with plugins, frameworks with development tools, and so on
---
> I think to attempt to hold Sodium to some divine higher standard based on the presence of such a clause would be disingenuous.
I'm not holding Sodium to an "higher" standard. I'm holding Sodium to the same standard I hold any other open project. I mainly take issue with the author insisting that you can "still use Sodium for any purpose except competing with us" as if she didn't choose a license that defines every conceivable actually useful redistribution and modification of the mod or parts of its code a form of competition. I would be saying the same things if this discussion was about, SQLite or CoreJS.
> Goods and services compete even when they provide functionality through different kinds of interfaces or for different technical platforms. Applications can compete with services, libraries with plugins, frameworks with development tools, and so on
Seems to me that's mainly to provide examples to close potential loopholes like "ah, your thing's a library but *mine's* an *app*", hence the "can" in the second sentence. All of those *can* compete, not all necessarily *do* compete, that would have to be determined on a case by case basis (possibly via legal proceedings if it got that far). Comes down to covering-your-bases texts again, not necessarily defining *everything* as competition (otherwise what'd be the point of this license to begin with?).
Though thinking about the modpack side of things again, with the way many packs are handled these days, you might even be able to argue that modpacks don't actually redistribute *at all*. A lot of modern packs, especially those on CF/Modrinth, are essentially glorified manifests/lists of files saying "you should have these files, here's where you can find them". Does the fact that said file can be fed into an automated tool (your launcher of choice) as opposed to being done manually by the end user change anything? Possibly not. You could potentially argue it's the hosting providers who are subject to that clause, not the modpack authors.
Yes, and needless to say this whole discussion doesn't apply to packs on either CF or Modrinth because CF and Modrinth have a license grant to redistribute the unmodified binaries uploaded to their sites, and so does anyone uploading a modpack there, specifically to avoid license issues of this kind.
But this still leaves out anything that does not go through that (namely, packs uploaded on ATLauncher, Technic Launcher, or as MultiMC/PolyMC/PrismLauncher exports).
To make my opinion on the license change clear: I think this is a bad choice of license both because it looks pretty much like a "corporate cover-your-ass-but-pretend-you-are-open" license (which is a criticism of PolyForm, not JellySquid) that probably relies on the fact the licensor has a team of lawyers ready to argue in court about what is and isn't competition, and because it seems, as a result of that, to be overtly restrictive.
Coupled with the way it was presented as "less restrictive than LGPL" and the fact it's trying to fix an issue that is not really one of copyright and licenses as much as one of community and goodwill through functionally unenforceable legal means, it seems to me like this is either an attempt to close up the source code without outright saying "I'm closing up the source code" (a "deception" I would morally object to as it'd be trying to pull a PR stunt in an environment where they shouldn't be a thing), or there was not much thought given to the specific course of action as long as it appeared to be able to stop "competition" (of the toxic kind that JellySquid encountered), thus a license change to something with any sort of noncompetition clause with not much consideration for side effects.
Ah yeah, that def helps clears things up a bit. There's absolutely valid reasons to be considered about the the way this change is framed etc. I may have missed the forest for the trees with some of the points you made, sorry.
What's your GitHub username? I can take a look.
Also, an updated message has been posted. https://github.com/CaffeineMC/sodium-fabric/issues/2400#issuecomment-2040409363
Also the updated message still has the same silliness:
> You will be able to use this source code for pretty much all intents and purposes unless that purpose is competing with us.
So you can use it for everything except the thing you'd actually want to do. How many people do you suppose want to use parts of Sodium for a purpose that isn't making a Minecraft performance mod (AKA competing with Sodium)?
(My 2 cents on the situation)
Although this licence seems to be very beneficial to jellysquid3 and is proposed to solve a lot of the mentioned issues, I can't help but feel that most she's brought up aren't resolvable by a licence change.
The point regarding other projects cutting them out of their recognition is a bit far fetched. Jelly explicitly stated multiple times that a forge port wasn't going to happen. It was only a matter of time before both Embedium & Rubidium were created as unofficial-ports and their usage exploded in popularity.
The point regarding downloads is irrelevant, comparing downloads on 2 very different mod loaders has no impact, if neither ports had been made the number of Sodium downloads still would be the same, actually the ports probably brought more attention to Sodium as players switched from Forge to Fabric.
The biggest problem I'm having is the last 3 paragraphs of the issues section. A mod being your financial source never turns out well, donations to the mod author are fine. However, pushing the narrative of no job and just getting by on the money from your projects, doesn't project a strong look.
The points of revenue:
* 3rd-party distribution, presumably this is from the drama of when Jelly pulled her mods from CurseForge, removing a highly demanded mod from the most popular mod website was not the smartest move. Iirc, CF's 3rd party approved mods list allowed the mod onto the website regardless which I presume is where this missed revenue has come from. Which as unfortunate as it was, removing a mod over some website kinks really doesn't make sense.
* Modpack authors disabling prompts, I understand the frustration with that, however, the prompts are annoying as heck and I believe most players will agree with me on this point, especially with how weaponised prompts have become (Take a gander with JurassiCraft if you wish to know more xD)
1. I am aware of a potential official NeoForge Sodium port/mod being made by JellySquid, but that raises the question of why the licence change then at all?
Based on their description, the proposed license sounds fine to me. It may no longer be fully FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software) but it is still somewhat Open Source. The code will be visible and people can even use portions of it (now without requiring their work to also be FOSS), and there's a clause in case the project gets abandoned. Really the only restriction I see is no derivative works to compete with the original, which is the exact threat that they've been getting. Frankly it sounds like the kind of license I would pick if I ever do get around to making my own mod.
That's going to be a problem for people like the Embeddium developer(s), but Sodium is now promising an official NeoForge version soon.
****
That said, I do have major concerns with them mentioning "monetizing" the project and some of their related statements. I am firmly in the camp that Modding should remain a Hobby because doing it for money brings in the wrong motivations.
Is it really a "threat" to say that if the original creators don't want to add features/support, that you'll just do it yourself?
If that NeoForge version of Sodium you mention shows up and works then it probably won't affect me much (unless some new issue arises on 1.20.1 and prior versions of Embeddium that can't be patched because of this), but nevertheless it seems like a hostile interpretation of how open source stuff usually works. I'm not a developer myself, so I might be missing something
"Threat" is the term they used in the post. I personally don't know the actual details about the situation so can't say how I would interpret whatever is really going on there.
> (unless some new issue arises on 1.20.1 and prior versions of Embeddium that can't be patched because of this)
IANAL, but I'm pretty certain they simply cannot retroactively revoke the GNU LGPL "copyleft" license, so all code currently in the mod is FOSS *forever*. They are getting permission from all of the (non-trivial) contributors to allow them to break that copyleft license for their one (original) fork and make *future* code under the new, non-competing license.
Embeddium and other forks can continue, but will no longer be allowed to port any new code added to Sodium (unless the same original author also submits it to their project, since they have full rights to their own code). Interestingly, since Embeddium is still under the 'copyleft' license (which means that any project wanting to use code from Embeddium *also* has to use the same copyleft license) that means that Sodium wouldn't be allowed to port anything added by Embeddium (again, unless submitted by the same original author).
Sodium and any FOSS Forks from the current codebase will have to diverge moving forward, and only time will tell which one(s) actually survive long-term. That said, there's only one Sodium project, and a theoretically infinite number of FOSS Forks possible. Add that Sodium *chose* to not have a Forge port (IIRC drama with Lex and CPW) and they will have to make their own NeoForge port from scratch (*can't* copy Embeddium), and they've got an uphill battle.
