Op/Ed: Why I'm not looking forward to OpenSim

by Jessica Holyoke

I was sitting in Robin's office hours and looking around. I came to the realization that I am not looking forward to OpenSim. 

OpenSim is the eventual program where the Grid All Hail the Mighty Grid exists as a centralized land.  Instead of everyone coming into Linden Lab's jurisdiction, residents can host their own servers/land that are branches off of the Grid.  Supporters of the idea argue that if a resident does not like Linden Lab policy, wait to host your own land and you can do what you want.  So if you like gambling, build a server that's not hosted in the United States. (Even though that does not take care of the payment issues that was part of the reasoning behind the gambling ban.  The Credit Card companies had as much an impact on the Lab banning gambling as US law.) 

But instead of opening up our shared internet experience, OpenSim promises to sequester us more.  The Goreans will be on their own servers.  The Furries will have their own lands, which may be separate from the Babyfurs.  The business people, the fashionistas, the licentious, the educators can all be sectored off in their own areas.

In many ways, SL is already sequestered, even if you don't fall into one of the sub-cultures mentioned above.  If you don't make the effort, you can see the same people day in and day out.  You don't know about the Turk that's studying astronomy in Greece.  You don't discover the Spaniard that's lost his way in a house store.  You don't find out about the people who decided to create a motorcycle gang in a land where you don't need motorcycles.  The people that go to technical office hours, hang out at Bondage Playground or want to recreate a caliphate are hidden if you stay on your own little plot of land, which can be good or bad depending on your point of view. 

OpenSim promises to make that situation worse.  The ability to mix and match, to see Rockefeller Center beside a Gorean enclave, is part of what make SL interesting.  Its our diversity and individually unique imaginations, not any one person or group's shared views, that make Second Life a better experience than other virtual worlds.   

Which brings me back to Robin's office hours.  Perhaps because her office hours are more about the community as opposed to coding, you see a wider range of residents.  At an office hour you can see me sitting next to a furry, a warrior woman, and Prokofy Neva.  The ideal proposed by OpenSim is that we would never have to sit down with each other and discuss the future of SL as a community. Which we, as residents, are no matter what the corporate-minded Lindens would have us believe.  And working with people that you disagree with is better than trying to create enclaves which contain only those who agree with you.  Eventually,instead of a shared internet experience, all you will have is yourself on your server.   

Comments

[Angel]

Huh? Since when has disparate regions been next to each other in SL, apart from on the mainland... and when did you see anything but adfarms and 512M2 starter blocks there.

You will still TP into private regions, just as you do now if you want to go to Gor, however instead of being in Texas you will be in Russia, or Singapore, or the Maldives or New Zealand (or on your desktop)... wherever the region's owner decided to host it. It won't make any difference to you... unless you want to have your own region which will be free and without Tier.

How is this a bad thing?

[dandellion Kimban]

No, you didn't understood it. Or what you said is a dirty lie. Choose yourself.

OpenSim is, as any other opensource project, aimed towards better and faster development. The possibility to choose if your land will be hosted on LL's servers is just one part of it, not the crucial one.

If you stay on your little plot you will stay out of the rest of the community no matter if the sim is hosted on private or LL's server.

And sitting down and discussing the future of community is more on the side of open source systems than privately owned like SL is now. You know, software of that kind is developed by the community.

Next time before you start attacking something, do yourself (and us) a favour and read at least a wikipedia entry about that. Or you were sitting too much with Prokofy Neva there so he filled your head with his traditional "I hate opensource, it's against my capitalistic fetish" rumble?

[Slowpoke]

HEY GUYS I HEARD THERE'S THIS THING CALLED OPENSIM COMING IT'LL BE AWESOME

[anon]

Everything that takes some power away from Linden Labs is good.

[Prokofy Neva]

It's ok, Jessica is welcome to stay on her own sim, closed or "open-source".

My God, dandellion is like the cliche communist open-sourcerer.

Open source=closed society. Why? because a million little fiefdoms get started, usually with strong tribal leaders who subject others to their will. But the irony of such "strong" formulations is that they are quite brittle, as historical examples like the defeat of the Incas will show you, and it is very easy to run memes through all those closed cells and unfortunately have them succeed, because in these feted/fetid little cells, there is no real adversarial discussion. So that means the coders of the whole system can pretty much influence it at will with coding and memes, even while they place thin veneer of "the freedom of Balkanization" and "let a 1,000 flowers bloom" over their totalitarianism.

Open source is basically a project for changing the software to the whims of a band of obsessive "altruistic" coders who fly the flag of "democratic participation" when it is really about only a few strong leaders and their slavish followers (like the JIRA). The JIRA today is a glimpse into the awful future we face.

Really, the only defense of an open democratic society with the rule of law and protection of minorities and adversarial expression apparently can come in the hippie company town we have with the Lindens. Ultimately, we'd hope the Lindens would confederate with other company towns and make something more like, er, united states or something. Otherwise, it dissolves into an archipelago of egos, as I have always said, with anarchy posing as freedom and licentiousness posing as creativity, both of which in fact take away the freedoms of other people.

What is especially touching about these script-kiddy hacker extremists is their belief that a) the Internet is "free" and b) that something even heavier and more expensive like virtual worlds can be "free". Of course you have to pay. At least $37 a month for the DSL if nothing else, no to mention the $800 computer. What nits.

[Sin Trenton]

Like dandellion said, you seem to have mixed up two different layers; servers and the grid.
The thing is that while servers may be placed/hosted anywhere, the grid is still experienced as one, in the manner as it is today. (Some modification to that statement, since we can't really travel between islands, but have to tp, so even today, it is a bit fractured).

This means that a larger body of sims, i.e. the Confederation of DS, may be hosted on their own sims, with their own support instead of LL's (may be good, may be bad), they are still right there on the grid, just like today.

Oh, and Open Source is a great thing. I recommend reading Barney Boomslang's Why do people do Open Source?
http://radio-boomslang.shacknet.nu/%7Ebb/archives/2007/10/27/index.html#e2007-10-27T11_43_35.txt

[100 Mbit/s at home]

She is a propaganda writer.

OpenSims will be taken in use outside the USA because of the favorable legislation (no software patents there) and because the internet connections are generally better.

And yes, people tend to lie because of social expectations that they love everybody and want to sit next to Robin Linden. But, in their actions, people are racists (no black avatars in SL) and whine about their neighbours in SL and RL.

An OpenSim becomes a must to impress virtual friends by inviting them to visit home-sim. And a good alternative to run a big club or organize concerts without paying for land.

As predicted, Lunatic Lab has stopped publishing economic statistics when they started to look bad.

Entropia Universe has started IPO process.

SL is not in top-10 of VRs.

A shared internet experience has not been in the mind of LL ever or in the minds of the residents. Instead LL develops more and more different types of access control systems to parcels and residents do use them.

[Cai Pinrinha]

"The Goreans will be on their own servers. The Furries will have their own lands, which may be separate from the Babyfurs. The business people, the fashionistas, the licentious, the educators can all be sectored off in their own areas."

YEAH, FINALLY! :)

[Taft Worsley]

I find it so funny how quick this site is ready to bitch at Linden Labs for every little hiccup and yet when a viable solution comes along you bitch about that too. You people are never satisifed, yet don't have the technical brains or savy to build your way out of a wet paper bag.

Linden Labs is a failure, any company with 6 Million ++ users, yet it can't support much more then 40K online at anytime is just down right appauling and a flop. Not to mention how this company doesn't listen to the community at large and has done nothing but piss away tons of people money via way of scams and back door loop holes they just can't fix.

