Puppy Linux: A distro well-suited for a portable Second Life®

A couple of days ago I stumbled upon an old Lifehacker article about Linux distros that can be run from a USB stick. The author of the article wound up favoring Puppy Linux as the best of the bunch. While I've had a go-round with Slitaz Linux before, it still seems too svelte to be a decent USB distro.

So I downloaded the latest stable release, burned it to CD, booted it up and installed it to my flash drive. After a quick change to my desktop's boot sequence via BIOS, I booted my new Puppy flash drive for the first time, greeted by a desktop similar to the screenshot on the download page.

Once I answered a few simple questions(video resolution, date/time zone, etc.) I immediately went to the "browse" icon on the desktop. On first click, a window popped up giving me a choice of web browsers to download and install(Dillo is included by default, but is like ELinks wrangled into a GUI). I picked out the latest stable Firefox release, and restored all my bookmarks from a save file I had on my hard drive. When I was done, Puppy copied over the entire OS stored in RAM into a file on my flash drive, in effect making Puppy persistent.

Over the next day or so I played around with Puppy, particularly as I was getting fed up with weird graphical glitches coming from the Flash player on Ubuntu. Just over an hour ago I decided to try an experiment to answer this question: Could I run an SL client on Puppy?

The answer turns out to be "Yes, if you can do without music and video streaming(due to the lack of GStreamer PET packages; can be somewhat mitigated using "About Land" and copying the URL to MPlayer)". Provided your graphics card is made by Nvidia, all you need to do is launch quickpet, go to the Drivers tab, choose "Click here to test your graphics card", install the Nvidia driver recommended, choose "Probe" in the Xorg wizard and pick a good screen resolution. That's it! Then you can download any viewer for SL/OpenSim(the official viewer doesn't run so well, but Imprudence works much better).

I haven't yet tried running OpenSim on Puppy, but I suspect that will be a bit harder to set up since I haven't seen any mono-related packages in Puppy's software repositories. I might have some luck if I try the official binary packages from the Mono website. Stay tuned for a future post if I'm successful, or an update on this post if not.

MetaGridNet Revamp in progress

As I've previously announced here, I have created a small public OpenSim sandbox called MetaGridNet. It was originally created alongside an Elgg social networking installation. Unfortunately due to persistent spam on the site, I decided to nuke the server and start anew. The MetaGridNet sandbox is still operational, although I did do a fresh install using the latest OpenSim "Diva" distribution(I may set up a basic web site later on). The Diva install has brought with it a couple of new features and one in particular that was sorely needed: a built-in web-based user account creation and management framework(called "Wifi").

The benefit of this is immediate: Metaverse travelers can now easily set up a MetaGridNet account by going to the account registration page and login any third-party viewer(except Emerald because it's not optimized for OpenSim use) with the login URI "http://metagridnet.com:9000/". Or if you're already on a grid that uses Hypergrid protocol 1.5, you can perform a Hypergrid jump.

Stay tuned for further updates.

Victoriana triumphantly returns!

I had previously blogged about Victoriana and Tinytoriana, a Victorian-themed Second Life estate that had been forced to leave SL due to gigantic permissions screwups caused by Linden maintenance routines. The decision to leave and the resulting close-down caused a lot of sadness in SL residents.

However, I'm very happy to report that Victoriana is rising from the digital ashes over at InWorldz! I had found out about it this afternoon while in a group chat with fellow Raglanite tinies. After checking the map, I had teleported to Victoriana Square to take a brief look. Later on in the day after I got home from work, I had checked out Tinytoriana, a place made specifically for Victorian tinies. If there were any differences from when the estate was in SL, I couldn't notice them. So there's relatively little readjustments structurally, despite the fact that LittleBlackDuck Lindsay is still in the process of reconstructing the Victoriana estate.

Nevertheless, it's heartening to see this wonderful estate get a "second life" again, thanks to InWorldz and OpenSim.

P.S. - For a future post, I may try to get in touch with Mr. Lindsay to ask him some questions like why he decided to pick InWorldz, how he reconstructed his estate, what the future holds for his newly resurrected estate and more.

