Hey everyone,

I just wondered, because I am working on a mod with the MCP right now, how does Forge handle the licensing with Minecraft?
How is Forge allowed?

I would never be able to publish my modification, so I wanted to know what Forge did different.
Is there a special contract with Mojang/Microsoft?
A loophole that allows it somehow?

Thanks for the answers, that would be really interesting to know!

One of the maintainers is a Mojang employee I believe

10 minutes ago, diesieben07 said:

The Forge Git repository only contains patches to the decompiled Minecraft source code. In very simplified terms this means "remove this line from this file" or "add this code here". It does not contain the decompiled game source code.

When the Forge installer is built, these patch files are converted to binary patches to the compiled code, these binary patch files are then shipped with the installer. As such the installer again does not contain any Minecraft code. When you then run the installer it takes the vanilla Minecraft jar (or downloads it from Mojang's servers if you don't have it) and then patches it, locally. As such, no Minecraft code is ever shipped by Forge.

When you are making a mod using the MDK a similar thing happens. The MDK will download Minecraft and decompile it on your local machine. The MDK does not contain Minecraft's code, only the instructions for your computer to get to it.

 

This is a very high level overview, there are a lot of intricacies to this process.

 

This is inaccurate and has nothing to do with it.

if you said its innacurate its a mojang emplyee of some kind right?

 

34 minutes ago, diesieben07 said:

The Forge Git repository only contains patches to the decompiled Minecraft source code. In very simplified terms this means "remove this line from this file" or "add this code here". It does not contain the decompiled game source code.

When the Forge installer is built, these patch files are converted to binary patches to the compiled code, these binary patch files are then shipped with the installer. As such the installer again does not contain any Minecraft code. When you then run the installer it takes the vanilla Minecraft jar (or downloads it from Mojang's servers if you don't have it) and then patches it, locally. As such, no Minecraft code is ever shipped by Forge.

When you are making a mod using the MDK a similar thing happens. The MDK will download Minecraft and decompile it on your local machine. The MDK does not contain Minecraft's code, only the instructions for your computer to get to it.

 

This is a very high level overview, there are a lot of intricacies to this process.

 

This is inaccurate and has nothing to do with it.

This explains it very well to me, much appreciated!
So there is a way after all! (for the time being)