Now i am not saying at the current state Opensim is the hotness either, there are alot of bugs and fixes we still need to develop on, but as one who participates in this open source project, i can see the things i have seen and the development time the handful of users puts in has made leaps and bounds in coming to light with an out of box software with little on no trouble installing it on Most OS platforms. Of course there are issues that need to be fixed, but lets face it LL has had a few years jump on what this project is bringing to light and yet they can't seem to house more then 40K concurrent users without your assets inventory dying, money and land sales not working and lag that could choke a horse.

[Taft Worsley]

I for one find it quite amusing that i can use my sl software and connect to a grid in which i own, control and manage without the interference of some company who doesn't answer their tech support calls or who you have to spam with 20 mails just to get some ones attention. Now with that being said yes, i agree OpenSim has a ways to come before it is a real threat to LL, but i am of the believe that when it gets to that point you will find the metaverse to be much more of an attraction for a few reasons.

1. A Company doesn't need to spend and absorbent amount of money to get a location up and running - a basic server with OS and a good internet connection, which most US companies already have is all it takes. So instead of paying LL $5275 for a years worth of bad service, you can support your users with existing IT staff and a server you have lying around. (I have had 35 concurrent users running on a dual PIII 450mhz box with a gig of ram - that running all three servers asset, login, and grid on one box as a single stand alone grid)

2. Support can come more quickly as there are more IT managers looking after the locations instead of two people at LL that know WTF they are doing with the software they wrote.

3. The software already supports boundary crossing - yes you can go from my grid to another grid owned by someone totally independent from me and it works( at least in our testing)

4. You have more people contributing with more brain power then you'll ever have at linden labs. LL hires their employees based on many criteria, one being college educated, i got news for you - some of the best people in this internet game have never attend one day of post high school training, some of these guys include Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs all college dropouts - i bet LL would hire them in a heartbeat - but not the average joe hacker who does nothing but geek all day.

5. With opensim you don't have a for profit company that needs to make money to pay the bills and keep the lights on. Most company's and people involved in this project to date are doing it for the fun and the challenge, not for profit. Now I am not naive to think that some day all the developers will try and get a slice of the pie for their work, but its about the passion of the game/environment that's driving this project at this point not money like LL. That's something LL has lost along time ago when they started making heaps of money and having to pay heaps of bills. So long term instead of one company choking on the cost of data facility floor space, bandwidth and server resources you have 100's of people adding this equipment - How could that be a bad thing? More resources - any way you slice it being independently managed has to a better solution - then one company holding all the marbles and yet keeps dropping a few because their hands are full.

Long term there are many things OpenSim and the community have to work out for this to really effect the bottom line at LL. But as quick as I see thing come to light in this project, if i was Linden Labs, i would either embrace the technology or start shoring up the shit system they have running. I mean look at the effects and ramifications of some of LL decisions - they have been piss poor at best. How many people have lost money due to scams i.e touch this prim and it sucks up all your money, or land bots make a simple newbee mistake and you lost $100 US bucks because of a bot. Your bought a 25000L$ poker table prior to the gambling ban, well your out that $93 US dollars as you cant use the thing without violating the TOS - get caught and lose your whole account. Then there is the whole issue of commercialization - when you sign up for an account the first thing they do is shove a join this commercial group right up your ass before you even commit to becoming a member. Then you have this whole age verification system - when did LL become the police, isn't it mom and dad's job to pay attention to what their kids are doing on the web. The list goes on and on and you guys know what i am talking about, if not go back and read the previous monthly posts here about all the shit LL has done to the user base. The biggest one of all is to not listen to the paying customer and to shit on them at every turn for their own financial gain. I have been a sl member for awhile and its funny the amount of people on my buddy list who months ago spent hours and hours on line, yet tonight out of the maybe 100 people i have on that list - there were a whole three people online. That's saying something for company with 6 million + accounts - its saying they have taken a good thing and turned it into a pile of shit - that's what its saying. Atleast with Opensim you have a second choice to a platform and world that is by far one of the best metaverse products on the market. But as i said in the begin of this - you people aren't satisfied with anything and instead of jumping in and lending a hand - you just spout hot air and bitch!!!

[TWorsely]

I for one find it quite amusing that i can use my sl software and connect to a grid in which i own, control and manage without the interference of some company who doesn't answer their tech support calls or who you have to spam with 20 mails just to get some ones attention. Now with that being said yes, i agree OpenSim has a ways to come before it is a real threat to LL, but i am of the believe that when it gets to that point you will find the metaverse to be much more of an attraction for a few reasons.

1. A Company doesn't need to spend and absorbent amount of money to get a location up and running - a basic server with OS and a good internet connection, which most US companies already have is all it takes. So instead of paying LL $5275 for a years worth of bad service, you can support your users with existing IT staff and a server you have lying around. (I have had 35 concurrent users running on a dual PIII 450mhz box with a gig of ram - that running all three servers asset, login, and grid on one box as a single stand alone grid)

2. Support can come more quickly as there are more IT managers looking after the locations instead of two people at LL that know WTF they are doing with the software they wrote.

3. The software already supports boundary crossing - yes you can go from my grid to another grid owned by someone totally independent from me and it works( at least in our testing)

4. You have more people contributing with more brain power then you'll ever have at linden labs. LL hires their employees based on many criteria, one being college educated, i got news for you - some of the best people in this internet game have never attend one day of post high school training, some of these guys include Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs all college dropouts - i bet LL would hire them in a heartbeat - but not the average joe hacker who does nothing but geek all day.

[Taft Worsley]

5. With opensim you don't have a for profit company that needs to make money to pay the bills and keep the lights on. Most company's and people involved in this project to date are doing it for the fun and the challenge, not for profit. Now I am not naive to think that some day all the developers will try and get a slice of the pie for their work, but its about the passion of the game/environment that's driving this project at this point not money like LL. That's something LL has lost along time ago when they started making heaps of money and having to pay heaps of bills. So long term instead of one company choking on the cost of data facility floor space, bandwidth and server resources you have 100's of people adding this equipment - How could that be a bad thing? More resources - any way you slice it being independently managed has to a better solution - then one company holding all the marbles and yet keeps dropping a few because their hands are full.

Long term there are many things OpenSim and the community have to work out for this to really effect the bottom line at LL. But as quick as I see thing come to light in this project, if i was Linden Labs, i would either embrace the technology or start shoring up the shit system they have running. I mean look at the effects and ramifications of some of LL decisions - they have been piss poor at best. How many people have lost money due to scams i.e touch this prim and it sucks up all your money, or land bots make a simple newbee mistake and you lost $100 US bucks because of a bot. Your bought a 25000L$ poker table prior to the gambling ban, well your out that $93 US dollars as you cant use the thing without violating the TOS - get caught and lose your whole account. Then there is the whole issue of commercialization - when you sign up for an account the first thing they do is shove a join this commercial group right up your ass before you even commit to becoming a member. Then you have this whole age verification system - when did LL become the police, isn't it mom and dad's job to pay attention to what their kids are doing on the web. The list goes on and on and you guys know what i am talking about, if not go back and read the previous monthly posts here about all the shit LL has done to the user base. The biggest one of all is to not listen to the paying customer and to shit on them at every turn for their own financial gain. I have been a sl member for awhile and its funny the amount of people on my buddy list who months ago spent hours and hours on line, yet tonight out of the maybe 100 people i have on that list - there were a whole three people online. That's saying something for company with 6 million + accounts - its saying they have taken a good thing and turned it into a pile of shit - that's what its saying. Atleast with Opensim you have a second choice to a platform and world that is by far one of the best metaverse products on the market. But as i said in the begin of this - you people aren't satisfied with anything and instead of jumping in and lending a hand - you just spout hot air and bitch!!!

