Few days ago Ari Blacktorne stated usual SL™ problems and asked for a replacement, for a new virtual world:
It already is public knowledge that the server and viewer code is such a spaghetti mess that to 'fix' it, they'd have to start over practically from scratch – and that won't happen.
I think there is a group that works on the new grid's architecture, but that is not why I am writing this. Something else kicked this train of thought.
It is not that writing server code from the scratch is a mission impossible. Actually, open source community did that already. And they did that on their own, by reverse engineering the code of the client. Sure it would be even easier job for people from the company that made the first server and maintains the grid to make a completely new server. So, not only that it is possible, it is happening.
Problem with OpenSim is that it has to break the inertia momentum of the residents. Grid maintained by Linden Lab has thousands of active users, hundreds of sims, millions of assets. It has a developed economy and traffic, buildings and places. It has years of work done by the community. And all that work is not transferable elsewhere.
And here is the paradox. On one side we have a grid that is proprietary and perform lousy but with all the community sticking to it, unable and not wanting to move. On the other, there is a grid made by the community, open and extendable, but without the support of the residents. One cannot blame residents that are not moving despite all the problems we are all aware of. It is hard to expect that many will move into new and unknown. To leave behind them all the shops with beautiful hairs and clothes. To leave all the favourite clubs and sims. Or should we blame those lazy asses that cannot organize themselves and stick to something for more than a week instead of just whining and ranting around every time something they don't like appear on the official blog?
Linden Lab is of course aware of their current monopolistic position. They know that residents won't move without the content creators, and that leading creators won't move without enough residents that will buy stuff and make moving profitable. And while those two groups are holding each other in place everything seems ok. Well, it is not ok. It is bad for residents, creators, code itself and, after all, for the company.
Question is, when company, creators and residents will see in which direction are we moving this way?
I actually disagree with the “inertia” argument. It is more a matter of functionality. Last time I checked the open source grid you could attach a box to your head, and that was it. No assets, no money, limited map function, and in general a lot less functionality on the server side of things compared to SL proper. Content creators aren’t going to want to move to another grid if they can’t even create content there.
Now, if there was another grid out there, running server code that gave us all the basics of SL (and hopefully with a few less technical issues), we might see migration. It would depend – as you say – to some degree on where the good content creators and interesting communities were, but I think it would also depend a great deal on the level of customer service the hosting company provided, the rules they put in place regarding in-world activities, and their level of rapport with the citizens.
In other words, if technical issues are overcome I think it’s more a matter of good customer service and creating a space that lets customers do what they came there to do, be it to work, play, or something else.
Trust me, if the wall comes down and people see that there is something better on the other side, people will move. God knows I would.
Best,
Argent
There’s at least one content creator hard at work on other grids: http://shenlei.wordpress.com/
Otenth, thanks for the link and the comment. I’ll try to talk with Shenlei about OpenSim.
Argent, technical issues you mention are the matter of time in a way that while I write this I don’t know in which stage attachment and LSL development are. Those things are changing very fast. Customer support is something that is expected to be better on (some of) open sims. Competition can do miracles for those things.
But, I still believe that moving will not happen in any significant form until we have possibility to move seamlessly from one grid to the other. Nobody wants to have ten microcurrency accounts, ten different inventories and to relog just because next teleport leads to a different grid. In that case, most of us will (quite reasonably) prefer to stick with the grid that has the largest community and offer of content.
Patience is the key. If Second Life itself is to expand there will be the need for more grids. I’m surprised that there isn’t a Second Life Europe in the pipeline. WoW have one, City of Heroes have one and the one complaint is not being able to play with the Americans.
Second Life could have the European grid, billed in local currency, tier in local currency and a hook up to the main grid that would exemplify how disparate grids can interact and flourish.
This may sound a little different right now but having other grids “hook up” to the main grid is very much on the table, Philip has spoken of it, Robin has spoken of it.
You are right, if it expands there will be the need for more grids. But planning is a nice thing to have with big enterprises like this one is. It would be shame to wait for things to get too big and then to try to make them efficient on that size. We all know that scalability is not the best side of SL. Bigger the SL is, harder it will be to set things.
It seems that Europe is something LL is not thinking much of. Sure, there is a difference between WoW and SL. Correct me if I am wrong but European and American WoW grids are independent and you cannot jump from one to another. That is not acceptable in the case of SL. But still, servers in Europe would save LL from many troubles like gambling and other law issues.And sure, link between farms would be faster (though expensive) than my connection to agni, which would speed up the whole grid and enchance the experience not only for European users. Not to start thinking of some proxies.
It’s not even about boxes on your head being the only thing, or moving between sims with inventory not working or whatever the functionality issues are.
Trust me, if there was the right set of people, attitude, ideology, and vision, people will move.
Why will I be very very slow in moving?
1. Reverse engineering is not something I trust. People who were willing to reverse engineer before it was legal, and who laughed in our faces when we showed concern for the nasty griefing of jumbo prims, god-mode stalking, and copybot — and other “delights” of libsecondlife — are not going to be trusted, reputationally. People looking over their shoulders at something else always copying and reacting to it do not make for mature, responsible adults.