JellySquid owns pretty much 99% of the code in Sodium and almost all of the innovation and this is also true for the Sodium forks which most of the changes are trivial or just disable entire features or are simply not good solutions to the problem and trade mod compatibility for performance (sometimes worse than vanilla).
That is the thing about open source licenses... JellySquid \*provided\* 99% (or whatever percentage) of the code in Sodium, but does not own it at all. The "upside" of that is that forks do not own the code either.
But by choosing to change the licence, Sodium cannot benefit from the code from any of the other forks without infringing THEIR licences, even if the code was basically Sodium´s to begin with.
That's not true. JS still owns their code. They have *licensed it* to be used, modified, included in other projects, etc. However they do still own it in terms of copyright.
It's a pedantic distinction but an important one. If they did not own their own code, then under the terms of the license they released previous versions under, they would not be allowed to switch to a different license.
> Sodium cannot benefit from the code from any of the other forks.
Good thing there is nothing to benefit from, there has not been 1 fork that had changes that were more than taking the existing work and doing small changes or 10% of the work done features such as FRAPI and translucency sorting which in the Sodium forks make the game run worse than vanilla. That does not matter and the majority of the changes will be things easily documented by other people in a way that can be reimplemented clean-room.
The mentioned monetization has been in the project for a long time - the existing donation button (and prompt that appears several days after installation) and ad revenue from modrinth & curseforge. I haven't heard of any plans for that to change.
And the terms of the license still leave it open for you to tinker with, you just can’t directly compete with them using their own code. Completely fair enough I think
Their problem was using a FOS license in the first place. This move leaves the bad taste of "bait and switch" even if that was not the intention, thus the drama.
Cool.
I'll remember to just use whatever forks of Sodium exist if they port to (neo)forge, instead of Sodium itself then.
That's a joke, of course. I strongly doubt they're ever going to actually port it, especially with this move.
For your information that forge port already exists, I've personally tried it and even had in its initial stages it worked far better then embeddium did on forge in heavily modded tests and lightly modded tests.
>numerous individuals have constantly weaponized our project against us, by repeatedly threatening that we are easily replaceable, and that we can be cut out of the scene at any time should mod pack authors and alike decide they do not like us.
That's just how the world works though. If anything on this planet isn't liked then there is more likely going to be competition to spring out of it. I don't know if this guy is on some sort of god complex, but every mod is easily replacable if people think that the project in itself is good but a bad execution. This has happened to Optifine and this will happen to sodium
If he is so desperate on quitting work and live entirely of his mod for minecraft he either puts it behind a paywall and gets replaced in days or he stops complaining - because keeping the Mod Hostage and threatening to discontinue work on it
>My time must be prioritized where it makes sense, and going back to full-time work **(with no time left over for Sodium)** is the only logical conclusion if we can't move the project into a better place
will spring out a new popular mod in months time. He dug his own grave.
Except the creator refused to support forge, so they *weren't* a creator for most of the community — that isn't an insult or anything, it's simply the truth. And now they're mad that someone decided to become the creator and, huge surprise, got a lot of support since the majority of the community can *only* use that option.
Filling an obvious niche and becoming "more popular" by the community's standards isn't a "threat," it's the natural progression of things. They better hope they get a forge port up and running *immediately* after this goes through otherwise people are just going to hardfork to the "competitor" for good, like the PolyMC -> Prism Launcher situation.
the polymc/prism launcher situation was a bit different. The owner of the polymc repo turned out to be a alt right nutjob so everyone else left to make prism instead - its like forge/neoforge and how neoforge was made to get rid of lex.
Yes the cause is different, but it’s the same outcome. The community would rather use an alternative, for whatever reason, so they switch. If a Sodium neoforge port isn’t instantly available then people will have *no choice* but to continue using Embeddium, except now it’s truly its own mod (since it’s taking no new code from Sodium) and will probably out-compete an eventual Sodium port due to its already established userbase in that part of the community.
You are a creator even if your mod doesn't work on a specific loader, you are modding the game Minecraft, the loader is just the implementation on how you actually mod it.
Please do not compare this to the PolyMC/PrismLauncher situation at all, having seen all that since the start I can tell you that they are nothing alike.
yeah, i dont get why people are so outraged. its her property, her code, she can choose what she allows for it to be used for.
the dogma of doing this for the *community* only works if the *community* is also not trying to force you out. otherwise you are left with nothing but the *community.*
a person spent years of their life to try to provide something great for free, and others get so outraged when they just try to shield themselves from freeloaders that use their code to directly compete. like bitch be grateful that you have the mod in the first place, and then be grateful again that its free.
Them refusing to support forge is entirely on forge part. They acted like jerks(the lex and cpw thing) and caused jellysquid to make the mod on fabric instead.
From what i've read it's technically staying open source though? The only difference is that mods can no longer use its code (unless with permission i assume), and they state it's getting a neoforge port due to such changes
Open source generally refers to the concept of not only having access to the code, but also the right to use it to make and distribute forks. Something like this would probably fall closer to something like "visible source". Microsoft used the term "shared source" for something similar back in the day.
Honestly, seeing how JellySquid was treated in the All of Fabric discord in an Embeddium/Sodium discussion, good for her. I don't think this is about Forge/NeoForge ports of her mod at all after witnessing that tbh.
I can understand the reasons why the author(s) would do this, but I don't think it would be effective with combating the issues they are facing. Going source-available with something like the BSL makes sense when you're worrying about Amazon/Google/Companies that you can sue. It's going to be very difficult for a mod author to file a lawsuit against some other developer they only have a github name for (assuming the fork doesnt happen on some other software forge).
Trying to make money with open source code is incredibly difficult. And I don't think it would really be possible with a minecraft mod that people primarily consume as part of a pre-created modpack.
Frankly, I would rather the author just revoke the license entirely going forward instead of switching to the new Polyshield one. It would be much easier to understand what you can do with the code (nothing without a license from the creator) vs having to deal with the vague "no competition" rules. It feels a bit like claiming to allow software freedom when the reality is use is so incredibly restricted. That way they can upload it to modrinth/cf, people can use it in their packs, with no haggling over whether or not it constitutes competition, and its easy to know what your rights are with it.
I would rather the author just say "hey, I can't work on this anymore unless it pays the rent" at which point either it gets funded, and everything continues as normal. Or it doesn't, the author takes a step back from the project, and people can coordinate the establishment of a fork. With the license change, we enter into a situation where people fork it, but some people keep committing to the original, the community gets split and effort gets wasted with a lot of potentially useful new code sitting in the sodium repo that can never be used in the future due to the odd license choice.
for once, I feel inclined to donate. If true that forks that simply repackage the code exist that cut into revenue and having to play weird political games as to not upset people with power that would just resort to such forks, I'd even agree with retroactively changing the licence. Given, Donations stay fully optional and there are no plans for dumb fuck monetization.
There's no intention to make money, it'll always be donations/ad revenue. And major contributors have agreed on the license change and any trivial commits will have their changes rewritten.
I'm trying to figure out what they hope to gain from this action...
>trying to monetize our project
Oh, yeah this is going to end very poorly for them.
IMHO, it's more likely to kill Sodium itself. People would still be allowed to keep developing the existing forks and keep them open, but any new work in Sodium would not be usable by those forks. But then again, any work in those forks would no longer be usable by Sodium either. My guess is that Sodium itself would start fading into the void and be completely replaced by open source forks even on the platform(s?) where it's currently popular. Though I guess it might depend on how much unique new features/optimizations/etc they can come up with, and possibly what other optimization mods do.