[PierreCorell Flow]

Many thanks to you, Jessica. OpenSim would be exactly evolved to what you said. If people would have the choice to decide, most would choose the privacy, like in personal rl it is often, too.

We have to keep Second Life as it basically is - a world of unity, exhibits and exploration. These possibillities make SL primarly worth to take part on. And we all should be interested in to save these.

Thx, PCo.

[Alazarin]

I've been a resident in Second Life for over 2 1/2 years and I'd love to be able to host my own sim using the Open Sim software. Why? I build stuff and simply can't afford to buy a sim at the rates Linden Labs charge. I nearly got there but then they introduced their price hikes which totally killed off that dream for me. Yes, I could have gone down the landlord / land cutter path and paid for my personal playground by renting out space but that's something I have no interest in. I'm an artist not a businessperson.

I've already got a home server that I use to host my radio station and it's got plenty spare of disk space and processing capacity. If Taft can run his OpenSim on a dual-processor P-III/450 than my old P-IV/1.6ghz Dell Optiplex ought to be more than enough for the job.

So, yes, it's OpenSim for me.... I'm already waiting in the queue :D

[Anonymous]

Uhh, misinformed much?

Also, with Opensim there's Opengrid.

http://www.deepgrid.com/ is an experimental grid.

IE. the grid is 100% separate from LL.

With opensim, we may see some people hooking into LL for a certain price, but I know a majority of people are going to be like "HAY FUCK YOU LL." and start their own independent grids. Furries will probably take the biggest advantage of this, which we'll see tons of hilarious drama as there will be mod abuse that makes the linden abuse look like a fair system.

It will be amusing

[A Club Troll]

"The ability to mix and match, to see Rockefeller Center beside a Gorean enclave, is part of what make SL interesting. Its our diversity and individually unique imaginations, not any one person or group's shared views, that make Second Life a better experience than other virtual worlds. "

Or the ability to troll the communities.

A Club Troll is a SL troll who seeks the company of the other people in meeting places. When she finds other people, her tactics of socializing is to eavesdrop if any discussion is going on between the avatars. If there is any, she starts to whine about it.

[JustMe]

"But, in their actions, people are racists (no black avatars in SL)"

I guess this is a good example of where you go in SL. There are black avatars, black night clubs, etc.

There's the Cosmopolitan Club, the Harlem Cafe, etc.

Some of the people in RL are Brazilian, some African, some Afro-American, some mixed race, and some are whites trying a black av to see what it's like. Are they in the minority? Yes .. but here in the US and in most other countries with broadband Internet services, blacks are in the minority too. It's no different in SL.

BTW, I saw a green av the other day ... maybe SL has spawned an entirely new race ?

[Prokofy Neva]

I can't *wait* to see all these pompous geeks talking out of their ass hook up their rinky-dink servers that they think are going to be cheaper, cost less, and not burn out as much as Linden Lab's, and will work better. It will be an utter laff riot to see. Because every basement-dwelling nit thinks he can do it better and cheaper, but he is merely thinking of servers that do the light tasks of the regular Internet or his boring call center job, and not the streaming and asset-serving of the interactive 3-D world.

If anything, hosting is going to likely cost people more, not less, and they may pass on those costs.

There is the issue of the hook-up to Linden Lab, which means they may clip people there, so even if they get a cheap server, they will be paying back the difference in the hook-up.

But wait, you say, why even hook up? And that's just it. Some of the geekniks will not want to hook-up and will make Basement World. That's fine -- but who will want to live there? It will have no stores or content or social life. The mass of customers just won't want to come into one of these script-kiddy sims where the avatars are chickens scratching in brown dirt or spinning triangles on Moebius strips. And that won't even keep geeks happy for long.

The idea that it is "LL who are the police" in loco parentis is utterly laughable. That's not what the Belgian, Dutch, or German police or media thought lol. As for gambling, Europeans who have this idea that their states are going to sit still and allow unregulated gambling also likely have another thing coming. What's hilarious is that all these geeks writing here who "want to be free" are merely going to recapitulate every single step that Linden Lab went through dealing with reality, and probably do it half as well.

You can't make an economy when you don't have a mass of basic customers. So all these little garage bands and boutique basements are going to languish.

I'm betting the IBM blogger is correct -- that LL won't open source precisely because the code is too much of a mess. And people reverse engineering will bog down without enough customers because people will prefer to go to SL -- or other worlds.

[Prokofy Neva]

>5. With opensim you don't have a for profit company that needs to make money to pay the bills and keep the lights on.

And uh, how will Geeks R Us pay the bills? Steal electricity?

Now I am not naive to think that some day all the developers will try and get a slice of the pie for their work, but its about the passion of the game/environment that's driving this project at this point not money like LL.

Huh? What are you smoking? No, it's the investment of capitalists who made it possible to develop the platform and subsidize all the little script kiddies on it and give them essentially unlimited free server time, space, and content rights. Insane that you should think other wise. Second Life was not paid for by bottle caps.

>That's something LL has lost along time ago when they started making heaps of money and having to pay heaps of bills. So long term instead of one company choking on the cost of data facility floor space, bandwidth and server resources you have 100's of people adding this equipment - How could that be a bad thing?

Uh, because it's uncoordinated? Dumb? Stupid? There's nothing essentially "evil" about centralizing something in one company -- not forever and anon, as they explain, but having them be the first and major hub, and then have them manage the appearance of other hubs in other countries. There's this silly hippie geeky idea that "many hands make light work". No, they make for chaos and duplication of labour and infighting and stuff like Linux LOL. Stuff nobody but geeks wants or promote.

>More resources - any way you slice it being independently managed has to a better solution - then one company holding all the marbles and yet keeps dropping a few because their hands are full.

Uh...yeah, sure, and that's why telephone companies spun all all these baby bells in their day but then...seemed to emerge once again into giant things like Verizon or Bell Atlantic...
Decentralization isn't some absolute fetish that you have to praise uber alles -- parallel processing is good, but note very single function can be decentralized. Currency cannot retain its value if there are a zillion currencies, for example.

Honestly, the huffing and puffing going on here is funny to watch. The idea that LL is somehow "more" vulnerable to scams than some kid in his basement or with his college's purloined server space. There's something pathetically infantile about it all.

Like this ad showing the old guy contemplating networking and organizing something managed by one company but with greater facilitation and access for many, versus a young guy trying to show off with dumb bells and whistles to be "unique":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LkQrtCIFA4

[Pie Psaltery]

Me, I like garage bands way more then corporate rock.

Yeah! for competition!! Yeah!! for alternatives!!!

/me happy geek.

[hai2u jessica]

Again Jessica has no idea what she is talking about and planted a picture of herself AGAIN only this time was too lazy to even make it a new one. She shouldnt even be writing articles...just put her picture up on the site and type blah blah blah blah blah and then let people comment. Seems the comments of the other people are the only thing interesting about anything Jessica writes.

[Anonymous]

Funny you should say that, prokofy.

Considering for a long time the internet was made up of "rinky-dink" servers and built by "pompous geeks" (including your precious second life)I'd say there isn't a problem.

Also, it doesn't matter if SL is 3D or not. The server doesnt care if it's 3d. the client does, the server just tells the client what it has to render. that this particular area has a cube or not, the fact Opensim is built with C# AND can run on a system as old as a 450 mhz PII with 35 users connected is already something amazing, but I'd like to see that tested with physics and heavy prim builds. It would probably need a little more than that.

Prokofy, do the world a favor, stop being a troll, and stop being a fucking idiot.

Go back to knitting sweaters and going spastic because someone who "doesnt look quite right" is on your e-lawn.

Also, I wouldnt totally discount the ideas of independent grids operating without LL's grid.

One word: Fandoms.

