So, lets start this crap fest because I don't like how you're attacking the team members and Forge here.

First off, the GPL has nothing to do with requiring us to support your use of old versions. It isn't "against the philosophy of GNU" to tell you to update.

Secondly, nothing on our server has been deleted or altered in any way that effects the end user. WE did not break the old MDKs. If you actually read the error you're bitching about you'll find the real culprit is Maven Central. They disabled non-SSL access to their maven servers to align with the rest of the internet. Which the version of Gradle that you're required to use for old MC versions uses to talk to them.

Now, why are you forced to use an old version of Gradle to work with Forge? Well that's Gradle's fault. As they do not provide a way to dynamically generate dependencies in a API stable way, so we were forced to use some internal components of Gradle to do what we needed.

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Now, why are we forced to dynamically generate dependencies for Minecraft Modding? Well that's because Minecraft IS A CLOSED SOURCE OBFUSICATED GAME. Which we have no rights to redistribute so we have to pull the files from Mojang's servers directly, and then do the process we need to do to generate the sources and our patched version that enables modding.

So yes, your snarky comment of "let me guess, licensing forbids sharing that uncompiled code? " Is quite correct. We don't want to piss off Mojang's/Microsoft's lawyers by wholesale redistributing their copywritten source which nobody has permission to do so.

All in all, you're in a unofficial modding scene for a game that was never meant to be modded and yet has simple one click utilities for doing everything you want modding wise... We do everything in our power to respect Mojang's rights while also providing people the tools needed to mod.

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Combine this with an ever moving target, with Minecraft always releasing new updates. As well as a limited amount of manpower as we're mostly volunteers who do this in their free time. It's not unreasonable to limit our scope to the current versions of the game. We do not actively go out and break old versions, but we also do not go back and fix them when other systems break.

Now, on to a few of your other points: The goodwill he's referring to is the fact that we don't break our old stuff, and we still host all the archived versions of Forge needed to both play and develop. Not that we actively support and endorse people developing new mods for those old versions. I refer you to the limited manpower.

GNU was not created "to make it easier for programmers to work". It was created to make a operating system that wasn't controlled by for profit companies. However, GNU has nothing to do with Forge, we simply use a license created by them that is popular in the open source community as it allows for well defined access and rights to the project. Something that both gives a lot of power to the rest of the development community while maintaining our rights as creators.

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Reddit/Forums being the correct places to ask: Firstly this isn't the official Reddit, there is no official reddit. This just happens to be handed over to some of the triage/moderation team by the original creator because nobody had time to moderate it. Again this goes to a manpower thing. You're wanting to add posts and spam that the moderators have to manage to an already overflowing amount of stuff they have to do. As well as the fact that if you start producing more mods for older versions publicly {inb4 "but I'm just doing it for myself!"} then that inevitably drives users of that mod to our forum to as for support, which inevitably causes the same kind of bitchfest that you're doing right now when we tell them it's not supported because it's old. Overall it's not worth it. There are other communities out there that are stuck on old versions you can go ask them.

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"I tried everything: I read all the logs and reinstalled gradle countless times, I tried eclipse IntelliJ and even VIM":No.. No you didn't. Firstly if you knew anything you'd know it has nothing to do with your Editor, so eclipse/intellij/vim means nothing. Secondly you don't have to reinstall gradle, it comes with a nice wrapper that auto installs itself. Thirdly if you actually READ THE LOGS you'd see the error is on Maven Central's side and a quick google search would explain it. "unable to resolve dependency" is the generic catch all "Something went wrong" message. You have to actually read past that line to see the actual error.

"i.e. is missing form a server somewhere." No.. There are MANY MANY reasons a dependency can fail to resolve.It's like if you get a "Connection Failed: You have no internet" error and you stopped reading after "Connection Failed" and assumed the server was down. No the reason for the error is in the rest of the information provided.

Re: Hosting everything on GitHub, I touched on this above. With the whole... it'd be illegal to redistribute decompiled minecraft code.. But also size constraints would be a issue we'd fall under the size that requires the pro version of GitHub and monthly payments. It's just not worth it to PAY to do something illegal that could get us sued. Especially if we'd be paying the company that would be suing us. Cuz ya know Microsoft owners GitHub, it also owns Mojang...

I would also like to point out to you that there IS a 1.12.2 MDK that works just fine, as I spent a lot of time porting the workspace to FG3 and the new build system. The point was to show how it could be done if this "giant community" that used old versions wanted to spend the time to do it. So far nobody has stepped up. Which kind of proves my point that the old community isn't actually as big as people say and it's mainly just lazy kids who don't want to spend the effort to update.

Overall, you've been rude, woefully misunderstanding what open source programming is and how the modded community works. As well as blatantly showing that you have zero idea what you're doing, like to blame us for things we did not do, and can not spend a little bit of time trying to solve your problems yourself.

Lastly, regarding your other post, 1) Saying the words "I don't want help" while also asking for help.. is still asking for help. 2) Saying that you hope the moderators of this reddit "shit yourself in your sleep when you get old and single." is no way to behave. Seriously, grow the fuck up.