Curse and FTB partner

[SXScarecrow]

So, if the title wasn't explanatory enough, Curse, Forge and Feed the Beast are partnering. Here's the thread on the FTB forums: http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/ftb-and-forge-curse-partnership.38512/

If that was too long for you, here is the summary:

• The goal is to eventually merge Forge and FTB into Curse.
  
• LexManos and Slowpoke have joined Curse in advisory roles.
  
• Future distribution of FTB modpacks will be on a new Curse Client.
  
• Development of the FTB launcher will stop in favour of the Curse Client, of which development will be almost solely in the hands of the Curse dev team.
  
• Primary distribution of Minecraft Forge will take place on Curse. Whether this means Curse will become the only distribution platform is unclear, however it is unlikely.
  
• The FTB forums will be accessible through minecraftforum.net.
  
• The Minecraft Forge forums will move over to Curse servers.
  
• The FTB Store will be unaffected.
  
• According to Slowpoke, the ultimate goal is to make FTB more than just a launcher; they want it to be a modpack platform where all members of the community can make their own modpacks and distribute them. (sound familiar?)
  

Whether you interpret this as an attempt by Curse to dominate the modding community or simply a partnership of convenience is up for you decide. However, I do like this quote by Slowpoke:

I am not really interested in a project that from a technical point of view favours FTB over other launchers.

Clearly a reference to Technic and the ATLauncher, as well as many others out there. What do you guys think about the whole thing?

[dwwojcik]

To me it sounds a bit like Slowpoke is a tad jealous of the Platform's success, and is turning to the sheer number of noobs at minecraftforum.net to make his clone a success. Unless, of course, curse initiated the merger talks, in which case they are trying to monopolize the Minecraft community even more that they already do.

[Neowulf]

It looks to me like a corporation is buying up a popular thing in an attempt to boost public approval and absorb their user base.

Historically it's a bit or miss. It will alienate a portion of the current userbase ("they sold out", "I came here to escape curse forums", ect...) and there are a LOT of actions they could end up taking at the direction of beancounters that run completely opposite of current philosophy, which may drive away the rest of the users they're buying.

Just look at technology acquisitions and writeoffs for the last 10 years. Big names corporations like microsoft and yahoo buy up The Next Big Thing then write off the purchase not long later when it turns out the expertise and "Common Business Sense" they brought to the table killed their new toy before it had a chance to actually take off.

Curse is not exactly known for fair moderators with a firm grasp on legality who promote intellectual discourse, and my past experience with the curse client with WoW addons has shown me less than stellar performance with a focus on getting you to subscribe to their service for it to actually work as expected.

Specifically the WoW addons, their supposed easy to use system to keep everything up to date took longer than it should, bugged me to give them money to speed it up, scanned my CD drive for some odd reason when it started up, and I had to run two other updaters to make sure the big addons like auctioneer and titan panel actually got updated.

I'm not very optimistic. Best I'm hoping for is they don't completely screw everything over and FTB stays viable enough to service people as they did before.

[Chefsbrian]

Eh. Curse forums are almost as terrifying as our own bug report forums (less bending going on though, such a shame) but I doubt they care. Shame too, I use FTB as well just for some of their packs. I don't the curse launcher, but if what was said above holds true, I may have to spend even more time here XD

[Generalcamo]

They did say that the forums will be independent. They might be linked, but the moderators will remain.

Also, I do see that FTB still owns themselves. If Curse tries anything, they should be able to pull out without too many problems.

Also, reassuring quote from Slow:

Curse doesnt use adfly and part of the agreement is they are not allowed to limit the downloads for anyone.

With regards to Forge, the only thing I see is that it will mean their download servers will be less likely to go down. Remember that Forge is open source, and due to the license, legally should remain so.

[Neowulf]

They did say that the forums will be independent. They might be linked, but the moderators will remain.

Forums will be independent for how long? Someone has to pay for it, and within a year curse will be wondering why they bother supporting a duplicate forum when their forum is obviously superior and everyone uses it anyway...

Also, I do see that FTB still owns themselves. If Curse tries anything, they should be able to pull out without too many problems.

Considering the sheer amount of armchair lawyering slowpoke used to do back during the great anti-technic wars, I suspect there's more to this that anyone on the FTB side realizes.