Certain ones would be all over the idea like stink on shit.

[Prokofy Neva]

It doesn't matter if the server "doesn't know" whether something is 3-d or not -- obviously virtual worlds with loads of dbase calls and interactions and caching and whatnot are a lot more complex than holding your dentist office's medical records and spreadsheets. Geez, that's just plain common sense.

All I do is apply reasonable logic and common sense to this field that people constantly try to aggrandize and obfuscate as if it is the Dark Secret of the Ages, but hey, it's just car repair and you are just garage mechanics, get over yourselves.

I don't know how to knit, never learned, never will.

I don't recall the early Internet days being populated with quite the extremist asses I see around Second Life, no, that's a unique phenomenon.

I didn't discount the idea of any grid just failing to never hook up to Second Life. But...I'm discounting the idea of it being very interesting. Uh, surprise me.

[Anonymous]

Oh hai prok, one more thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmxPfZtV6w0

Speaking of IBM and rinky-dink servers, there's one now using a operating system based on open source!

[Nacon]

"All I do is apply reasonable logic and common sense to this field that people constantly try to aggrandize and obfuscate as if it is the Dark Secret of the Ages, but hey, it's just car repair and you are just garage mechanics, get over yourselves."

That's your logic? Good lord, how do you make your stupid logic with anything else?
(No wonder why people hates you, Prok.)

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

I would be very interested in a link to any example of Prokofy Neva making any argument that is neither ad hominem nor strawman.

[DF]

I don't know much about computer stuff, and all the things I read about it are like chinese to me.

If you go from sim A via TP to sim B...

Would you notice any difference if sim B is on someone's computer in Arizona, in stead of on a LL computer in California?

And, if I would run my own sim at home on my computer, without having it connected to LL's grid, could I still let others log in to my sim if I gave them the 'adress'?

On the creating little islands and no-one of the communities meeting eachother anymore at places like it happens now, I think it's unlikely that you won't ever run into a gorean or a furry anymore. after all, there's still, and always will be, meeting places and shops and clubs and whatnot on the main land.
Aside from that, most people don't belong to only one cummunity.

There's fashion crazy furries, Goreans will keep buying Xcite products, ponygirls need their bridles and hooves when in ponysims, and will go back to their office block when they go back to their job as land baroness, and there will always be people who havent visited the gorgeous Caledon sims.

Traffic on the main grid will not die, theres just going to be even more sims one can visit from the main grid, and secluded private sims for those who want to keep their fetish out of sight of others, that will only be accessible for the invited. (if that's possible, I dunno :))

Me for one, will definately create a little sim to build in. I'm a model crafter, and SL has been the perfect no-cost way for me to make my shipmodels.
Not having my own land to build in, and the public sandboxes filled with greifers and other assorted kind and unkind people interrupting while building... being able to build stuff in peace and quiet is a dream come true.

I just hope I'll be able to have my homebuilt stuff on the main grid for when I want to show off without having to pay for 'importing' them to the main grid... (and hoping this won't give the Lindens any ideas lol)

[DaveOner]

Prok: You never have anything positive to say here which leads me to believe you don't like what's going on here. Since the internet is "open source" and has a lot of different places to go to with all different kinds of people (I know that part scares you) maybe you'd be happier going to one of THOSE places and stop crowding the comments section here.

Anyway, Jessica's article points to the one thing that is wrong with most of the vocal anti-everything new minority in SL...they're stuck in the recent past. I hear all the time how much better SL was before they added all these things and did this or that. While it might be true that good times were had when there were only 3k people online at a time, those days are gone and you wouldn't be able to enjoy yourself if you went back.

But honestly, this article has little to do with Open Sim (obviously by the opinions expressed) and more to do with wanting to be famous in a crowded room.

Do you think anyone will give a shit about Prok or Anshe or Jessica once open sim is around? The land barons' businesses will drop dramatically since they aren't actually providing a service but rather putting their name over LL's name and being middlemen leaching off of LL's hardware and services. The focus will potentially shift from giving these people money so they can pretend they aren't pathetic to more creative people with actual skills and resources who are more interested in building than making money.

That's not to say there won't be tons of companies that will eventually take advantage of this but it's just like how you don't have to go to pepsi.com if you don't want to. I don't see how anyone could make an argument against variety and more choices.

And that "happy community" bullshit doesn't hold water. The majority of people in SL stay around their own "kind"...meaning people that stand around, play dress up and cause drama of one form or another. You'll all still be able to find each other!

So yeah, that's not the sky falling, it's your house of cards now that more people will have the option of getting their own deck!

[Taft Worsley]

Prokofy Neva - did you ever stop to think - Some of us might already be in a business that would be complimented by the system, but not have to profit from it. Prime example, my personally business is already a collocation and data hosting facility - all cisco and IBM - i would put my facility against anyone of those the lindens are renting floor space in - Its a Class 1 Tier 2 facility. There would be no monthly extra cost for me to host another server or two or 40 to make money off this. But what about companies such as IBM, Microsoft (since this does run on Windows Server under .net) or better yet the clothing boutique who host there own data - there are tons of company's out there that have bandwidth and equipment cost already and have the cost associated with doing some other type of business that doesn't rely on Information technology but is better complimented by IT - so there is no over head or very minimal as its the cost they already have for doing business, no matter what business that is.

uncoordinated? Dumb? Stupid?- big adjectives -I guess this means you dont agree

Lets give you some history about baby bells - this was caused to break up ATT market share, the government regulators did it for just that reason - so that instead of ATT controlling 80% of all the phone service market share in the US, that they did at one point - it would be divided into smaller regional companies - so somewhere someone else ( a collective group) thought smaller is better then one guy holding all the cards - they used 22 regional companies as opposed to one company - maybe you should do some homework because you obviously haven't clue of what your talking about in this area of the conversation.

Hai2u = Considering for a long time the internet was made up of "rinky-dink" servers and built by "pompous geeks" (including your precious second life)I'd say there isn't a problem.

The internet is still made of that - you have people hosting data in small retail business not to mention the home user with a comcast business account and 5 Ip addresses, you have many company's who already buy cage space who have servers collocated who use them for off site backup, DNS server redundancy and even family type stuff - the internet is still a bunch of little geeks - housing servers - not just in data centers, hell Microsoft now has a nice HP home server for those who want to be able to take there house computer, music and files with them to work.

RE: It doesn't matter if the server "doesn't know" whether something is 3-d or not -- obviously virtual worlds with loads of dbase calls and interactions and caching and whatnot are a lot more complex than holding your dentist office's medical records and spreadsheets. Geez, that's just plain common sense

you haven't a clue, what h2 said is right the client is what matters the server is serving nothing more then text data and images - nothing more then a web page and according to google, their system runs on lots of low end systems which are clustered as it cheaper to throw them into the cluster to spend a million dollars on hardware - but wait i guess your as rich as these guys who run google to know more about grid computing and server farms of clusters. The reason you feel it takes more is because every time LL has an issue they blame the hardware / software- which if you know anything about SL LL is running tons of open source code already - that's why they have issues and time delays - they can't fix what others have built and need to wait on these companies to come up with a work around or a fix - so as much as your bitching on one hand about open source - you praising a company who is using it on the other. Hypocritical thinking is what your offering up - not logic

I wonder how many times a code change fuck up has cause the servers hardware to be taxed - yet its always someone else faulty when there is trouble - its called the blame game and ever company does it and lets face it LL has a great PR spin department. I can remember once a few months back where LL said their outage was due to a collocation faculties bandwidth redundancy issue - i don't know what fly by night company they are hosting with, but i can tell you most assuredly it wasn't the collocations fault as they said more likely one of LL highly educated network admins who didn't make the right settings changes - but hey its always easier to blame the next guy.