Guide to the Metaverse, Part 3: H-Town, A showcase grid

Continuing my trips to OpenSim grids, this morning I heard that the residential architecture company Hometta has opened their OpenSim interactive showcase grid, H-Town, to the general public. I had heard a lot of buzz about it recently and felt it was worth a visit, so I promptly registered. After registration I hit upon a stumbling block as the viewer offered for H-Town(a slightly customized Hippo viewer) was only for Windows and Macintosh. However, after a failed attempt to use Wine to run the Windows version of Hippo, I had found the instructions necessary to login with the regular Hippo viewer(on Linux).

Upon login, I landed at the Welcome Area, where there were several display signs that would take you to the house shown on the display. The grid itself, while technically small(only 3 regions), is well designed and certainly looks like a modern suburban neighbourhood in development. The houses already up are wonderfully built and are scripted to give visitors an interactive, hands-on experience. My personal favourite was the Draft House, and given that there's more houses coming soon, I'll be sure to make subsequent visits.

The Hometta folks have put a lot of effort into developing H-Town, and it shows. In my opinion, H-Town is a great example of utilizing OpenSim to showcase RL architecture to potential customers, and as a tool for architecture protoyping.

If you're into architecture or are looking to find a dream house to build, checking out H-Town is definitely worth a shot.

If you want to check out the other places where I've been, all of my "Guide to the Metaverse" posts are now tagged "metaverseguide".

The Google vs. Viacom decision: How Virtual Worlds benefit from it

The big news just came out: Google has beaten Viacom on summary judgement. The case was about Viacom claiming that Google/YouTube knew that copyright infringement was happening on their site and was therefore exempt from the DMCA "Safe Harbor" provisions.

These two snippets from the decision sum up the reasons for the judgement perfectly:

General knowledge that infringement is 'ubiquitous' does not impose a duty on the service provider to monitor or search its service for infringements ... the burden is on the owner to identify the infringement

What Viacom was trying to do, in layman's terms, was attempt to force Google/YouTube into taking the burden of enforcing copyright beyond traditional copyright law and the DMCA. If Viacom prevailed, it would mean YouTube would have to review each and every video uploaded to their site and determine if the video infringes someone's copyright.

This decision is good news, not only for website operators, but also for virtual worlds. As an example of how virtual worlds could have been negatively affected if Google lost, one only needs to look at the long dead virtual world There.com.

There.com residents were split into two classes: consumers and content developers. To become a developer, you had to enroll in the developer program. When you create content, you can't simply start selling it on the spot(like with SL/OpenSim). You must submit the content to There.com's review staff. If the content doesn't pass the review for reasons such as inappropriate content or perceived copyright infringement, you can't sell or use the content inworld.

The problem with this approach is that the review staff weren't copyright owners or authorized agents of copyright owners. Yet they actively played "copyright cops" even in the absence of proper DMCA procedure. This, despite the approach successfully enticing RL companies into creating presences in There, actually endangered their ability to invoke the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions in court.

It's not hard to see that this sort of "copyright police state" scenario is very possible in SL and OpenSim grids, because SL/OpenSim's situation is practically identical to YouTube. Copyright infringements happen quite often in virtual worlds, but it's practically impossible for the grid operators to police the entire grid for copyright infringements. They would wind up dedicating all of their time taking down content they think is infringing someone's copyright instead of properly operating, running and improving the grid. It's an undue legal burden.

That's why the decision states that the burden is(rightfully) on the copyright owner, not the service provider, to identify(via DMCA notices) infringements. The service provider isn't liable to legal action unless they do not follow DMCA procedures. That's Safe Harbor in a nutshell, folks. Be thankful for it.

Update: Via one of my favourite YouTubers, Thunderf00t, I have found a jaw-dropping 18 minute video of Mike Mozart of JeepersMedia catching Viacom doing the exact same thing they accused Google/YouTube of doing. Using Viacom's logic, the YouTubers whose videos got uploaded to Spike.com without their permission could sue Viacom(not the "uploaders"). And since Spike.com(formerly iFilm.com) claimed to "screen all videos uploaded", they may lose Safe Harbor protections under the DMCA. So Viacom, maybe you should rethink filing an appeal, and be happy the judge ruled in Google's favor. You actually benefit from it, believe it or not.

