Is a complete rewrite against the license/eula of this software?

Question

Okey, so I have for a while now been thinking of rewriting the minecraft server, this time in a language called golang. It's just a example project that I can learn a new programming language through..

My question is: If I -rewrite- the minecraft -server-,:

• I read the Minecraft EULA, and they only talking about -modifying- the the current server or client. Nothing about re-creating it. Do I violate the EULA if I recreate the minecraft server in golang?

• If I ever will finish the project, having a completley functional rewritten server. Can I release it?

• And if I can release it, can I earn money from it in form of donations?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can do this.

What you want to do is called cloning a software. Considering that your server and the original server aren't even in the same programming language, your server is a completely new piece of work and you have all the rights to it.

At least in the united states, the DMCA grants a safe harbor to reverse engineer software for the purposes of interoperability with other software. So when you find out how the Minecraft protocol works by reverse-engineering and re-implement it in your server, this is perfectly legal.

By the way, I am not a lawyer, but I think the clause "We have the final say on what constitutes a tool/mod/plugin and what doesn‘t" is unlikely to hold up in court.

Answer 2

It depends on whether you read the source code of the Minecraft server and translate it "word for word", then your code is basically a modification of the Minecraft code.

If instead you only see what the server does and then invent your own code to do the same thing, you're fine.

This is why in the past sometimes code has been playing by companies using two teams, one team to read the code and describe it in functional terms, the other only using the functional description to write new code that does the same thing. But you can't do that as one person.

Answer 3

I am not a lawyer, but I would have thought that a port of the existing code constitutes a modification of it so is covered by

Any tools you write for the Game from scratch belong to you. . Modifications to the Game ("Mods") (including pre-run Mods and in-memory Mods) and plugins for the Game also belong to you and you can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don‘t sell them for money / try to make money from them. We have the final say on what constitutes a tool/mod/plugin and what doesn‘t.

You can do this, but you can't try to make money for it.

If you had never seen their code and created a server based on reverse engineering the client/server protocol that probably would be a different thing, but I would consider a port to be a modification rather than an independent effort.