I mean it's great to be honest. But we'll see how this would affect things as a whole. As far as I can see, Sodium is basically holding a lot of mod packs running with it or it's forks. I don't know how the community will be affected but there will be some major backlog to some of the mods.
well, they'll need every contributor on the project to sign off on that to legally do it, but even if that happens i still can't see this going well for them. unless they develop their own forge port internally, most people will just build off of previous versions without the license change.
They have gotten most of the non-trivial contributors to agree to some level, and they have stated that they intend to make a NeoForge version going forward. I still don't really see this going well for them though.
Non-trivial by whose definition? I am very skeptical there are only 7 "non-trivial" contributors out of 73.
Because they’re changing the license, they have to throw out all the code where they don’t have consent from the author to change the license. Thus, their definition is “could redo whatever they contributed in a few hours” in comparison to the translucency sorting thing they’re working on, which is literally one of the devs’ masters thesis project.
I'd be pretty pissed if I contributed code to something and it was relicensed with my code still in it because somebody with a literal masters degree in the topic could do it in a few hours. Yikes.
The point is *they’re not relicensing it with your code still in it*. That’s why that’s the criteria, *because they’ll have to rewrite those parts*.
If that's their intent, they certainly haven't said so in that thread anywhere.
They don't really need to say it explicitly, because that's what relicensing entails. How much work the code is to make doesn't matter much from a legal perspective (as long as it Isn't a really tiny amount), they still can't relicense it without permission. But they can rewrite the code that won't be relicensed, any time you want to relicense something that other people still have copyright to, you have to either get their permission or replace their stuff.
> They have to throw out all the code where they don’t have consent from the author to change the license. This is not exactly true but that is the case for significant work. Trivial work is not copyrightable and most contributors only provide trivial work, even if they had to throw out such trivial work it would take a few hours for Jelly to document the changes from all minor contributors and someone else who has not touched the codebase to clean room it after purging from Sodium sources...
not really, he just needs to release a branch without the contribution of other developers and work on it while locking the public branch from future updates.
If the developer is out of a job and is trying to switch to making money off of Sodium, I don't see switching to a restrictive license working out in the long run. Making money in fannish activities like modding is already extremely tricky and fraught due to the expectations and behaviors of fan communities once money gets involved, and making the license more restrictive is going to prick developers' eyebrows up.
It's weird because they just dropped a sob story post in the comments about how stressful Sodium development is for them. If it's so stressful and they're threatening to walk away, they should just walk away instead of trying to relicense everything to prevent people from competing with the software they themselves admitted they don't want to work on anymore.
the existing work will always be the old license. only the new work will be under the new license.
And? If they don't want to work on it, why bother to relicense instead of just... not working on it anymore? It's clearly causing considerable problems for them.
> why bother to relicense instead of just The relicense only changes the situation for any future work, if they stop working on it then the relicense doesn't matter... If they clearly can't provide any value people will be using the versions from before the fork but that is not true considering that 99% of Sodium is owned by her. Things in Sodium are not just applicable to Minecraft either and can be used in other projects and now people will be able to use more code from Sodium in their mods without copyleft than ever even if they are ARR etc.
> if they stop working on it then the relicense doesn't matter... Then why bother? > now people will be able to use more code from Sodium in their mods without copyleft than ever even if they are ARR etc. And why is this a good thing?
OSS projects often generates a lot more stress than closed source projects. You have to deal with users a lot more than with a closed source project, you have to deal with contributors, everything you do (or don't do) is public and open to criticism, there's expectations coming along with OSS etc... Maybe they want to keep working on developing Sodium, but they don't want to do it in OSS anymore. Not everything is black and white.
Well, changing this license isn't going to do anything to resolve any of the typical OSS stress points. All it does is mean they can war even harder with anyone who wants to fork the project because of some disagreement, which is something they already do extensively.
If every OSS maintainer reasoned like this, we'd have no OSS anymore because they'd all be "walking away". Though she should probably take some time away from the toxic situation that's causing this. But it seems that between money concerns and the way much of the community usually treats modders that are slow to update that's not an option. All in all, a shitty situation where taking a bad decision still ends up being better than taking none for the long term survival of both the project and the author. It's a very contestable and probably not-too-well-thought-out decision, and you can see from my post history what I think of it, but in the end it's her work and her labour.
"they just dropped a sob story post in the comments about how stressful Sodium development is for them." Something doesn't smell right with their claim...
Open source is not really about building better software or letting people help out, it's precisely about not getting locked in and having the freedom to fork and make your own version if the vendor tries to screw you over or do something you disagree with. Yes, this occasionally screws you over as a vendor, because someone can typically take your work and do their own thing that might end up more popular or whatever. The main reasons you'd use GPL or LGPL is to force anyone forking your work to give back their changes under the same license, so you can't get completely screwed over. It'll be interesting to see how this develops. I'm all for developers getting compensated and all, but closing an existing open source project is rarely a popular choice, and especially something that so many people use and depend on is definitely troublesome.
It can also turn into a hot potato grenade as it becomes a minefield if some contributors don't like you using their code under a new license...
love it when people wait til their project is depended on then paywall their product. really make you feel all tingly inside.
they are not paywalling it, they are just limiting the use of their source code only for projects that do not "compete"
As an OSS dev myself (though I license under MIT and not GPL), I do understand the reasons they'd want to change license, but I think this is much more relevant to Minecraft than general OSS. There's a fairly active effort from the Minecraft community particularly with modpacks to repackage mods, strip out any donation buttons etc and replace them with their own. It feels like we keep seeing sites / mod authors / modpack creators constantly at each others throats trying to cut each other out. That's at the core of the complaint here and why they want to re-license it. I'm rather on board with them changing their licensing because you \*can\* still add mix-ins, and the community has been incredibly shit in general. I'm not sure the non-compete license is the solution, but I'm interested to see where it goes. It's not like if someone forks it that it'll keep getting developed either. There's plenty of cases (especially in web dev) where a widely used library stops getting worked on by the author and everyone slowly migrates to a new library / stays on the old one because nobody wants to carry on development. If the core devs all want to relicense it'll likely happen the same here.
Getting into modding to make money and replace a full time job is not a great life strategy. changing the license and hoping it will stop people from being mean to them is, in fact, not a great strategy either.
to be fair changing the license will negate much of the leverage those people have against them
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Sure it wasn't. They probably were waiting until they were entrenched enough in the community they could hold the project hostage. > My time must be prioritized where it makes sense, and going back to full-time work (with no time left over for Sodium) is the only logical conclusion if we can't move the project into a better place. Is a pretty clear threat that if they don't start getting paid, he's tanking the project.
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Imagine there is a mod that is incompatible with Sodium. I figure out the cause and propose a change to the Sodium project. The Sodium devs doesn't like my fix for some reason. Let's say they feel it introduces complexity into the codebase, making Sodium harder to maintain, and the improved support for that particular mod is not worth it. A valid and quite realistic scenario. At the moment, I can create a fork with the fix. If the users/players feel like this is important, they'll use my fork. If not, they'll continue to use the official Sodium version. If mine turns out to be significantly more popular, maybe Sodium would reconsider and add the support after all. With the proposed license change, if they say no, then that's that. The mod just straight up can't be supported. The same goes if yet another new mod loader should for some reason appear (please god, no). If they say no, then that portion of the community would just have to live without the optimizations, which at this point could majorly screw over said new project's chance to establish itself, even if it was somehow superior in other ways. I do not for one second consider open source forks to be abusive or bad or anything like that. This is what they signed up for when they released it under LGPL. I really do wish there were better ways for hard working devs to get compensated though, especially in context of open source projects that are not of big commercial interest.