Guide to the Metaverse, Part 2

Continuing my travels to OpenSim-based virtual worlds, we come to two worlds that aren't for general use, but are very important nonetheless: Meta7 and ScienceSim.

Meta7 is a world showcasing an innovative technology called LightShare. LightShare allows region owners to share their WindLight environment settings with users via LSL script. Aside from LightShare, Meta 7 sadly doesn't offer much beyond most other OpenSim worlds. However LightShare alone makes it at least worth a look, especially if you're an OpenSim admin or a viewer developer looking to spice up your grid/viewer.

ScienceSim is for those who wish to use OpenSim for scientific and bleeding-edge research, simulation and education. The uber-geek's virtual world, if you will. If "Fern Lifecycle and Population Genetics Simulations" are your cup of tea, then ScienceSim is right up your alley. Just be sure to change your starter avatar's chin if you choose the male starter avatar(unless you're Jay Leno).

There may be a part 3 soon, but in the meantime I highly recommend taking a look at the grid list at Hyperica, as there's a heck of a lot more grids out there than I could realistically travel to.

Update on MetaGridNet

Just a quick update on the status of the MetaGridNet OpenSim grid. First off, a few days ago I had begun subdividing a part of the megaregion into 1024 meter parcels. These parcels will become the start of a rental program that I will be launching soon to help lessen the costs of hosting the grid and website. Once I figure out how rent payments will be done(most likely via PayPal) and create a decent covenant, I'll officially launch the rental program.

To get a MetaGridNet OpenSim account, you must contact me as per the instructions of this blog post.

Also, I will soon set up some freebies to help new users get started with building and scripting. So stay tuned, more good stuff is yet to come!

Leaving Second Life and embracing OpenSim

Today I announced that my shop, NixTech, will be closing down on April 30th, 2010. The reasons behind it are related to the Third-Party Viewer Policy that will take effect on that day.

It's no secret that I prefer certain third-party viewers(Imprudence and Hippo, specifically) over the official LL viewer for many reasons(OpenSim support, content backup and restore, better performance, etc). Since many of the developers of third-party viewers have rejected the policy for several good reasons, after April 30th if I use any third-party viewer I run the risk of being banned.

Now, I could simply use the official Viewer 2.0, but to be honest it is a disaster of a viewer in comparison. It suffers from major slowdown, rezzes everything at a snail's pace and still consistently sucks up over 100% CPU use. It is absolutely not good enough for normal use, unless the Lab fixes these problems by April 30th(highly unlikely).

So as it stands, that means I won't be able to stay in Second Life for a long session(greater than a 1/2 hour) without suffering severe performance problems. This in turn affects my ability to run a shop in SL and offer support to my customers. Even my ability to merely socialize in-world will be adversely affected. So I decided to close it down on the 30th and convert the plot into my own residential spot(as I had it before I opened up NixTech). I will continue to have a presence in SL, but due to Viewer 2.0's volatility it will be a greatly diminished one.

However, this doesn't mean NixTech will be dead. I will continue to offer support to customers who have bought my items in-world or via META-life. I have already exported a good selection of my creations to my hard drive, and I plan to re-open NixTech in an OpenSim-based grid(most likely InWorldz) where legitimate third-party viewers are welcomed.

This was a decision not taken lightly. I've been a Second Life resident since 2006 and I've hung on through many events that have sent other people packing: the Linux client's sub-par quality before Tofu Linden fixed it up(no sound, no media, no shiny, not even copy/paste back then!), the gambling ban, the Lab pushing voice chat against the community's input, the OpenSpaces fiasco, and the XStreetSL freebies tax. This third-party viewer policy was simply the last straw and I can't just lie down and take it anymore.

See you all on the other side of the metaverse :)

How to access MetaGridNet sandbox via Hypergrid

As I noted in my previous announcement of the MetaGridNet social networking site and OpenSim sandbox, I had noted that it's possible to access the sandbox via Hypergrid teleporting. Here's how you can do it:


1. Download and install the Hippo OpenSim viewer. It's the only viewer that currently fully supports the Hypergrid technology(I did test with Imprudence, and it technically worked but it rendered the sandbox all botched up).

