As of today, prolific Minecrafter R-T-B has ported the popular plugin Biome Terrain Mod to Beta 1.2 (the latest version). Miners rejoice! You can once again generate outlandish chunks, like Avatar-esque floating islands (pictured). R-T-B says he plans at least one bugfix release before soliciting donations for continued development.
He mentions in that thread that he runs a Minecraft hosting solution, so this could be an important precedent in the Minecraft community. Server hosting providers not only have a vested interest in keeping MC administration easy and feature-laden, they also have the technical chops to keep popular plugins from falling into disrepair.
Thanks for the hard work, R-T-B!
