Julian Gough: I wrote the End Poem. I also own it, because I never signed a contract with Mojang, or Microsoft. Now I am setting the End Poem free, under a Creative Commons public domain license, for all of you to use, dramatise, film, sing, remix, or play with.
As you can tell from my total lack of karma, I don't really use Reddit (wrong generation). But I thought I'd pop by, because this might be of interest to some of you.
My name is Julian Gough; I mostly write novels and children's books. Back in 2011, though, I wrote the End Poem, just before the official launch of the game. For complicated reasons, I never signed the contract with Mojang, and for even more complicated reasons, I again refused to sign it in 2014, when Microsoft bought Mojang. So I own the End Poem.
It's been kind of tricky to know what to DO about that, and over the years I mostly just parked the problem. Most of the problems that led to me not signing the contract were to do with friendship, not money, so I was very reluctant to send in the lawyers, because suing would have made it all about money, and it wasn't about money. Plus, suing is bad karma! And I liked everyone involved; we had just communicated badly. And I love Minecraft, and love the fact that so many people get to see the End Poem. I mean, that's why I wrote it.
Although, it's an oversimplification to say "I wrote the End Poem": particularly in the second half, the universe wrote the End Poem through me. I had no idea what words would come out of my pen next; even though I was writing them down, I read them with fascination as they appeared.
So, anyway, last year, I did some (nice, legal, safe) psilocybin mushrooms in a very special place in the Netherlands, and rather to my surprise, got some advice from the universe about Microsoft and Minecraft... and you.
And so I have finally freed the End Poem. More specifically, I have made it available under a Creative Commons license. This one: CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
It's a nice elegant solution to the problem, where nobody gets hurt. By bringing the End Poem into the public domain, everyone is free to use it, including Microsoft. So I give them the gift of the End Poem, and they give me the gift of continuing to distribute it around the world. Nothing in the game needs to change. But outside the game, you are all now free to play with the End Poem; put it on posters, or t-shirts, or barn doors, set it to music, make it into an art film, whatever.