2. Log into OSGrid and teleport to a Hypergrid-enabled region such as Aesthetica.

3. When you get there, open up the map screen and enter this into the region box: "metagridnet.com:9000", then click Teleport.

Please note that for ReactionGrid users, to get to MetaGridNet you must first make a Hypergrid jump to a grid whose position coordinates are closer to MetaGridNet's(due to Hypergrid not being able to reach regions further than 4096 regions in a single jump on the map; thanks Maria!).

I do have a few rules for Hypergrid visits, though:

1. No griefing, harrassment or drama.

2. When you are done, please save your works, otherwise they may get deleted.

Otherwise, have fun!

Imprudence Developers take a stand against the Third-Party Viewer Policy

This past Tuesday I had the privilege of attending a "weekly ImpDev meetup", where Imprudence viewer developers and those(like me) interested in it's development would meet and discuss various issues, like bugs, feature ideas, and anything else related to Imprudence. The meeting, however, turned out to be the most important meeting not just for Imprudence, but for other third-party viewers as well.

The meeting was about how the Imprudence developers should respond to Linden Lab's final wording of their third-party viewer policy. Earlier today, Jacek Antonelli broke the news of their decided response. While it echoes the general response of the TPV developer community, it states it in a very professional and respectful manner towards users, developers and even Linden Lab. Jacek also announced that while Imprudence cannot agree to the TPV policy as a whole, they will honor the parts of the policy that are reasonable and do not legally endanger the project.

This response is already having a ripple effect, as it has seemed to inspire Luna Viewer developer, Fred Rookstown, to continue developing Luna but with similar changes as Imprudence. It would also seem other viewer developers will follow suit, with the possible exception of the Emerald developers as they may be secretly negotiating with the Lab to get some sort of exemption from the policy in exchange for some changes made to Emerald(most likely gutting import/export, grid manager functionalities and a few controversial features).

While this marks a very sad day for SL, conversely it's a red-letter day for OpenSim-based virtual worlds who will benefit from the increased viewer support and likely incoming users. The ball is now in Linden Lab's court, and how(or even if) they respond to this will set the status quo in SL open development possibly for years to come(if SL manages to last that long, though).

Victoriana & Tinytoriana: A case study of how SL is losing it's soul

Very early this morning, the Alphaville Herald broke the news that the "mayor" of the Victoriana and Tinytoriana communities is to leave Second Life for OpenSim, as will the communities.

The reasons he gave for his departure read off as an indictment of the Lab's mismanagement on nearly every level. Here's the money quote:

This lacklustre response from Linden has brought to light a great deal of uncertainty in our little community about the future of Victoriana and the Linden grid itself. I’ve seen a number of people in the past few weeks re-evaluate their own personal investment in SecondLife, and sadly a number of them have chosen to leave the grid for fear of losing everything they’ve invested money in. It’s a very very sad thing to see good people go (especially long-termers who’ve been around for a while) for fear of "what will happen to them" come the next maintenance rollout/asset server failure/grid issue.

That pretty much says it all. This person had invested $30,000 over two years+ to acquire 13 sims and build a sizeable community on it. Common sense would dictate that the Lab should have given his problems some modicum of attention and care due to his very considerable investment towards Lab employees' paychecks. But he didn't, and this was the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back".

I wish Mr. Lindsay and the Victoriana/Tinytoriana community the best of luck in relocating to a new home. While I've never had the pleasure of visiting your community, I hope to do so during my travels to other grids.

The Lab, on the other hand, should be very ashamed. Communities are the lifeblood and soul of the grid, and should be fostered with reasonable care and attention. This is a fact of the metaverse that seems to be ever lost to the Lab under Kingdon's reign.

I still hold out hope the Lab can stop it's looming downward spiral into financial ruin, but with all the recent bad decisions it's been making, it's becoming much harder to hold on to.