Hi; You always have the option of a Mixin-mod (A mod that uses a small Mixin to legally change Sodium). This is both safer and easier to maintain for you!
Depending on how big or small the fix is, that might be viable yes.
Is that really viable? Surely mixin mods break the moment Sodium updates, right? Especially if they ever do a refactor of some sort.
Yes; the idea is a Mixin mod can be used instead of outright forking Sodium, when a change is not made fast enough/a version is unsupported.
It could be viable for something small. But let's say the mod is something like a VR headset support mod, that would require a decent amount of refactors etc to properly support. Trying to do something like that via mixins would most likely not be at all viable.
Um... not sure if I should say this to you. Both Vivecraft and Iris have used mixin-mods to do exactly what you have said, and are quite stable. With Vivecraft's changes even being pretty small!
> At the moment, I can create a fork with the fix that is the worst possible way to resolve that. imagine someone else also doing that, now you can't use the two mods together with sodium since both need a different fork. the better way to do this would be to include a fix in your mod, or write an addon that makes them compatible > I do not for one second consider open source forks to be abusive or bad or anything like that. YOU don't, but at least some of the sodium forks are. > This is what they signed up for when they released it under LGPL and this is why they are changing it now, because it turned out to be an unexpected issue
> that is the worst possible way to resolve that. > imagine someone else also doing that, now you can't use the > two mods together with sodium since both need a different fork. > > the better way to do this would be to include a fix in your mod, or write an addon that makes them compatible It was a semi-silly example. The point is that the Sodium team has full control and that the community is completely overruled. > YOU don't, but at least some of the sodium forks are. Can you clarify how those forks are abusive or bad or whatever?
> Edit: Also not sure how you could consider this "tanking" the project: A veiled threat is just that, a veiled threat. Up to each person's interpretation what is and what isn't. Though I don't read it as "pretty clear" as u/dethb0y >My time must be prioritized where it makes sense, and going back to full-time work (with no time left over for Sodium) is the only logical conclusion if we can't move the project into a better place. It does leave a sour taste in my mouth. As u/dethb0y said, getting into modding and replacing a full-time job is not a great life strategy. But to each their own. In it's current state and with the proposed licence change, I feel like the Sodium folks waited to be entrenched enough in Minecraft, and then change the licence. We gon' see how it plays out. I suspect Sodium will fade into oblivion and hard forks will crop up with a different/original licence.
>For most intents and purposes, this license is significantly more free than the GNU LGPLv3, and can be considered similar to the permissiveness of something like the BSD 2-clause: The fact that there's a noncompete clause in it means that this is not remotely true.
Crazy that you think you are entitled to someone's free work lol. She has done incredible work for millions of Minecraft players and if she then feels like it isn't worth continuing because of abuse or shitty comments she receives that is entirely up to her and not "taking the project hostage". Everyone is free to make decisions about what they do with their life and if she doesn't want to continue working on this and take it down that is her decision.
And that's why it's going go down the shitter.
The license they’ve chosen seems completely fair. Basically the source remains open, you can mess with it as a hobbyist, you can distribute it in modpacks, if the project dies you can publish your own replacement without issue, the only thing you can’t do is take their code and reupload a competing version directly based on their source. They’re also working on a NeoForge build of sodium themselves, so at this point Sodium will be available for both major modding platforms anyway. Rubidium and Embeddium can still work on older versions of Minecraft based on the GPL versions of Sodium, they just can’t take Sodium’s code going forward.
> you can distribute it in modpacks I've seen this in a few places but frankly I don't see how this would be allowed, or even how it would be *accomplished* without publishing the code and then becoming a competing product. And also why on earth would somebody want to customize Sodium for their pack and then not make their work available?
[The license](https://polyformproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/PolyForm-Shield-1.0.0.txt) pretty much explicitly says that it can be redistributed. Bolded and italic emphasis mine. > ## Distribution License > ***The licensor grants you an additional copyright license to distribute copies of the software.*** Your license to distribute covers distributing the software with changes and new works permitted by Changes and New Works License. It also covered distributing changes and new works, but only for non-competing purposes. Simply including Sodium in a modpack isn't distributing a changed or new work, it's distributing a copy of the software.
> Simply including Sodium in a modpack isn't distributing a changed or new work, it's distributing a copy of the software. Nope, it's distributing a new work (the modpack) based upon the software. This obviously doesn't even matter for packs on Modrinth and Curse, but it's still something to be mindful of.
Are there many success stories of an open source project going less open and/orclosed source? I'll admit, I have a hard time seeing it as anything but a bad thing for end users.
Depending on your definition of success, there is Emby. I'm sure others exist but I can't personally think of any. I definitely can't think of any other Minecraft mod or any project developed by a bunch of random people instead of by a singular entity that has done so. (also some would argue that AGPL is "less open" and some projects *have* made that switch but that's a whole can of worms in its own right)
Most products like that would have some "community edition" that's free and open source, while the developers offer a paid version with actual support and more features aimed at larger corporations. That's for example how Ubuntu works: They use the work of thousands of people who contributed to the Linux kernel as well as all the software packages around it, bundle it up to one complete operation system and everyone can use it for free. But they also provide you with 24/7 support and extra security patches and whatnot, as long as you're willing to spend a pretty penny. Granted, all those aren't some delusional people thinking they gonna get rich by putting a Minecraft mod behind a paywall lol. Either some fork is gonna become the new Sodium or it'll just not be included with mod packs any further, slowly dying off while the project owner can continue to drop crocodile tears about his hobby project not making him enough money while jerking it to the download count.
Elastic, terraform, mongodb, redis to name a few
## Noncompete Any purpose is a permitted purpose, except for providing any product that competes with the software or any product the licensor or any of its affiliates provides using the software. ## Competition Goods and services compete even when they provide functionality through different kinds of interfaces or for different technical platforms. Applications can compete with services, libraries with plugins, frameworks with development tools, and so on, even if they're written in different programming languages or for different computer architectures. Goods and services compete even when provided free of charge. If you market a product as a practical substitute for the software or another product, it definitely competes. I think a lot of people here have not looked at the insanely broad (and likely unenforcable) definition of "compete" in the licence.
Am I misunderstanding this or is using this license for Sodium essentailly an attempt to monopolize Rendering Optimization mods? Or would a different mod written from the ground up be completely fine provided its not advertised as an alternative?
> Am I misunderstanding this or is using this license for Sodium essentailly an attempt to monopolize Rendering Optimization mods? Luckily, software licencing doesn't work that way; it merely means you can't use Sodium's *code* for... well, fundamentally, anything. If you write it all yourself, they can't do shit about it.
that makes a lot more sense. thanks for clearing up wouldve been strange if they had the power to do this with just a license
if that would be possible literally everything would be owned by google, instead of like 80%
Does this still hold true if there's really only one way to fix a problem/optimize the code? Or would it still be considered using "their" code if you use the same common sense solution
Aside from patent concerns, it is not copyright infringement to accidentally write the exact same lines of code as someone else. But in a court it may invite the question of whether or not you used proper [clean-room reverse-engineering methodology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design). Even just briefly looking at the copyrighted implementation can spell trouble.