Remember, Curse is a company and if they are incorporated are legally required to use whatever underhanded yet legal tactics they can to gain as much from a deal as possible for as little expenditure as possible. Anything less than cheating and stealing from little guys is considered defrauding shareholders.

With regards to Forge, the only thing I see is that it will mean their download servers will be less likely to go down. Remember that Forge is open source, and due to the license, legally should remain so.

OSS licenses don't prohibit projects from going closed source or other license changes in the future, as long as they can settle any copyright claims.

[Portablejim]

This is an attempt to standardize modding to make it easier. From what I have heard and read it sounds like Curse will be "the place to get mods" and that third party launchers will be able to hook into it.

At the moment Curseforge is an attractive place to host mods. It provides a unified place for mods to be.

• It provides free filehosting to mods in a way that users can easily dowload (e.g. here is a direct link to the latest version of forestry (at time of writing)). This is better than the rabble of methods used by modders currently. As for the platform, is there a way, as a modder, I can host files and use the technic platform as my main distribution method (for everyone, not just those using the platform)?
  
• It provides a wiki for me to use to describe my mod and give documentation about it. This is better than the forum posts currently using spoiler tags to try and keep the length down (and where did they put that darn download link?)
  
• It provides and actual ticket management system to help manage problems. This is better than just forum posts that have bug reports intermingled with crash reports and (...wait, there's 3 pages of people talking in the thread about other topics) actual (...now where is the next post following up the issue...) conversation about the mod. (now how many problems are actually fixed?)
  

I think the aim of Curseforge was to make it like dev.bukkit.org (which is hosted by Curse), but for minecraft mods instead of bukkit plugins.

Note: I have a mod on cuseforge (here it is) and decided to use it before I knew it would give me free premium based on the popularity of my mod.

[freakachu]

the devil is in the details when it comes to this kind of thing. they can say "oh we're TOTALLY independent!" now, but how true is that going to be months down the line? curse is not going to want to throw money at this thing with no return for very long. make no mistake, this will be costly for them. I'm not sure if either group thought through just how much bandwidth and server resources will be required for something like this if it releases to even moderate success. the curse launcher, if it's anything like the current client they offer will most likely be ad supported if not hobbled by the same curse premium junk the current client has. just because you can't download more than 2 mods at once doesn't mean they're "limiting people from downloading mods".

additionally, if the new launcher is either a) just an updated curse client with MC support or a new launcher with ads there is no way that any 3rd party launcher will be allowed to use their service with the same level of quality as their 1st party app. absolutely no way.

I've been around long enough to know how this kind of thing usually goes down, and it's not pretty. while I hope for the best, I am prepared for the worst.

[dwwojcik]

What I've gathered is FtB is selling out into a plan to create a pretend official plugin shop that is likely to crash and burn.

[Watchful11]

SXScarecrow had it right. FTB is partnering with Curse. Curse isn't buying FTB.

[dwwojcik]

I didn't mean it that way. I was referring to this:

It will alienate a portion of the current userbase ("they sold out", "I came here to escape curse forums", ect...) and there are a LOT of actions they could end up taking at the direction of beancounters that run completely opposite of current philosophy, which may drive away the rest of the users they're buying.

[Munaus]

If forge is under Curse hands, will that affect Technic in any way?

[freakachu]

SXScarecrow had it right. FTB is partnering with Curse. Curse isn't buying FTB.

in my experience, the difference between "partnering" and "buying" is really only how direct you can be with giving orders unless the 2 entities are fairly equal. from what I can see FTB brings one thing to the table for curse: eyeballs. they have a reasonably large following that can be convinced to look at ads. curse is bringing hosting, marketing, developer resources, and who knows what else. this is not a situation where the power is relatively equal. FTB needs curse, but not the other way around and curse absolutely knows this. if anyone thinks that will not be used to curse's advantage and potentially the detriment of end users, think again. FTB is not in a position to bargain in any real way. curse will say what is needed to mollify slow and Co. so that there isn't an immediate upheaval and exodus from the community (because that is what they want, the ad views). once they either have secured dominance in the modding "market" or have failed horribly to make enough return on investment, things will suddenly not be so peachy and FTB will end up like the dude who thought he had a deal with darth vader.

not that curse is some evil group of devils incarnate, but this is just the realities of business. it's a dog eat dog world out there and I don't think FTB is prepared to eat any dogs.