The hitchhiker's guide to the metaverse

(Apologies to Douglas Adams, but the title fits what I've been doing)

Lately I've been hopping around various OpenSim-based grids to research which one(s) would be viable replacements given that Second Life may be irreversibly heading in the same direction that There went. So here's the rundown of the grids I've been to as of this writing:

• OpenLife: OpenLife was the first OpenSim-based grid to have an in-world currency, and that alone set up OpenLife as the first possible competitor to Second Life. Unfortunately, the OpenLife folks had forked OpenSim and chose not to release their changes back to the OpenSim community. While this is technically allowed because of OpenSim's BSD license, this act had basically turned OpenLife into a non-OpenSim grid.
• InWorldz: A currently small but growing OpenSim-derived grid similar to OpenLife. You're actually pretty likely to catch the founders and devs of this grid right from the first time you login to InWorldz, which is nice.
• OSGrid: The first non-Linden Lab grid I've ever been to, and without a doubt the biggest OpenSim-based grid. While it currently lacks an in-world currency(intentional because it's a non-profit grid), it's more or less ground zero for OpenSim development.
• ReactionGrid: And for something completely different, there's ReactionGrid. ReactionGrid is a lot like OSGrid, but with some very distinct differences: ReactionGrid has a solid revenue model by being an OpenSim grid hosting company, their OpenSim grids are hosted on Microsoft's Hyper-V technology, and grid operators are free to modify their grid server functionality if they wish. ReactionGrid is targeted at educators and businesses for collaboration, but there 's nothing stopping grid operators into purposing their grids for other uses.

While I'm not a big fan of Microsoft technology, I have to give it up to the ReactionGrid folks. Their business model is solid and professional, but they don't gouge the customer like how SL does with land(Same can be said of most other OpenSim-based grids that have region purchasing options, of course). OSGrid is where you want to be if you want to keep up with OpenSim development and testing, and freely experiment around. OpenLife and InWorldz basically aim at providing an economy experience similar to SL, minus the land gouging.

This is by no means an exhaustive list or review of virtual worlds, just my opinions of those I've checked out so far. There's several others I'm interested in checking out, so stay tuned for a "Part 2" blog post in the near future.

A Cross-Grid Content Store: An idea whose time has come?

This morning my thoughts drifted into thinking about the inevitable screw-over XStreetSL merchants are going to get real soon. Then I took a second look at a comment Imprudence viewer developer Armin Weatherwax left on that blog post(emphasis mine):

lol, I admit my thought is a bit far fetched... having those archives gives of course the possibility to exchange content in "new" ways, like from torrents or git repos. So maybe XStreet would have become less interesting for open content anyway - well, we'll never know.

Given not only the coming XStreetSL changes but also in light of the controversial third-party viewer policies and ToS "content trap", I now think Armin's idea isn't as far-fetched anymore. A far better solution than "torrents and git repos" would be an online store like XStreetSL, MetaLIFE, or Metaverse Exchange(the goals of MVX match the cross-grid store concept, but it currently just supports Legend City and SL) but would deal in content archived in the HPA format. This would kill a couple of birds with one stone:

• No need to deal with "magic boxes", which are prone to delivery failures whenever the region the box is hosted on fails for whatever reason, and potentially costs you sales.
• Easily make content in one virtual world, and be able to sell(not just give away) it to residents of any world that can use HPA-capable viewers such as Meerkat or Imprudence.

While these are excellent points for this idea, I can also see one point against it: The nature of content import at the moment circumvents the in-world permissions system(on import, you are the creator of the content as far as the system knows), as there is no content metadata to properly address it, which can lead to copyright infringement if not used responsibly. So as it is, it's a trade-off: sacrifice reach for control(walled garden), or sacrifice some control for reach(public park).

So, would this concept be feasibly possible? Ideas, thoughts, criticisms?

P.S.- Also, take a quick look at OpenSimWorlds and MyOpenSim as a couple of prototypes as how such a store might look like.

How Third-Party Viewer Developers are going to feel the pain

In my previous post, I described exactly how inter-grid content creators are going to become walled out of Second Life. But the Second Life® Terms of Service and third-party viewer policies will also bite third-party developers, hard.