Personally i don't care if opensim ever comes to market - its great now even with the bugs to host a sim party of 12 friends and not have to worry about some a-hole running around propositioning every girl online for a virtual fuck, which is purely useless in my eye anyway. The bugs it has are minor to the freedom you have to work, play and have fun without paying a high cost for service to a company who could give two shits about you and has shabby service at best - but yet talks out the side of their neck about being transparent and for the user community - you mean to tell me with all the signers of the Open letter to LL, that them releasing this voice was nothing more then for braggin rights, I have yet to run across anyone in world that even uses that shit - but all those people wanting stability - i have seen them 10 fold on the grid - yeh that's a company who's working for the user base who pays their bills.

Maybe you should get your head out of Phillip's and Robin's asses, wipe the shit off your face and look more into what your talking about before you come spouting the logical hot air when you haven't a clue what it is your spouting about!!

[Taft Worsley]

Melissa Yeuxdoux

Would you notice any difference if sim B is on someone's computer in Arizona, instead of on a LL computer in California?

- No you would see no difference

And, if I would run my own sim at home on my computer, without having it connected to LL's grid, could I still let others log in to my sim if I gave them the 'address'?
- Yes you can have as many people as your bandwdith and server equipment can handle - you don't need LL for anything

There are meeting spaces right now on the OSGRID.ORG - we have office hours and discussions both in IRC and live in the grid.

Not having my own land to build in, and the public sandboxes filled with griefers and other assorted kind and unkind people interrupting while building... being able to build stuff in peace and quiet is a dream come true. Want to give an OS grid a try, let me know - i give you an island to play on

Right now OpenSim has nothing to do with LL or the second life grid - the grids that are running are private grids with nothing to do what so ever with LL.

[Darien Caldwell]

What all the people who are all "ya let's make our own grid" don't seem to realize, is that setting up your own grid will cut you off from just about everything that makes SL 'cool' and worthwhile. It would be like moving to the North Pole. Ya you have all this free space, but not a whole lot to do there.

[Jamie David]

Just my humble opinon;
There was a 2D virtual world called Palace. In the beginning they were nice to their Residents, they wanted people, well green balls. Then things started getting more and more complex on their servers. They sat in their equivalent to office hours and said less and less and hardly listened.

Then the users found that they could run their own servers. The mass exodus happened. No one wanted to deal with the rules, conditions and environment of the main server and ran for external servers with in days of creating accounts.

Now in Palace all you could do was pay money so that you could customize your avatar. There was no inworld money, businesses or the like. It was just the love of the community. With own servers Palace'ers could have the freedom to create as they wished. So of course they chose to build their own. It required a linux or Windows server.

The company thought OOO we can make money by licensing the software. But no one did because by then they were fed up with the company and had no need for the master Directory of servers they had. The better ones were opperated by independent users.

So in the end Palace the company was sold to AOL and died. The users and servers exist till today. 10+ years later.

I see the same in SecondLife. I love it just as I loved Palace. Community. We had kid, skater, japanese, gorean, BDSM and those who were into furry as well as many others. Now LindenLab has been doing the same, withdrawning from the community that they needed to start off. They have been adding rules, conditions and ways to limit the access of the residents to support and the like.

With the server troubles it is little wonder that some folk decided to try and create a server. I personally heard about it and started playing when SL had banned me because they owed me money and felt I owed them. So being unable to access the real server I created my own. It has been a great source of fun. I got to sit with my kids and we built. They now have their own grid with 16 sims where they and a few of their friends build, hang and play. I couldn't and wouldn't allow them onto the Teen grid or the Main grid so Open Sim has given them something that SL couldn't or wouldn't save for spending $$$.

The Land Barons have been making their money as LindenLab has. Cost of land is high. Now there is an option where for 40ish bucks you can rent a server and load up opensim and off you go. 16 sims later and you have something that Lindens would charge you 4800$ a month and some frightening amount to set up.

No it is not perfect. Many things don't work but the team are amazing they seem to work 24/7 and are crossing off missing services everyday. The team is also growing as more chip in their time and effort. All very socialist. As of today my server can deal with inventory for example. It is opensource and in C# so all the code is there to be looked at and tinkered with. I am not a programmer but it is not that hard and they are very helpful in answering questions and solving problems. Takes about 2 minutes to set up on a Windows machine and 30 min to an hour on Linux.

LindenLabs have been treating the users with little to no respect for the past year or so. They must know that the moment there is serious competition the users will be gone. SL has a serious hard time with scalability and retaining users. 90% leave in first month.

Users want the freedom to do as they please and not have a nanny telling them all the time that you can't do this and that. Now they do have a good product but lousy Customer relations. So many horror stories of taking weeks or months to resolve the most basic of issues. When it comes to billing it can be a nightmare as I found. They actually wanted to charge me 50$ to fix a problem they caused with double billing for the third time.

The users will flee. Build their own grids. LindenLab knows this and has been heading toward this. Philip hopes that grids will all use SecondLife for directory, asset servers and the Financial system. I don't see that happening. The ammount of illwill towards Linden Lab is growing.

So it is the way of things. I expect in 4 months to see the population of SL main grid fall along with land prices just like the real world in US. I pay 400$ a month to LindenLab for two sims. 400$ gets me a few servers and a lot of bandwidth and that can run 2000 sims and I can hand over to my friends a sim each for free.

I loose the investment in my sim as no one will want to buy them. But that is the way it goes. LindenLab should have been finding ways to drop prices and they have not. 4 sims to one server is a serious money maker. All I would need in SL would be a small plot of land for an intergrid teleporter linking SL Grid and my grid.

For me personally the last straw after the billing trauma they put me through and this shoddy implementation of verification. Yet another 3rd party and yet another useless barrier. The big mistake happened a year and a half ago when they opened up the system to those with out creditcards. Griefing, costs and the like have all been thrown on the shoulders of the ones who pay.

There are possibilities with opensource/Open Sim to do things that allow the grids to inter connect and for residents to use bots for the SL grid that would relay chat and friendslist to where ever they are on another grid. The possibility to teleport from one grid to another just as easy as one sim to another. Scripts for a grid, region or sim. Better contol as a sim owner of things like roll backs. Recently I tried for the first time in a year to get a roll back for Forum as 20 or so prims went missing. I was gruffly told that it has to be 100+ prims to deserve a roll back. Gawwwd.

Change is always hard and worrying. I feel for those who have large land holdings. They stand to loose lots. LindenLab does not give back the money spent to buy the sim so they are out of pocket. For the content creators who have been profiting from the SecondLife monopoly it will be a hard thing. Just as it was for Microsoft when Sun provided OfficeStar for free. Or when Microsoft all but put Netscape out of business by giving away Explorer for free.

Be prepared. The genie is out of the bottle and there is no way to put it back.

[Blinders Off]

I don't know much about Open Sim, but I cannot IMAGINE what anyone would have against someone hosting their own SL world.

I mean consider: people already have private themed islands. How will Open Sim be any different than that?

From what I understand, if I want to host my sim on a quad-core, 3 gig server with dedicated hard drive and network card on a 10mbps cable interface... I'll be able to do that, yes? Result: BYE BYE LAG!

Hey, there may be things about Open Sim that I don't understand. But my primary questions will be:

* Will everyone on SL still have access to the sims unless the sim owner declares otherwise? (I certainly hope so).

* Will LL be SIGNIFICANTLY reducing their hosting and setup fees? (if not, they gotta be kidding).

* How will this pevent one of the other projects currently coming to market from eating SL's lunch? (and there are several people. The next 2 years are likely to be a little bit of a wakeup call to Linden Lab).