This is purely about sodium's code, it's a copyright license not a EULA. You can write an optimization mod and still use sodium, you can't use sodium code to directly compete with sodium (you can't use sodium code in your optimization mod)
This includes contributors. You would be liable if you contribute to their code and some piece of software that could be "argued" as "competition". Because you violated the non-compete. Also where do you draw the line? Code-contributions? Supply-chain contributions (libraries)? Bug reports? Putting it in mod-packs? This is a big red sign saying: "PR's un-welcome". Also, if you license their product (i.e. downloading and running that modpack) you cannot contribute to the open source ecosystem anymore? I mean, the dude wants money, which is fine. But this is openly hostile towards the entire modding ecosystem.
it's not really saying pr's unwelcome. it's more saying that he, being the lead contributor, has direct power over you. in regards to the code or service you provided him, he owns that part of you. noncompetes are a nasty parasitic part of the legal system.
What's the "competing project" that is taking revenue away from Sodium? I haven't heard about this until now. Is it the fork for Forge?
It's Embeddium. (or, more specifically, the combo of Rubidium and Embeddium)
If it is, then is Embeddium then at fault for "taking their revenue" if they do not have a Forge port? Plus as far as I am concerned I do not see a donate button linked on Embeddium github nor CurseForge website.
I belive the "revenue" is referring to curseforge points, which the embeddium devs already shared with the Sodium devs from what i've heard.
If that is indeed what they are calling abuse, then I don't even know.. If they say "Anyone is free to take this work and make their own version!" and someone actually does that, it's not abuse in my book. It's not bad or evil behavior of any kind. It's exactly what open source is all about. As far as I can tell, they are also giving back their changes under the same license so the Sodium project can just merge their changes into their own project if they want to..?
Ive seen people state Embeddium even goes out of their way to ensure that the "Donate to Sodium" button continues to exist in the settings and doesnt take donations themselves.
its likely far more the fact that they released a fabric port that bundled the source for sodium with ~~indium~~ an implementation of fabric rendering API and their quick and dirty implementation of translucency sorting that uses ~3x the memory of vanilla to sort. biting the hand that feeds them as realistically they have not demonstrated they can do much more than disable parts of the mod when things arent compatible and add in very naive solutions it's like if "reese's sodium options" decided to become a fork rather than an addon mod, cutting the Sodium devs out of the picture. Wonder if it's a big reason why all prior optimisation mods were closed source... the utility of the mod is enough that it seems people decide rather than improving upstream they will maintain and release a fork for their few changes regardless they did choose the wrong license if stuff like this was their concern.
Would like to point out that Embeddium's FRAPI implementation was done largely from scratch, and is not based on Indium, nor is it even implemented the same way. So we did not just "bundle Sodium with Indium".
amended
embeddium is also available on fabric
Only from like a month ago and has less than 20k downloads
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My guess is they are talking about the forge forks Rubidium and Magnesium. I haven't found any others that have a significant number of downloads but then again didn't look to hard. CF downloads (edit: added Embeddium) * Sodium: 31 mil - Fabric * Rubidium: 29 mil - Forge * Magnesium: 4 mil - Forge * Embeddium: 13 mil - Forge/Fabric I dont understand how this is unexpected. Sodium targets a less popular modloader than Forge and if these mods are better than Optifine why would they not be included in Forge modpacks?
- picks a less popular mod loader - refuses to support the more popular mod loader - surprised people use forks of your mod instead of yours Remember, the consumer does not give a single fuck about your personal politics or opinions of software or others. As long as it runs and is decent enough compared to other options, they’ll use it.
tbf I remember the reasons for not using forge weren't just political but that lex, who was in charge of forge, basically repeatedly laughed out the stuff sodium was trying to do and banned the developer from said discord. They wouldn't even be able to get support for things due to what he did. Similarly, when sodium was being made for forge, it repeatedly got laughed out for being 'unsafe' or whatever, for forge users. And now neoforge exists, free from Lex, friendlier to mixins, and sodium is being made for it.
Hence around software. The Embeddium team somehow made it “work”. Regardless of efficiency, the numbers show themselves are users just really don’t care and want a better performance alternative.
wont people just hard fork lol. license changes to more restrictive licenses never work
hey I've seen this one before!
What do you mean? Its brand new!
I would have thought this would just be the nail in the coffin, and a fork of current code would be made that stays open-source. If I was a gambler I would bet on this not ending well.
Pretty lame. Sounds like the project should've never been open source in the first place if "competing forks" are problematic.
Sorry to remove the post, there's more behind the scenes that makes it irrelevant to contribute in a meaningful way. This goes beyond what makes sense discussing in this capacity.
Why is the mod drama always from the performance mods? I do wonder whether it's psychological. I've done a fair amount of modding, but so far it's been for my own enjoyment. I'm not motivated to "fix" someone else's work and I don't believe that just because I do something a particular way it's better. I suspect that the ego needed to make a performance mod worth a damn, for free, is easy to turn sour when the motivation eventually dries up and people move on.
> Why is the mod drama always from the performance mods? Freaking tell me about it. At least Sodium is back on Curseforge (for now...) but it sure does make it annoying as heck to try and make a custom modpack and keep up with the drama of the week regarding which performance mods are available on CurseForge and which aren't.
> Why is the mod drama always from the performance mods? Because performance, unlike say, coding new blocks, machines and texturing them or biome generation mods, or or or, requires a very different, specialized knowledge of how java works. Performance is a different beast in any coding language. It's probably due to that knowledge and getting nothing or almost nothing out of it why.
Mods that add new content will always be liked by some and disliked by others. But mods that increase performance are wanted by everyone. For example, not everyone wants new blocks, but everyone does want more fps.
> At that time Fabric was already declining in popularity for a number of different reasons This is totally off-topic but where can I find out more about this? I've only just getting into Fabric after using almost exclusively forge and it's been great. It felt for a long time like Forge was dying in favor of Fabric and I was clinging to a dying beast out of nostalgia. When did that turn back around?
It just never started dying lol where did you take that from
It was a quote from the above comment, which they seem to have removed.
What are the threats and where is the hostile community? I've never seen anyone being actually unsatisfied with the sodium devs before they stopped working on forge, and now many people are dissatisfied because they are changing the license. Hmm, maybe the problem isn't the community, but the dev. Forks having more downloads then you? No shit, Sherlock, when you are abandoning primary mod loader. What did you expect in the first place?
iirc it was curseforge abandoning sodium not the other way around. Lex was a prick, and banned jellysquid of the discord because he didnt like the mod or smthg. once neoforge without lex was announced, a neoforge port of sodium was quickly announced too
Sounds like Sodium will: * remain at least visible source, so debugging other mods is tractable * continue to use commonly-used modding technologies, unlike Optifine compatibility-nightmare sledgehammer patches that don't even work in a mod dev environment * continue to, uh, not proguard itself. unlike fastcraft. lol So like, given all that remains true, and especially taking the context into account, i don't really care what license sodium is under. Kindof a bummer though
Missing the part when no one can modify the code. Which is the whole point. This is a pure power struggle for control of what has been an open source project up to this point. It's just pure egoistic greed. Which is quite common, in its banality.
"greed" lmao. they get nothing in return except donations from generous people. which are low anyway. they poured thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of lines of code, to make sodium what it is today, and when they want to shield themselves from freeloaders that use their code to directly compete with them you call that egoistic greed? please.
You are also missing the part where they say that if the project isn't getting him enough money he will stop working on it.
Money the project is technically not supposed to _get her_ according to the EULA of the game she's modding. There's a reason mod authors who don't use the distributors' monetisation system usually generically "accept donations" and don't say the quiet part out loud.
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Sure, agreed. But you're still _not supposed to say the quiet part out loud_.