In particular, the ToS and third-party policies place restrictions on GPL usage and distribution for viewers that connect to Second Life, as I've blogged about it before. Also, Section 2(b) of the third-party viewer policy will affect the major third-party viewers(Emerald, Meerkat, Imprudence etc) because they all have content export capability. If a third-party viewer developer wants their viewer to comply with the policies, then they will have to somewhat cripple that functionality(no full perm export, creator-only), despite legitimate use cases that warrant it.

A third-party viewer developer now has this hard choice to make: either cripple certain functionality and accept restrictions on usage and distribution, or rewrite their viewer as "not for Second Life use" and as a result lose much of their current user base in Second Life.

From the discussion going on in the opensource-dev mailing list, it seems virtually all third-party developers are going to take up the latter choice. But that may wind up to Linden Lab's disadvantage in the long run, because that means those viewers' innovations will be re-geared to benefit Second Life's biggest competitor: OpenSim-based grids.

My predictions for 2010

In less than a month from now, 2009 will officially be history and the New Year will be upon us. So let's look at Second Life in 2009 and see if we can divine where we will be going in the New Year:

Snowglobe and Third Party Viewers:

2009 seen a prominence in third-party viewers, even Linden Lab's Snowglobe viewer joining the mix. However, the newfound popularity of these viewers has also brought controversy. Where will this lead us in 2010?

I predict that the Viewer Registry will see the light of day, with the Hippo, Imprudence and Meerkat viewers easily making the cut. Emerald will be included in the registry, much to the anger of a "certain comrade", but only after certain controversial features are removed or changed. Put quite simply, I see a bright future ahead for third-party viewers.

OpenSim:

This year we've seen the introduction of OpenSim archives, inventory archives, megaregions, the Diva distribution, Hypergrid and a highly experimental in-world currency module using PayPal. This has been the year that OpenSim has finally become a halfway decent alternative to buying a sim in SL.

In the New Year expect to see the stabilisation and maturation of Hypergrid, megaregions and the possible inclusion of an in-world currency system to finally push OpenSim as a marketable alternative to SL.

XStreetSL:

Never have I seen something go from one of SL's greatest innovations to the biggest example of corporate greed and favoritism. It all started when the Lab bought out XStreetSL and OnRez. They shut down OnRez, horribly redesigned the XStreetSL site, and replaced the forums with a P.O.S. "blogorum". But the coup de grace came last month when the Lab announced higher commission fees and introduced unconscionable listing taxes on freebies. This prompted myself and many others to de-list our items from XStreetSL, trash our magic boxes, and sell our items on competing sites. This has caused a significant loss of business for XStreetSL, leaving merchants and customers alike to question the future of SL's once favourite online marketplace.

Where will XStreetSL go in 2010? Judging from this year's failures, unless the Lab realizes just how much damage they've caused themselves, XStreetSL may get shut down due to sheer lack of business. This, however, will be a boon for third-party e-commerce sites who stand to gain the most from it.

Second Life*:

We've seen overall greater grid stability and growth, Zindra, a bottoming out of land prices in line with the RL economy, Second Life Enterprise, Philip Rosedale leaving, and the forced disbandment of the Mentors group on the same day as the XStreetSL listing taxes announcement. It's been a mixed year for the grid.

Where will Second Life go next year? I predict there will be new features to the official viewer borrowed from third-party viewers, but that's where the good stuff ends. I am sadly predicting a return of the "prim tax"(or an in-world sales tax), caused by the failure of XStreetSL to extort more profit for the Lab. There will be revolts and protests like the last time, but the Lab will not buckle and this will force people to completely jump ship and set up on OpenSim or an OpenSim-based world. It will be a harsh year in SL, for both residents and the Lab. 2010 may be the year SL completely loses its' mojo.

*Update: Looks like the Lindens have given new Premium residents a nice Christmas present: Linden Homes. It's essentially a new incarnation of the previous "First Land" program. It won't change my predictions, though. It's all just to get more Premium memberships to offset the cancellations that resulted from the XStreet fiasco.

