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](https://neoforged.net/) 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.
- Added MineColonies' visitors (`minecolonies:visitor`) to the default allowlist.
- This will only take effect for new installations. If you wish to whitelist
MineColonies' citizens to an existing installation, you will still have to
add the exception manually.
