The Fence Unleashed

1.0.2-1.20.2-1.0

Released 2024 Jan 07

Requirements

• NeoForge: 20.2.86

Overview

This release of The Fence Unleashed for Minecraft 1.20.2 migrates the mod to NeoForge and changes the license conditions.

Migration to NeoForge

Earlier this year, NeoForge was forked from Minecraft Forge with significant parts of the team moving on to the new project. While the two versions were initially compatible, NeoForge quickly evolved and became incompatible with Forge's API. Now, a few months after the split, NeoForge and the NeoForged project as a whole are more actively developed and the ecosystem seems healthier.

Thus, starting with this version, The Fenced Unleashed will target NeoForge instead of Minecraft Forge. Specifically, there will be no more updates targeting Minecraft Forge for Minecraft 1.20 and later. However, there might still be updates targeting Minecraft Forge for earlier versions.

This does not directly affect players. Even migrating a world to NeoForge is fine, since this update does not break save-game compatibility.

Licensing Changes

Going forward, The Fence Unleashed is made available under a new license that is tentatively called "Fency license". (The license's conditions are final but the name is subject to change.) The first three clauses of the Fency license are equal to the BSD3 license and essentially clarify attribution. The BSD3 license itself is, like the MIT license, a permissive open-source license. However, such a license is not fit for video game mods. Thus, clauses 4. and 5. impose further restrictions.

Open-source licenses in general, do not restrict commercial use of copyrighted work. For example, third parties may specialize in redistributing mods to generate ad revenue without the copyright holders' involvement. For software libraries, this does not matter since the target group is other developers and downloads do not matter. However, video game mods target players of a video game instead and may use ad revenue as a source of income. Open-source licenses do not protect the copyright holders from such financial exploitation. Additionally, third-party redistributions pose an inherent security risk as players are unlikely to perform integrity checks on downloaded files.

The fourth clause restricts commercial redistribution and differentiates between original and derivative work. It is important to emphasize that this clause does not restrict general commercial use. For example, third parties may produce monetized videos without express written consent. Similarly, redistribution of the mod is fine when there is no commercial intent.

Further, permissive licenses allow modifications and derivatives to be published under different licenses, including ones that keep the modified source code private.

The fifth clause of the Fency license requires derivatives and modifications to be made publicly available under the same license terms as the mod itself. This ensures that fixes and improvements are given back to the community and cannot be kept private.