Indie developer Mojang Specifications has acquired some new employees to help enhance server support for its flagship title, Minecraft. While this is good news in and of itself, the most interesting part is that the new hires were selected from the Minecraft community; specifically, the top four developers of Bukkit, a "commununity-based Minecraft server implementation."

The news comes via a post by lead developer Jens Bergensten on the developer's official blog. The new team "will work on improving both the server and the client to offer better official support for larger servers and server modifications," and includes Warren Loo, Erik Broes, Nathan Adams, and Nathan Gilbert.

After the new server API is constructed, Mojang intends to expand it to support client-side modding. Though backwards-compatibility for current Bukkit users won't be guaranteed, bukkit will be updated to support version 1.2, which should shorten the wait when Minecraft server updates occur.

Bergensten notes that the developers of Bukkit were chosen over other community-driven Minecraft teams because they always kept the server admins in mind when developing modifications. "We hope that this will help the quality of Minecraft multi-player to improve, both for large and private family servers, while still being able to add fun stuff for the bigger audience," Bergensten wrote.

Aside from the four bukkit developers, developer Daniel Kaplan "will join to handle the project lead to coordinate Minecraft's broader goals."