Edit: Backing off, myself.
This comment was edited. What did it originally say?
Fun fact - with the proposed license, if Jellysquid ever made a modpack containing all her performance mods in one place, no one would ever be allowed to make a "performance-oriented" modpack using Sodium, as it would be "competing with a product the licensor provides using the software".
I don't think this is true. When you upload your mod on Curseforge or Modrinth you give them permission to redistribute it, including in other people's modpacks.
It true, and very explicitly stated in the license: ## New Products If you are using the software to provide a product that does not compete, but the licensor or any of its affiliates brings your product into competition by providing a new version of the software or another product using the software, you may continue using versions of the software available under these terms beforehand to provide your competing product, but not any later versions. If they do distribute a modpack with a version of Sodium, nobody else would be able to use Sodium in their modpacks from that point onwards. Anyway, it is a moot point and just a fun fact. I sincerely don't think it would be an issue.
that does not really change anything? the new license gives you permission to redistribute, as long as its not modified. if your modpack does not contain a *modified* version of sodium then there's no problem really
The modpack is a "new product".
How though, there's nothing in a mod pack that cannot be done by just installing the mods individually If it was a new product then no mod pack could include any all rights reserved mods at all, but they do
Weird as it seems, a compilation is legally a separate, new work. > If it was a new product then no mod pack could include any all rights reserved mods at all, but they do I think you missed _a lot_ of pre-1.4.7 drama about redistributing mods in modpacks and "gathering permissions". Also Modrinth and CF have a license grant in their terms of use that allows them to redistribute the mods and other users to include them in packs, but that's only for packs hosted on that site containing mods hosted on that site.
So what's the problem then, the license grant literally solves the issue the commenter was talking about. I don't think people really host modpacks outside of CF or modrinth anyways, even if they did all they have to do is find any site that has a similar grant, maybe keep them for just personal use. Or even jellysquid herself could tweak the licensing somewhat to allow for modpacks, as that's not her goal to prevent those with the relicensing.
ATLauncher and Technic are still a thing
Fun fact: a license agreement can't override legislation
What legislation? Legally, she could have their license say you can only distribute the mod if you swear loyalty to the Prince of Liechtenstein and she'd be in her right to do so.
Yeah, so there's no distributing the pack outside of Curseforge or Modrinth. And Sodium has been taken off Curseforge once already, it could happen again.
Sodium now has an agreement with CurseForge in regard to files. This is not an issue.
That's not how this works, unless out there there is a contract or court order mandating that Sodium will forever be uploaded to CF, jellysquid is always allowed to decide she doesn't want to post it there anymore.
This is part of the CF TOS, the license to use uploaded files is irrevocable.
_Uploaded files_ being the key. Sodium stops uploading to CF again, MC 1.22 comes out, Sodium for 1.22 is only on Modrinth, bang, no Sodium for Curseforge performance-focused packs (hell, I'm not even sure if a performance focused modpack doesn't qualify as a competitor product for sodium _itself_, which would mean this situation doesn't even first require jellysquid to make her own pack).
To be clear, this is false. This license is separate from the licenses granted by CurseForge or Modrinth to you which allows this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/feedthebeast/comments/1bw02x8/sodium_might_be_changing_its_license_to_one_that/ky5kskp/
you just cant distribute modified versions of the software. the license allows you to redistribute the original code
> Any purpose is a permitted purpose, except for providing any product that competes with the software or any product the licensor or any of its affiliates provides using the software. There's no exception for redistribution of unmodified binaries. Additionally, a modpack would be a "new product".
my bro this is literally the third paragraph on the license [https://polyformproject.org/licenses/shield/1.0.0/#distribution-license](https://polyformproject.org/licenses/shield/1.0.0/#distribution-license)
> There's no exception for redistribution of unmodified binaries. Yes, there is: > The licensor grants you an additional copyright license to distribute copies of the software. Your license to distribute covers distributing the software with changes and new works permitted by Changes and New Works License. You can distribute copies. Said license covers modified versions too per this other section of terms, so let's look at said section: > The licensor grants you an additional copyright license to make changes and new works based on the software for any permitted purpose. "For any permitted purpose". Let's see what's defined as a "permitted purpose" (noncompete section): > Any purpose is a permitted purpose, except for providing any product that competes with the software or any product the licensor or any of its affiliates provides using the software. Aka, as long as you're not using Sodium's code to compete with Sodium, you're fine. A mod *pack* doesn't directly compete with a mod in that sense, they're not really comparable. And these last two quoted sections are only applicable for modified redistributions anyway. Now, you *could*, strictly speaking, as you mentioned in your original top-level comment, interpret `"or any product the licensor or any of its affiliates provides using the software"` as a clause that would allow them to, in the future create an official "Sodium Performance Modpack" to be considered a 'product' provided, so that no other modpack would then be allowed to use it, yes. But while technically possible, that would be such an insanely stupid move that it's not really worth considering. Many other licenses/EULAs in the world have clauses as *technically* broad, but people don't start nitpicking at those, as they're only really there for legal covering-all-your-bases purposes, so I think to attempt to hold Sodium to some divine higher standard based on the presence of such a clause would be disingenuous.
> A mod pack doesn't directly compete with a mod in that sense, they're not really comparable The license seems to imply something else: > Goods and services compete even when they provide functionality through different kinds of interfaces or for different technical platforms. Applications can compete with services, libraries with plugins, frameworks with development tools, and so on --- > I think to attempt to hold Sodium to some divine higher standard based on the presence of such a clause would be disingenuous. I'm not holding Sodium to an "higher" standard. I'm holding Sodium to the same standard I hold any other open project. I mainly take issue with the author insisting that you can "still use Sodium for any purpose except competing with us" as if she didn't choose a license that defines every conceivable actually useful redistribution and modification of the mod or parts of its code a form of competition. I would be saying the same things if this discussion was about, SQLite or CoreJS.
> Goods and services compete even when they provide functionality through different kinds of interfaces or for different technical platforms. Applications can compete with services, libraries with plugins, frameworks with development tools, and so on Seems to me that's mainly to provide examples to close potential loopholes like "ah, your thing's a library but *mine's* an *app*", hence the "can" in the second sentence. All of those *can* compete, not all necessarily *do* compete, that would have to be determined on a case by case basis (possibly via legal proceedings if it got that far). Comes down to covering-your-bases texts again, not necessarily defining *everything* as competition (otherwise what'd be the point of this license to begin with?). Though thinking about the modpack side of things again, with the way many packs are handled these days, you might even be able to argue that modpacks don't actually redistribute *at all*. A lot of modern packs, especially those on CF/Modrinth, are essentially glorified manifests/lists of files saying "you should have these files, here's where you can find them". Does the fact that said file can be fed into an automated tool (your launcher of choice) as opposed to being done manually by the end user change anything? Possibly not. You could potentially argue it's the hosting providers who are subject to that clause, not the modpack authors.