2. Open source is not something I trust. I’ve come to see open source as merely a fake buzz word, a cover for what amounts to a sordid little hothouse of horrid vanities, rigidity of thought, and unwillingness to explain things in laymen’s terms — a deliberate obfuscation, even. Sorry, it’s unpleasant and will not make friends and influence people.
3. Aversion or even hostility to any economy. How DARE you rant on about people being too lazy or conservative or stuck with Linden and unwilling to move when we have your friend Adam Zaius actively and visibly and loudly promoting his concept: no economy. No interface with money. No land for sale inworld. No vending. “Someone else can do that on third-party aps if they want”. That lets me know that we have something worse than California hippies-turned-entrepreneurs: we have Bolsheviks.
4. Inability to make a clear, functional site inviting to the public. The site for opensim is clunky, wonky, filled with the sort of showoff geeky web logging that drives away people just trying to find simple information. Nobody wants to read about your nightly compile; they want to find out whether you can have inventory and buy stuff already — it’s just not ready for prime time with the average user in mind.
5. Could there ever be anything worse than the self-satisfied, arrogant, smug geeky hippy Lindens? Yes, those who imitate them and reverse engineer them…
1. Legality of reverse engineering is a bit of a tricky question. Am I legally allowed to open this keyboard and see how it works? If I buy an ice cream, am I legally allowed to let my taste guess what the ingredients are or even to run any kind of analysis to check the contents? Yes, I am. And there is no reason why software should be different. How knowledge gained by reverse engineering is used is another thing. But, one cannot blame one because of the other.
2. Open source being a fake buzz word is something you preach around every time you get (or not) an opportunity. While I might agree that there are flaws in open source community (and wrote about it more than you did) like gap between developers and users that you mention, there is quite a lot things that are good about open source. And, what you constantly fail to notice, open source as an idea and a project is developing and getting more mature. I remember times when Linux installers with GUI were considered almost a blasphemy. Now, many distros are being installed much easier than Windows, documentation is getting better and better and support for non-tech users is there.
The thing that you feel left out just because you are not familiar with coding has nothing to do with quality of the software and benefits that community gains from the project.
3. “Aversion and hostility to economy” is just a propaganda. It is “Russians are coming” of the digital age. I am sorry that so many people are falling on that nonsense, but so many people fell on Bolsheviks, on war on terror and any kind of induced paranoia that’s been put into their lazy brains. Truth is, open source is not against economy. GPL allows you to sell software and what you make with that software. Check why Red Hat, Sun and IBM are dealing with Linux. Because they are getting millions out of it.
And it is not true that you cannot buy land on OpenSim. it is much cheaper than Linden’s land, that is true. Maybe that was your reason to write this? That would be quite ok and understandable, but then, please, don’t try to sell us the story about Bolsheviks and economy. it is just your private interest. And also, what exactly is wrong with having third parties dealing with land? Isn’t that the principle of the free economy?
4. I agree. Most of the OpenSim is not ready for the prime time. What you miss here is that those sites you are mentioning are not intended to general “just a resident” public. Site of the OpenSim is tech site, its audience are people who might be interested in running their own servers. And running a server is not “just a resident” stuff. At least not at this moment. It is like arguing that Apache is bad because Apache site is not telling you how to make a post on your blog. That makes no sense at all.
I appreciate Prokofy’s arguments about the virtues of the market place, but I am at the same time fascinated by open source. I’d like to think there is a role for both in virtual worlds, as in real ones.
My problems with OpenLife, which I have visited several times lately, are more of an immediate practical nature. When I managed to figure out how to log on, I found myself in the Ruth avatar with no inventory, and only after going into chat did I realize that the wiki *does* explain how to create a new body and clothes, which you can edit once you “wear” them. And when I tried to use search to find profiles of avatars I had talked to on the chat, I discovered that the search function seems absent, so how can you find anybody or anything? The map and teleporting does work, but there seems to be a shortage of sandboxes: I met someone who had been desperately seeking one for a while.
Another fundamental problem, as Prokofy notes, is that Adam Zaius has decided to avoid implementing any in-world currency, leaving this task to users who might try to create financial “applications”. Apparently to own land you simply buy an entire sim and create your own stuff on it, which means that OpenLife is a community of sim-owners, a sort of private club. Which works fine for those who have the means to buy their own sim-sized sandbox, but what about the rest of us? Do we have any role in OpenSim?
I think the answer might be yes, but we have to do-it-ourselves. I’m interested in starting a group that would pool the resources of several members to buy an OpenLife sim or two, set up a simple financial system for monthly land rental and other economic exchange (the financial system could go through a separate website rather than in-world), and try to start building an open community. Those interested are invited to email me at the address given on my blog.
I am not surprised at all that there is no monetary system yet. It is not just “think about the nifty name for the currency and let the things go” as it might seem. This is not a FaceBook. Monetary system of the virtual world is too much of a job. Or we want another Ginko case, though even a fraud like that one asks for a nice knowledge of economy.
To have a working monetary system, there should be a financial company behind it. And then, we’d need interoperability of the monetary systems. Interoperability is not just a matter of code.