I’ve opened sourced my Minecraft launcher. The past versions weren’t open sourced, nor were they really released to the world.

You can find compiled versions (and a link to the source) on the MC forums.

If you are looking for WorldEdit, WorldGuard, or CommandBook for MC 1.2, please see this post.

But it’s never bad to think ahead! With the recent news that the core Bukkit team has been absorbed by Mojang and that Bukkit in its current form is going away, that presents a number of issues for people who currently depend on this ecosystem. Fortunately, in regards to WorldEdit or WorldGuard, the news is mostly positive. We’re hoping to keep everything that you depend on the same as you’ve always been used to, even if mod APIs come and go, freeing up time so you can tend to better things. To us, a deprecation of time of “3 months” is nothing when you’ve got other things on your plate.

We’ve been able to do this because of a few decisions that were made from the beginning. I made a few assumptions going forward in late 2010:

1. One day, the server mod APIs that I were depending on were going to die.
2. It wasn’t really within my means to start my own server mod, due to my future time constraints, and the project would be in a particular crossroads if the project ever needed to enter into a more official capacity.

For better or worse, these assumptions have held uncannily true. It was within a few months that hMod effectively folded, and it is now true Bukkit will be ceasing to exist within a few months’ time. Already, you can find WorldEdit for several platforms, including officially for single player, Bukkit, Spout, unofficially for Canary, at at one time officially for hMod. This means WorldEdit will continue to exist in its current form, for the most part, in whichever new fangled API gains popularity. The process of porting WorldEdit only requires writing a few files of code, a task that takes one or two hours, and it is the reason that WorldEdit was the first mod ported to Bukkit.

Better news is ahead, however. Within the next one or two major versions of WorldEdit, we should have far superior support for custom blocks and entities, allowing you to copy your complex RedPower contraptions or your extremely detailed BuildCraft operation between chunks or worlds. We will also hopefully allow WorldEdit to better handle large operations, performing them in smaller chunks (which currently presents a number of technical difficulties) rather than freezing the game. Scripting support should be improved, and we plan to add better support for better API interaction with WorldEdit, allowing you to more easily modify WorldEdit with new commands or functions that tap into WorldEdit’s vast library and cross-platform support.

As for WorldGuard, many of the ideas were applied. The core potions of WorldGuard are written to be easily ported, though due to the nature of WorldGuard, parts do have to be rewritten for it to be ported.

With the release of Minecraft 1.2, WorldEdit and WorldGuard should be updated as a number of issues are present in their respective versions for Minecraft 1.1.

The following are alpha builds of WorldEdit and WorldGuard that are compatible with Minecraft 1.2. While there have been no major issues reported with the releases below, THESE VERSIONS ARE NOT GUARANTEED TO BE STABLE. If possible, please test all features that you depend on, preferably on a test server on your local computer or elsewhere, and remember to check back when an official stable version is released for MC 1.2.

EDIT: New versions are available. See the new blog post.

Recently fixed issues or issues fixed since versions for MC1.1:

• FIXED: WorldGuard: NullPointerException errors when pumpkin scuba is on
• FIXED: WorldGuard: NullPointerException errors when infinite item stack removal is on
• FIXED: WorldGuard: Region flags not working at all
• FIXED: WorldGuard: Chest access being blocked completely
• FIXED: WorldGuard: Becoming invincible on join by default (you must now turn this off manually in the configuration as well)
• FIXED: WorldEdit: World height limitations
• FIXED: WorldEdit: Missing 1.2 blocks and items
• FIXED: WorldEdit: Errors when pasting schematics in some cases

Reported, but unconfirmed, issues:

• WorldGuard: PvP flag does not work
• WorldGuard: Entry/exit member groups flag does not work
• WorldGuard: Invincible flag may not work
• WorldGuard: Block break notification in the blacklist only prints to console
• WorldGuard: Minecarts can’t be broken
• WorldEdit: Jungle trees are not properly regenerated with //regen
• WorldEdit: While the height limit was abolished, it always goes up to 256 even if set at a height limit below 256

If you find any errors, please report them by commenting on this post.

You can follow me on Twitter if you want more up-to-the-minute news. In addition, you are invited to visit us on IRC by joining #worldedit or #worldguard on irc.esper.net.

Please note that we generally do not commit to stable builds until CraftBukkit releases its own stable build.

Stable releases of WorldEdit and WorldGuard are not yet available, but the latest stable version of CommandBook should work. If you can’t wait, you can get developmental versions of WorldEdit and WorldGuard here:

http://build.sk89q.com

We’ve squashed a number of issues, particular with WorldGuard, just in the past few hours.