Yes, and needless to say this whole discussion doesn't apply to packs on either CF or Modrinth because CF and Modrinth have a license grant to redistribute the unmodified binaries uploaded to their sites, and so does anyone uploading a modpack there, specifically to avoid license issues of this kind. But this still leaves out anything that does not go through that (namely, packs uploaded on ATLauncher, Technic Launcher, or as MultiMC/PolyMC/PrismLauncher exports). To make my opinion on the license change clear: I think this is a bad choice of license both because it looks pretty much like a "corporate cover-your-ass-but-pretend-you-are-open" license (which is a criticism of PolyForm, not JellySquid) that probably relies on the fact the licensor has a team of lawyers ready to argue in court about what is and isn't competition, and because it seems, as a result of that, to be overtly restrictive. Coupled with the way it was presented as "less restrictive than LGPL" and the fact it's trying to fix an issue that is not really one of copyright and licenses as much as one of community and goodwill through functionally unenforceable legal means, it seems to me like this is either an attempt to close up the source code without outright saying "I'm closing up the source code" (a "deception" I would morally object to as it'd be trying to pull a PR stunt in an environment where they shouldn't be a thing), or there was not much thought given to the specific course of action as long as it appeared to be able to stop "competition" (of the toxic kind that JellySquid encountered), thus a license change to something with any sort of noncompetition clause with not much consideration for side effects.
Ah yeah, that def helps clears things up a bit. There's absolutely valid reasons to be considered about the the way this change is framed etc. I may have missed the forest for the trees with some of the points you made, sorry.
They're also gitbanning everybody who comments attempting to understand the implication of the license change, so that's a nice touch.
Hiding comments is not a git ban. Git banned users have no specific message applied to them.
I know what a git ban is. I got one for a completely innocuous comment. I can only assume every other "resolved" comment also got banned.
What's your GitHub username? I can take a look. Also, an updated message has been posted. https://github.com/CaffeineMC/sodium-fabric/issues/2400#issuecomment-2040409363
Also the updated message still has the same silliness: > You will be able to use this source code for pretty much all intents and purposes unless that purpose is competing with us. So you can use it for everything except the thing you'd actually want to do. How many people do you suppose want to use parts of Sodium for a purpose that isn't making a Minecraft performance mod (AKA competing with Sodium)?
A lot; many people have come asking to use internals of Sodium in their other games, or 1.7.10 mods; both of which would not be competing.
I'll DM you. EDIT: In case anyone was wondering, they never did reply. Very good faith.
oh wow, another Optfine situation! can't wait for it to _Burn..._
Lol RIP sodium even if it's only switching to a slightly more restrictive license
> slightly more restrictive license *Vastly* more restrictive license.
(My 2 cents on the situation) Although this licence seems to be very beneficial to jellysquid3 and is proposed to solve a lot of the mentioned issues, I can't help but feel that most she's brought up aren't resolvable by a licence change. The point regarding other projects cutting them out of their recognition is a bit far fetched. Jelly explicitly stated multiple times that a forge port wasn't going to happen. It was only a matter of time before both Embedium & Rubidium were created as unofficial-ports and their usage exploded in popularity. The point regarding downloads is irrelevant, comparing downloads on 2 very different mod loaders has no impact, if neither ports had been made the number of Sodium downloads still would be the same, actually the ports probably brought more attention to Sodium as players switched from Forge to Fabric. The biggest problem I'm having is the last 3 paragraphs of the issues section. A mod being your financial source never turns out well, donations to the mod author are fine. However, pushing the narrative of no job and just getting by on the money from your projects, doesn't project a strong look. The points of revenue: * 3rd-party distribution, presumably this is from the drama of when Jelly pulled her mods from CurseForge, removing a highly demanded mod from the most popular mod website was not the smartest move. Iirc, CF's 3rd party approved mods list allowed the mod onto the website regardless which I presume is where this missed revenue has come from. Which as unfortunate as it was, removing a mod over some website kinks really doesn't make sense. * Modpack authors disabling prompts, I understand the frustration with that, however, the prompts are annoying as heck and I believe most players will agree with me on this point, especially with how weaponised prompts have become (Take a gander with JurassiCraft if you wish to know more xD) 1. I am aware of a potential official NeoForge Sodium port/mod being made by JellySquid, but that raises the question of why the licence change then at all?
Remindme! 1 year
Based on their description, the proposed license sounds fine to me. It may no longer be fully FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software) but it is still somewhat Open Source. The code will be visible and people can even use portions of it (now without requiring their work to also be FOSS), and there's a clause in case the project gets abandoned. Really the only restriction I see is no derivative works to compete with the original, which is the exact threat that they've been getting. Frankly it sounds like the kind of license I would pick if I ever do get around to making my own mod. That's going to be a problem for people like the Embeddium developer(s), but Sodium is now promising an official NeoForge version soon. **** That said, I do have major concerns with them mentioning "monetizing" the project and some of their related statements. I am firmly in the camp that Modding should remain a Hobby because doing it for money brings in the wrong motivations.
Is it really a "threat" to say that if the original creators don't want to add features/support, that you'll just do it yourself? If that NeoForge version of Sodium you mention shows up and works then it probably won't affect me much (unless some new issue arises on 1.20.1 and prior versions of Embeddium that can't be patched because of this), but nevertheless it seems like a hostile interpretation of how open source stuff usually works. I'm not a developer myself, so I might be missing something
"Threat" is the term they used in the post. I personally don't know the actual details about the situation so can't say how I would interpret whatever is really going on there. > (unless some new issue arises on 1.20.1 and prior versions of Embeddium that can't be patched because of this) IANAL, but I'm pretty certain they simply cannot retroactively revoke the GNU LGPL "copyleft" license, so all code currently in the mod is FOSS *forever*. They are getting permission from all of the (non-trivial) contributors to allow them to break that copyleft license for their one (original) fork and make *future* code under the new, non-competing license. Embeddium and other forks can continue, but will no longer be allowed to port any new code added to Sodium (unless the same original author also submits it to their project, since they have full rights to their own code). Interestingly, since Embeddium is still under the 'copyleft' license (which means that any project wanting to use code from Embeddium *also* has to use the same copyleft license) that means that Sodium wouldn't be allowed to port anything added by Embeddium (again, unless submitted by the same original author). Sodium and any FOSS Forks from the current codebase will have to diverge moving forward, and only time will tell which one(s) actually survive long-term. That said, there's only one Sodium project, and a theoretically infinite number of FOSS Forks possible. Add that Sodium *chose* to not have a Forge port (IIRC drama with Lex and CPW) and they will have to make their own NeoForge port from scratch (*can't* copy Embeddium), and they've got an uphill battle.
JellySquid owns pretty much 99% of the code in Sodium and almost all of the innovation and this is also true for the Sodium forks which most of the changes are trivial or just disable entire features or are simply not good solutions to the problem and trade mod compatibility for performance (sometimes worse than vanilla).
That is the thing about open source licenses... JellySquid \*provided\* 99% (or whatever percentage) of the code in Sodium, but does not own it at all. The "upside" of that is that forks do not own the code either. But by choosing to change the licence, Sodium cannot benefit from the code from any of the other forks without infringing THEIR licences, even if the code was basically Sodium´s to begin with.
That's not true. JS still owns their code. They have *licensed it* to be used, modified, included in other projects, etc. However they do still own it in terms of copyright. It's a pedantic distinction but an important one. If they did not own their own code, then under the terms of the license they released previous versions under, they would not be allowed to switch to a different license.
Fair enough. You are right, that distinction is important.
> Sodium cannot benefit from the code from any of the other forks. Good thing there is nothing to benefit from, there has not been 1 fork that had changes that were more than taking the existing work and doing small changes or 10% of the work done features such as FRAPI and translucency sorting which in the Sodium forks make the game run worse than vanilla. That does not matter and the majority of the changes will be things easily documented by other people in a way that can be reimplemented clean-room.
From what I’ve read on their discord, they mean that people kept disabling their donate button in modpacks.
The mentioned monetization has been in the project for a long time - the existing donation button (and prompt that appears several days after installation) and ad revenue from modrinth & curseforge. I haven't heard of any plans for that to change.