But the idea of people hosting their own sims on as powerful a computer as they deem proper? Hey, for $1,650 I can buy some heavy-duty equipment.

[DaveOner]

Darien misses the part where you could make the North Pole your own fun place or whatever and invite people to it to do whatever.

As far as opensourcing the server side of things I haven't seen anything specifically say you "can" or "cannot" connect your own sim to the main SL grid.

Either way SL won't go away any time soon...certainly not because of opensim. You could go kick it in SL and invite people to your own private sim to do whatever...or you could have your personally hosted sim connected to SL so people could keep their stuff and visit your sim like regular only you aren't bound by LL's support (or lack thereof).

And what makes SL 'cool' and worthwhile is different to different people. For some it's being a socialite (or sociopath in many cases) and shopping and talking. For some it's building and playing with scripts. For some it's combat. For some it's all types of sex...sounds like a perfect way to get away from Age Verification, guys!

Anyway, I look forward to seeing what options this will bring to the table for everyone. I have no illusions about SL and how everything is temporary and technically doesn't exist anyway.

[Blinders Off]

As a follow-up, while I may not understand entirely the Open-Sim concept (first I've heard of it), the post by Jamie David above is right on. I've been telling LL the same thing for at least 2 years. They've priced themselves to eventual extinction, and their shoddy performance and rickety platform is definitely not worth the price of a new car ($1650 setup and $295 a month? Get real).

[Taft Worsley]

the one thing i can say about this article is this - no matter what you say or feel about Linden Lab or Open Source / Opensim, your posting this on a LL maintenence day was a great idea, because you have done nothing but give many more people information about the Opensim Project, that certainly doesn't hurt the projects cause going forward in the future.

The more heads the merry as thats what makes open source projects fly - so thanks Jessica for helping the cause you so don't want to see suceed!

[Jamie David]

One point that seems to have been missed is that the OpenSim server will run on Windows running .net or linux running Mono. I have successfully installed it on Mac OSX (Intel), Windows XP, Linux (Cent OS, Umbutu, RH and Debian).

[Lewis Nerd]

"But the idea of people hosting their own sims on as powerful a computer as they deem proper? Hey, for $1,650 I can buy some heavy-duty equipment."

Don't they stick 4 regions on one server in the colo, thus giving you more money to play with?

Lewis

[ichi]

Super gauche article!
The author could at least have read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse

A small overview of how Linden Lab is thinking about a new architecture for the Second Life grid:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Structural_Design_Overview

Someone posted an IBM Linux ad above, this however is undoubtedly the classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwL0G9wK8j4
~ This is business! Faster, better, cheaper, constant improvement. ~

IBM and Linden Lab Launch Collaboration to Further Advance the 3D Internet:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22428.wss

[Binders Off]

@Lewis "Don't they stick 4 regions on one server in the colo, thus giving you more money to play with?"

Huh? What's a "colo"? (Sometimes abbreviations don't really serve the purpose).

Linden Lab stacks 4 sims to a server. They charge each sim a $1,650 setup fee. That means they are charging 4 people a total of $6,600 to set up a server box, and charging them a total of $295 x 4 = $1,180 a month ($14,160 a year) to operate a server.

It costs a new sim owner $4,895 the first year to set up a sim. And yes, that's US dollars.

For that kind of money, I could set up a quad-core server on a T-1 line and still come out ahead.

[Blinders Off]

BTW folks, the big question... could someone please provide the links where we can find the basic files and information for setting up our own servers? :D

I'm not sure I'll leave SL just yet... but it's nice to have the option. If LL doesn't wake up, I'd guess within the next year they're going to find their customer numbers dropping dramatically and their competition celebrating.

[Blinders Off]

OK, I've read a few more of the above posts on Open Sim...

* Linden Lab has failed to listen to the needs of their clients, have a shaky platform, and are charging exhorbitant prices for their product. Anyone who thinks the market isn't ripe for takeover is hiding his/her head in the sand.

* Regarding not being connected to the SL Grid... well, that's sad, but so what? My guess is the Open Sim community will band together and find a way to combine their user data base so that anyone can move from world to world though a world index, much as is already used at Active Worlds.

* Whether we will see large continents joined together edge to edge is a question, but IMO, I wouldn't mind one bit seeing separate, themed worlds that we can visit at a click instead of edge-to-edge endless garbage and lag being the primary way to tell when we cross from one region to another. I've always preferred the private island concept to mainland. Frankly, mainland is an area I avoid. It's primarily garbage builds, rotating advertising signs and constant head-bump security regions. Ugh. Nasty.

* Will Open Sim limit sims to 256m, or will we be able to set up both the land area and prim allowance to what our computer can handle. I'm betting a quad core with 3 gigs can handle quite a bit of land. I'd love to see the old 256m and 15,000 prim limitations bite the dust for sure.

* I would also love to see the 10m prim limit and the 30m flakey link limit go the way of the dodo.

* I'm pretty sure that the people working hard on Open Sim, if they can join together and be unified rather than chaotic, will be far more productive and far more open to input than LL ever dreamed of. I know it would take a standard coder about one afternoon to find and fix the group text problem, and maybe a couple days at the most to completely fix the Group Notices failures. I bet given a week or two they can put an end to inventory loss and given a month or two, put an end to lag, period. So much for Linden Lab monopolistic price-gouging attitude.

Bottom line, LL had a great idea, they're terrific visionaries, but they have set too many arbitrary limitations, have gouged the customers for too long, and at a 95% customer loss rate... I would say it is evident people are looking for an alternative. And from what I am hearing, Open Sim stands a very good chance of being that alternative.

[Jessica Holyoke]

The editorial wasn't about the technical side of OpenSim. It was about one social aspect of it. Thank you for the links though.

The article wasn't supposed to convey that OpenSim is "evil" but that there is a down side that isn't addressed. I'm a little surprised that so many felt so strongly about OpenSim.

Thanks for commenting.

[Bumpy Bits]

"OpenSim promises to make that situation worse. The ability to mix and match, to see Rockefeller Center beside a Gorean enclave, is part of what make SL interesting. Its our diversity and individually unique imaginations, not any one person or group's shared views, that make Second Life a better experience than other virtual worlds."

Huh? You really think Rockefeller Center belongs beside a Gorean enclave?

I have other great ideas then.

How about a dance club on the Star Trek bridge?

Maybe we could put a race track beside a rose garden.

Or even a zoo beside a French cafe! Nothing like zoo doo to go with your tea.

Are you really serious? The idea of individual, themed worlds, separate from some main grid really appeals to me. I'm tired of putting up big tree partitions so that I don't have to stare at the shopping mall next door. For sure the idea of setting up my own sim without having to pay Linden Lab $295 a month sounds just wonderful!

I could never own a sim on Second Life because of the prices. If Open Sim allows me to do so, I'm all for it! Goodbye Second-rate Life!

[Blinders Off]

One other primary advantage to the Open Sim concept: zero grid downtime. One server may be down for one reason or another, but other servers will always be up. SL was offline for how many hours today? How many thousands of $$$ does that come to in SL commerce.

Zero downtime. Yeah, that's a big plus.

[ichi]

ok then:
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

obviously this isn't for everyone...

OpenSIM Mega-Prims Extravaganza!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqcdH4ub6rQ

[Taft Worsley]

Links for opensimulaor Software and Other Good OS Stuff...

http://www.opensimulator.org - simulator software wikki
http://www.osgrid.org - A common grid run by CFK and you can attach your grid to it
http://www.deepgrid.com/ - DeepGrid is a public network for connection region simulators
http://gridgalaxay.wordpress.com - Taft's public test grid and som other information

These are the last version that were considered "stable" and useable in a test enviornment.
Version 0.4.0 without compiling the source
http://ruth.petitbe.be/build/

Source Version in zip
http://dist.opensimulator.org/opensim-0.4.zip
http://dist.opensimulator.org/opensim-0.4.tar.gz
You will need http://www.microsoft.com/express/vcsharp/Default.aspx
If you decide to compile the source code using the svn download source.

http://tortoisesvn.net/ - will let you download the daily source files if you prefer to compile the software yourself.