[Portablejim]

I think it is a good idea to create a central way to manage mods (including an easy way to get, say, the latest download link for minecraft version X) instead of the current '1001 ways to publish your mod' (requiring a '1001 ways to download mods' or advice like "just try and follow the links"). I guess the FTB team figured that Curse would be the best to provide such a service.

If curseforge provides an API where you can get download links based on info they already have such as:

• Mod Name
  
• Supported minecraft version
  
• Release status (alpha, beta, release)
  

then making a 3rd party launcher based on that would be much easier that what you currently have to do.

If forge is under Curse hands, will that affect Technic in any way?

Apart from the people who build the packs having to direct their browsers to a different URL, no. If you include future plans (and hopes) of the Forge team and FTB team, Techinc might be able to automatically detect the mods that require forge and download it if needed. (Using the Techinc platform)

[Mooseman9]

SXScarecrow had it right. FTB is partnering with Curse. Curse isn't buying FTB.

Most likely is paying off Slowpoke and Lex, though.

[Generalcamo]

Well, the AT launcher and the Technic launcher are still viable alternatives. If FTB fails, then those two mod launchers will likely prevail, since I doubt anyone would be willing to pick up FTB's pieces if it does shatter.

Regarding Forge/Curseforge, if Curse does close the source (Which would be STUPID and probably wouldn't last long without dedicated volunteers), someone else would easily pick up the pieces, since the open-source nature would solve that problem.

Edit: I did double check the license forge uses, and it is possible for someone to close it. It would be impossible to stop open-source distribution however, since deriving code is legal under the license.

[Portablejim]

Regarding Forge/Curseforge, if Curse does close the source (Which would be STUPID and probably wouldn't last long without dedicated volunteers), someone else would easily pick up the pieces, since the open-source nature would solve that problem.

Edit: I did double check the license forge uses, and it is possible for someone to close it. It would be impossible to stop open-source distribution however, since deriving code is legal under the license.

How would Curse close the source? The code is posted on github. The developers want it open source, so the most Curse could do is "you can't host here because you have the source open".

[Portablejim]

Grr...flaky Internet connection causing double posts

[freakachu]

the thing is, in a perfect world where nothing goes wrong and there's no ulterior motives or straight up incompetence/misunderstandings a central system would be great.

a one stop shop for all your modding needs that has no problems, easy to navigate, fast downloads, used by everyone, API access for 3rd party launchers that is just as good as using the official site's launcher, and many useful features besides. it sounds like a great vision, but the problem is that it is just that: a vision. it is not reality.

call me a jaded, cynical pessimist if you want, but I am not buying this grandiose utopian vision they're putting out there for this thing until I see it.

[Ashzification]

Most likely is paying off Slowpoke and Lex, though.

They will be independently be contracted in manager-like positions.

[Mooseman9]

Yeah, there really is no way this is going to end up well. I really do like FTB, been using the new 1.6 packs lately and I enjoy it.

I just don't see Curse as being something good.

We have no intentions of profiting off the downloading and installation of mods.

Any ads we place will be unobtrusive and none of those silly flashy things that you can sometimes get.

Also this.

[dwwojcik]

contracted

That alone is too much.

It's a mod.

For a video game.

For fun.

[Munaus]

That alone is too much.

It's a mod.

For a video game.

For fun.

Why would that be a bad thing? You think the only people who should work with modpacks or mods should be slaving in front of the computer screen for free?

[Ashzification]

-snip-

I just accepted a job CreperHost.

Much smaller scale, but the same thing.

Company contracts person/people who can help them complete a task.

[dwwojcik]

Why would that be a bad thing? You think the only people who should work with modpacks or mods should be slaving in front of the computer screen for free?

Well, no... I suppose I can't appreciate how much time and effort goes into making a mod, but still. I would never enter a legally bound agreement (<-- This guy only got his lawyer's license because his roommate's a wizard) over something that is done for fun. I think that would take the fun out of it entirely, and God help us if any modder decided to start modding to make a profit.

I just accepted a job CreperHost.

Much smaller scale, but the same thing.

Company contracts person/people who can help them complete a task.

Fair enough.