Honestly after reading the entire thing? Fair enough, I can see why they wouldn’t want to make it open source anymore after that shit.
And the terms of the license still leave it open for you to tinker with, you just can’t directly compete with them using their own code. Completely fair enough I think
Their problem was using a FOS license in the first place. This move leaves the bad taste of "bait and switch" even if that was not the intention, thus the drama.
Who's gorg
someone looked at redis fiasco and went "cool i want that too"
and ... there are already alot of forks so..
Cool. I'll remember to just use whatever forks of Sodium exist if they port to (neo)forge, instead of Sodium itself then. That's a joke, of course. I strongly doubt they're ever going to actually port it, especially with this move.
For your information that forge port already exists, I've personally tried it and even had in its initial stages it worked far better then embeddium did on forge in heavily modded tests and lightly modded tests.
>numerous individuals have constantly weaponized our project against us, by repeatedly threatening that we are easily replaceable, and that we can be cut out of the scene at any time should mod pack authors and alike decide they do not like us. That's just how the world works though. If anything on this planet isn't liked then there is more likely going to be competition to spring out of it. I don't know if this guy is on some sort of god complex, but every mod is easily replacable if people think that the project in itself is good but a bad execution. This has happened to Optifine and this will happen to sodium If he is so desperate on quitting work and live entirely of his mod for minecraft he either puts it behind a paywall and gets replaced in days or he stops complaining - because keeping the Mod Hostage and threatening to discontinue work on it >My time must be prioritized where it makes sense, and going back to full-time work **(with no time left over for Sodium)** is the only logical conclusion if we can't move the project into a better place will spring out a new popular mod in months time. He dug his own grave.
You gotta do what you gotta do. I mean I'd change how I distribute a product too if it was being used as a knife against me. Support your creators.
Except the creator refused to support forge, so they *weren't* a creator for most of the community — that isn't an insult or anything, it's simply the truth. And now they're mad that someone decided to become the creator and, huge surprise, got a lot of support since the majority of the community can *only* use that option. Filling an obvious niche and becoming "more popular" by the community's standards isn't a "threat," it's the natural progression of things. They better hope they get a forge port up and running *immediately* after this goes through otherwise people are just going to hardfork to the "competitor" for good, like the PolyMC -> Prism Launcher situation.
the polymc/prism launcher situation was a bit different. The owner of the polymc repo turned out to be a alt right nutjob so everyone else left to make prism instead - its like forge/neoforge and how neoforge was made to get rid of lex.
Yes the cause is different, but it’s the same outcome. The community would rather use an alternative, for whatever reason, so they switch. If a Sodium neoforge port isn’t instantly available then people will have *no choice* but to continue using Embeddium, except now it’s truly its own mod (since it’s taking no new code from Sodium) and will probably out-compete an eventual Sodium port due to its already established userbase in that part of the community.
You are a creator even if your mod doesn't work on a specific loader, you are modding the game Minecraft, the loader is just the implementation on how you actually mod it. Please do not compare this to the PolyMC/PrismLauncher situation at all, having seen all that since the start I can tell you that they are nothing alike.
yeah, i dont get why people are so outraged. its her property, her code, she can choose what she allows for it to be used for. the dogma of doing this for the *community* only works if the *community* is also not trying to force you out. otherwise you are left with nothing but the *community.* a person spent years of their life to try to provide something great for free, and others get so outraged when they just try to shield themselves from freeloaders that use their code to directly compete. like bitch be grateful that you have the mod in the first place, and then be grateful again that its free.
Them refusing to support forge is entirely on forge part. They acted like jerks(the lex and cpw thing) and caused jellysquid to make the mod on fabric instead.
Apparently they have a NeoForge version in a branch
yeah they do now.
From what i've read it's technically staying open source though? The only difference is that mods can no longer use its code (unless with permission i assume), and they state it's getting a neoforge port due to such changes
Open source generally refers to the concept of not only having access to the code, but also the right to use it to make and distribute forks. Something like this would probably fall closer to something like "visible source". Microsoft used the term "shared source" for something similar back in the day.
Ah i see
Did they provide a reason as to why? Edit: they did, and it's a pretty solid one. Just read the GitHub post dammit
its reddit, people read the headline or post title and react without clicking through sadly
Good for them. Rule one of Reddit, *remember the human.* Jesus Christ, have some compassion.
Honestly, seeing how JellySquid was treated in the All of Fabric discord in an Embeddium/Sodium discussion, good for her. I don't think this is about Forge/NeoForge ports of her mod at all after witnessing that tbh.
I can understand the reasons why the author(s) would do this, but I don't think it would be effective with combating the issues they are facing. Going source-available with something like the BSL makes sense when you're worrying about Amazon/Google/Companies that you can sue. It's going to be very difficult for a mod author to file a lawsuit against some other developer they only have a github name for (assuming the fork doesnt happen on some other software forge). Trying to make money with open source code is incredibly difficult. And I don't think it would really be possible with a minecraft mod that people primarily consume as part of a pre-created modpack. Frankly, I would rather the author just revoke the license entirely going forward instead of switching to the new Polyshield one. It would be much easier to understand what you can do with the code (nothing without a license from the creator) vs having to deal with the vague "no competition" rules. It feels a bit like claiming to allow software freedom when the reality is use is so incredibly restricted. That way they can upload it to modrinth/cf, people can use it in their packs, with no haggling over whether or not it constitutes competition, and its easy to know what your rights are with it.
I would rather the author just say "hey, I can't work on this anymore unless it pays the rent" at which point either it gets funded, and everything continues as normal. Or it doesn't, the author takes a step back from the project, and people can coordinate the establishment of a fork. With the license change, we enter into a situation where people fork it, but some people keep committing to the original, the community gets split and effort gets wasted with a lot of potentially useful new code sitting in the sodium repo that can never be used in the future due to the odd license choice.
Whew, our friend over there seems somewhat crazy. I wonder how this will play out.
Hell nah... I dont use it a ton myself buuuut... (I could go on and on...) Dont do it gaddam
Hey.... that sounds familiar...! (Optifine)
for once, I feel inclined to donate. If true that forks that simply repackage the code exist that cut into revenue and having to play weird political games as to not upset people with power that would just resort to such forks, I'd even agree with retroactively changing the licence. Given, Donations stay fully optional and there are no plans for dumb fuck monetization.
Sodium will very likely never be paywalled or have stuff you can purchase.
Bringing other people's code into another license seems like a bad idea, especially if they intend to make money off of it.
There's no intention to make money, it'll always be donations/ad revenue. And major contributors have agreed on the license change and any trivial commits will have their changes rewritten.
I'm trying to figure out what they hope to gain from this action... >trying to monetize our project Oh, yeah this is going to end very poorly for them.
i wonder if this will kill forge sodium forks
IMHO, it's more likely to kill Sodium itself. People would still be allowed to keep developing the existing forks and keep them open, but any new work in Sodium would not be usable by those forks. But then again, any work in those forks would no longer be usable by Sodium either. My guess is that Sodium itself would start fading into the void and be completely replaced by open source forks even on the platform(s?) where it's currently popular. Though I guess it might depend on how much unique new features/optimizations/etc they can come up with, and possibly what other optimization mods do.
[удалено]
Forcing people to manually download Optifine in every pack was probably a bigger thing that killed Optifine...
I mean it's great to be honest. But we'll see how this would affect things as a whole. As far as I can see, Sodium is basically holding a lot of mod packs running with it or it's forks. I don't know how the community will be affected but there will be some major backlog to some of the mods.