P.S. The spam checker on this site sucks!!!!

[Taft Worsley]

look to http://gridgalaxy.wordpress.com for more information as this ass site keeps rejecting the post as spam!!

[d3adlyc0d3c]

ARE YOU GUYS STUPID? OPENSIM IS ALREADY OUT. YOU HAVE ALL TROLLED YOURSELVES AND WE'RE LOLLING AT YOU. WE HAVE BEEN USING OPENSIM OFF AND ON FOR EONS. IT WAS BEING USED TO TEST NEW WEAPONS AND EXPERIMENTAL EXPLOITS THAT MAKE SHIT SUCH AS THIS POSSIBLE:

http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=snapshot013no6.jpg

OH AND ON A LIGHTER NOTE LOOK AT WHAT DARTH VADER IS DOING TO YOUR SIMS:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9E4dcYPY6Uw

KTHXBYE

[Anonymous]

@ prok
extremist asses like yourself? :)

[Blinders Off]

To the UPPERCASE poster above with the goofy name:

Someone who doesn't have the brains to not type in all upper case doesn't impress me. The Patriotic N*gras don't impress me (the spam filter won't even let me type their name because of its abusive concept). They're a juvenile, imbecilic group without a shred of maturity or respect for anyone. As such, they get no respect from me and the goons who belong to such groups I consider somewhere in the area of subhuman. So if your post was supposed to impress anyone with your wit and intelligence, I recommend you dive back into your collection of porn tapes and leave the posting to the adults. LOL

[Remy]

"Prokofy Neva - did you ever stop to think - Some of us might already be in a business that would be complimented by the system, but not have to profit from it."

No, she never stops to think.

She just goes on accusing people of the sinister shit that SHE thinks of.

It really IS classic projection. SHE thinks that way, so she expects that everyone else does. It's similar to why people who cheat on their partners many times suspect their partner (and sometimes the person they are cheating with - oh irony that)of cheating.

All this "evil" and "zomg communists" crap is the product of a malfunctioning brain that dwells in the past, nothing more, nothing less.

[Allana Dion]

I am a supporter of the OpenSim project and I look forward to the opportunities I believe will come from it.

That said however, Jessica, I do understand what you're saying and there is a part of me that feels the same sense of loss.

Some people here are being too harsh I think. I thought your article was well written and I do see where you're coming from.

[dandellion Kimban]

"What all the people who are all "ya let's make our own grid" don't seem to realize, is that setting up your own grid will cut you off from just about everything that makes SL 'cool' and worthwhile. It would be like moving to the North Pole. Ya you have all this free space, but not a whole lot to do there."

What you don't realize is that if I run my own sim that doesn't mean it is disconnected from the rest of the grid. If you tp there you don't see the difference.

What other anti-open-source-SL activists here forgot is that LL announced opening of the server's code. So, second life will be open source with or without OpenSim. Yes, that would be a strike to feudalism of second life.

[Prokofy Neva]

dandellion, you are forgetting that a) the cost of hooking up may be steep; b) the requirements for hooking up as trusted may be more stringent than you script kiddies will tolerate and c) that people speak openly of wanting to have their own *separate* grid that never connects up.

And we all know that LL announced they were going to open-source...and then what? It was a year ago. And...well? Where are they on it? What's the time-table? Cory Linden's departure is very likely related to this.

[Blinders Off]

Hold it... Cory Linden's departure? I missed something bigtime. What's that about?

[Anonymous]

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

[Anonymous]

BAAAWWW.

QQ moar

[Jamie David]

Cost of hooking up is not steep. Server for daughters cost 45$ per month with no set up fees. 40$ a month if I paid a 40$ set up fee which is way I went. One server happily handles 16 sims. The sim, grid, asset and user servers.

There is work being done on a intergrid teleporter that will allow a user to click on an object on the SL main grid and wiz, bang wallop you are on another grid and sim. Another I know is working on a bot that you can leave behind on the main grid that will relay chat and friends list.

OpenSim has a IRC connectivity to allow people to use IRC client to chat.

There is no need to hook up with SecondLife and LindenLab at all. If users can teleport and communicate the hook up would only add in SL asset server and finance (Lindens). That poses HUGE problems as content then could be moved and used on OpenSim servers and that would not be acceptable to the content creators. Especially scripts. It is also problematic in the SL asset servers have issues a lot.

The OpenServers will link up in near future I believe and with 10 or more grids running it is possible for the land area to be bigger than SL it's self. I was testing on a dual quad core and got 1000 sims going. Best I have managed so far was 20 users per sim. I am sure that will increase as code is cleaned and optimized.

Will Opensource Servers be coming any time soon from LindenLab? That I am not sure about. To me it sounds very dangerous. I am not a coder or programmer. But would think that if people could see how the server runs they could find the holes that normally can only be found by blind luck. With the code it would be much simpler to find the ways to hack.

How long to clean the code and make it safe and presentable? No Cory, 1 year, 2, 3? We have been waiting on Havoc for how long? Windlight and voice are other company products that got layered on top. Havoc needs to be coded into server and client as I understand it.

Better start brushing up on using linux if you want to run a stable server. Download the compiled server ( http://ruth.petitbe.be/build/ ) and play with it so that you are not left behind. Technology is driven by the users not the creators. Can make the bestest software out but if the users don't understand, like it or adopt it it will not fly. The number of systems that felt they were going to rule and live for ever yet died either in the starting blocks or later due to low loyalty of the consumer is long. Compuserve, AOL, FirstClass, Hotline, Napster, Palace, Netscape Server, ICQ, PageMaker, Primere, COBAL, Floppy Disks, ........

Currently most of the web is driven by opensource servers. Linux (OS), Apache (HTTP web server), MySQL (Database), Sendmail (Email). A few use commercial software due to company policy or because they are looking for something easy to instal manage or to do something specific that is not offered by the opensource equivalent, but they are fewer and fewer.

"So long and thank you for all the fish"
Douglas Adams, "Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy".

Are the creators of OpenSimulator the vogons?

PS thank you Cory for all your wonderful work and ideas. Good luck.

[um]

ok stupid question, as this is the first I have heard of opensim and don't know too much about it. It isn't connected to the main grid's financial system, correct? So you can't make money on a sim run by someone other than LL? So wouldn't that make it pointless for all business owners?

[Blinders Off]

@Jamie: OK this is driving me nuts. I've seen 2 references to Cory leaving Linden Lab. Read ZIP in the LL blogs (of course). What's up? Why did he leave and more importantly, where's he going to? Inquiring minds GOTTA know! :D

Regarding OpenSim. You stated that one server can handle 16 sims, but that you can't get more than 20 users on a sim. To me, that sounds like one server can't handle 16 sims. LL stacks 4 sims to a server and still boggs down. How is OpenSim able to handle more sims on a server than SL... and more importantly... why would we be limited to the traditional concept of "sim"? Is the 256x256m limit so etched into the code that such can't be overcome? I would love to see "sims" consisting of 4 times that land area. I believe single quad server could handle a mega-sim such as that, but considiering the current status of code, I would have to see to believe any more than that.

One of the major deterrents of SL to date is not being able to get more than 20 people on a sim with any reliability. If we can manage to get 50, 75, 100 people on a sim without maxing out its assets and lagging to a standstill, I would consider that an accomplishment.

Of course, the major accomplishment is getting out from under Linden Lab's financial thumb. They have only themselves to blame for the extreme dissatisfaction people have with their board. No matter what LL propaganda claims, they lose 95% of all potential customers. That is just plain pitiful. They have a shoddy platform and charge Porche prices for bad service. They've just been asking for a competitor to put them out of business through simple poor service and flakey coding. They charge people ridiculous amounts of money and then stack their sim on a server-- and then have the gall to blame the customers for lag. They've had this coming for a long time. But if it's coming, I'd like to see it come in an intelligent, right way meaning... we need to get more than 20 people on a sim. That means imo, NOT stacking 16 sims to a server. Just my thoughts, nothing more.

With Cory leaving SL, two things will happen: either things will improve (because after all, someone was responsible for programming that mess), or things will greatly mess up. Will be interesting to see what happens in the future.

[Blinders Off]

Um, I don't know much about OpenSim either, but yes, it's disconnected from LL, which means SL commerce won't work on OpenSim, which means that unless OpenSim has its own method of commerce, it's of little or no value to merchants. More on that to come, I'd guess.

However, the really great idea about it is people being able to host their own sims without the financial or authoritarial thumb of Linden Lab. It means their being able to moderate their land as they see fit, being able to ban grifers at computer ID level, not having to wait for LL to get around to fixing absurdly simple bugs (such as group chat not working), and especially not having to pay Linden Lab NEW CAR prices just to run a silly piece of virtual land.

For all those reasons and more, I 100% support such a project. OpenSim sounds like it's in an infancy stage and as such, it will have some rough startup periods. But once it's established, I would guess it will pass up Second Life and leave it sitting in the dust. I wouldn't put it past OpenSim to develop its own financial system an merchandising method. But the great thing about it, the really great thing, is that people won't be forced to merchant or rent land just to pay for a sim. The cost of a sim will basically be equipment and a net link. People won't have to work at merchanting just to make sim payments. More people will start creating just for the joy and reputation of the thing. We'll see entire freebie sims set up just because people can AFFORD to set them up.

Once VR is out from under the opressively financial thumb of LL, just like the web itself, there will be no restrictions such as currently exist... and it should be a whole lot more secure and a whole lot less frustrating. No more pulling our hair out waiting for LL to not fix a bug. No more knee-jerk, self-serving corporate decisions. No more charging ultra-dedicated server prices and delivering stacked servers. And especially, once they get the bugs ironed out... NO MORE LAG.

Hey, I don't see any negatives there so far. :D

[Lao-Tzu]

@ Prokofy : "archipelago of egos" ? lol wow your excellent thoughts are surrounded by useless words and phrases. Clear and concise comments are 1)Read in full by people and 2)Have more lasting impact. Trying to impress people with your style of writing only bores them :) (Just some free advice)

@ Taft Worsley: Your choice of words are clear yet your "5000 word-count minimum rule" is WAY overboard. Your comments border on needing a PDF file to efficently contain them. Bottom line: people begin to nap by the time you have made the point in your conclusion sections of each of your dissertaions. :)

[dandellion Kimban]

Short introduction to OpenSim: http://metaverse.acidzen.org/tag/opensim

Jamie, "if people could see how the server runs they could find the holes that normally can only be found by blind luck. With the code it would be much simpler to find the ways to hack." is security by obscurity principle. Usually, it is implemented by Microsoft and the others whom security is not a stronger point.
And Apache takes three minutes to install or five if it's your first time.

BlindersOff, as has been said a hacker can forgot his/her mom's date of birth, but would always recognize number 65536. Yes, there is a reason to keep with 2^16. And, I don't see what keeps you away from setting four or 16 sims one beside the other. It is actually much better than one of the same size.

Um, yes, the money and assets and names will be problem one day when OpenSim stand in broad use. But at that moment open grids will be big enough so negotiations may be easier. Btw, in one interview Philip stated that one of two problems with opening the server's code is how money and assets will be dealt with in that scenario. Somehow, there will be a solution by then.

[Stupid Article - I think she is more afraid of having to learn technology.]

Plain Stupid. Go OpenSim, have it loaded locally just waiting for the day.

[Blinders Off]

Dandellion, what I'd like to see is not 4 sims set beside one another, but one huge sim of say, 512x512m (or 1024x1024 if my server can handle such). Reason: to get away from the [expletive deleted] sim border crossing. :)

[dandellion Kimban]

I would like that sim border crossing is not so dangerous activity :)

[Blinders Off]

Yeah Dandellion, that's the primary thing. But what I mean is, rather than setting up 4 256m sims as 4 separate lands (sim crossing dangers or not), I'd like to be able to name them all one land, consider them all one land, and them act as one land.

Aside from server issues, I've never seen the need for LL to limit land area to 256 x 256m. Even if they still held prim limits to 15,000... why can't my actual land area be 512x512 with builds spread out over the countryside rather than all jammed together?

If I want one huge, 512x512 sim named Metropolis with no sim borders and plenty of "walking room"... why can't I do that? Maybe this "your own server" concept will allow us to remove that 256x256 limitation forever... not by stacking 4 sims corner to corner, but by literally eliminating land size limits and giving sim designers more flexibility.

If that's not really feasible under current code considerations... that's ok. I'm still all for bypassing LL entirely. I wouldn't be if they'd done the job right and charged reasonable amounts of money for their service. But as things stand, at this point they deserve what comes. Users have been telling them for at least 3 years this day was coming and they paid no heed. Instead of reducing prices as their sim numbers went from 400 to 10,000+, they actually increased them. That level of stupid knows no end and deserves to have the platform pulled out from under them. GO OPEN-SIM! RAH RAH RAH! Can't come soon enough.

>Do you think anyone will give a shit about Prok or Anshe or Jessica once open sim is around? The land barons' businesses will drop dramatically since they aren't actually providing a service but rather putting their name over LL's name and being middlemen leaching off of LL's hardware and services. The focus will potentially shift from giving these people money so they can pretend they aren't pathetic to more creative people with actual skills and resources who are more interested in building than making money.

DaveWhiner is in his usual hostile troll mode, and of course he himself never attempts anything of any significant in SL, so he posts from a fundamental lack of confidence and insecurity.
Land barons don't leech off the Lindens; they pay them a lot of tier, and they take care of the customers that Linden Lab itself doesn't want to take care of. Every tenant who becomes the job of a landlord to orient and take care of is one less customer directly interfacing with LL.

Making rentals is actually pretty creative work, I find, commissioning builders, designing how areas will look, selecting pre-fabs, works for me. Not everyone can be a stellar content creator in the top 10 percent, but you can gain a lot of pleasure from SL learning to do simple builds and modifications and working with others to make beautiful areas, that's what it is all about.

There's nothing to stop anybody from giving any money they want to more creative landlords *now* in fact, and many do.

I don't see why OpenSim magically removes all the hard work of being a landlord, and most geeky script-kiddies will not want to do the scut work involved in rentals and landlord services and might be happy to just invite some of those landlords they used to hate to come in and do the work for them so they can build their OpenSim empires.

I can see from a lot of the hostile comments here that I hit the nail BANG on the head: a lot of these hacker geeks are totally talking out of their asses if they imagine they can do things better than the Lab.

Re: "Some of us might already be in a business that would be complimented by the system, but not have to profit from it. Prime example, my personally business is already a collocation and data hosting facility - all cisco and IBM - i would put my facility against anyone of those the lindens are renting floor space in - Its a Class 1 Tier 2 facility."

Again, I will laugh and laugh, frankly, at arrogant asses like yourself who imagine that just because they have a few servers and already run a business from that they can run something as complex as a virtual world. So you can host your own sim. So? so what? Who will bo