**Update 2: As quite a few people expected, Prok responds to the Linden Homes announcement with the kind of tl;dr outrage that screams BS. She thinks these un-terraformable, un-joinable, un-sellable plots with an un-removable small home, only available to Premium residents are a threat to her mainland rental business. I'll write up a post later on why she's really just shoveling manure on the subject.

Linden Lab announces a policy for "approved" third-party viewers

Linden Lab just announced the formation of a new policy regarding third-party viewers. Basically, the Lab will finally be putting their foot down on illegitimate viewers such as Cryolife, Thuglyfe and Neillife and work closely with approved third-party viewer developers via a "viewer registry".

I'm cautiously optimistic about this new development. I'm optimistic because it would mean that the Lab may finally get off their butts and perhaps incorporate some features of these other viewers, hence no longer relegating the official viewer as the "newbie" viewer in comparison. Plus working with third party devs the right way would help build trust with potential new users.

What I'm cautious about(and the Lab should be, too) is the possible negative effects it may have on third party viewer development if done with a heavy hand. Apple's condescending and abusive practices against third party iPhone/iPod Touch application developers come to mind here. And even worse, the possibility of the approval process being gamed by those with an agenda against third-party viewers(you guys know who you are) is present within the ongoing discussion with the Lindens.

I must admit here that before the policy announcement I was thinking about diving into the Snowglobe source code and try my hand at creating my own viewer(Not "the next Emerald", but rather a plain viewer with eventually one feature no other has: Ogg Vorbis/Theora streaming support). Now... I'll wait and see or go for it but develop the viewer for OpenSim exclusively.

This has the makings of a debacle, I'd say.

In development: an external grid selector for Second Life/Emerald

Just a quick post announcing that I'm in the process of writing up a crude, but functional "external grid selector" for the official Second Life viewer, Emerald and Snowglobe. It will be a bash shell script using zenity to create a selectable GUI list of grids. It's written for the Gnome/XFCE desktops in Linux, but porting it to KDE, Macintosh or Windows is trivial. I'll post the code in a future post once it's polished up.

Section 3.3: A Virtual Copyright blocker?

As a Second Life and OpenSim user, there's a natural desire for me to be bring over content I create in one virtual world to another(I'm not alone there, either). When I first got my local OpenSim up and running, I immediately proceeded to copy over a few pieces of my own tiny avatar. I had copied over the helmet, chest piece and my own Pet Rock in a pouch. In this instance it was totally legal since what I brought over had virtually no textures that I didn't create. When I thought about exporting some of my builds that had textures that weren't created by me, I hit upon an important legal question: Is bringing your own content(prims and/or textures) from Second Life legally allowed?
My gut was telling me "No", and it turns out I was right. Why? Because according to Section 3.3 of the Second Life Terms of Service, you don't own the account you use to access SL, and nor do you own any data on their servers that represent your content. Plus the license to the textures in question did not specifically address "inter-grid use", so the safest course of action was to assume it's not okay to export them.

What could be done about this? Is there a legal workaround? Yes and no. No, if the virtual world where the content(including textures) you made originates from is Second Life. Yes if the originating virtual world is OpenSim or any other virtual world that allows inter-grid use.

So I did an experiment to create a very simple house in my own OpenSim, export it with Meerkat, package the XML file and the textures used(from the OpenSim library) into a zip file, add a public domain notice, put the zip file up on a web site, import the build into Second Life, add metadata to the object description(such as "[Creator: Antonius Misfit] [Virtual World: OpenSim]"), then package it a box containing the public domain notice with the URL to the zip file sources. It all went pretty smoothly. I had successfully brought over a piece of content into Second Life that is not bound by Section 3.3!

This process easily applies for public domain, copyleft and Creative Commons-licensed content, but it also makes sense for commercial and even proprietary content creators who want to expand their content beyond Second Life and profit from it. You can follow the process I did, but instead of a public domain or Creative Commons license, you can use any license or EULA you want, provided inter-grid use is addressed. And of course source releasing isn't required, as long as you can prove that the content did not originate from Second Life(hence the metadata). So until Linden Lab properly addresses the "inter-grid use" in their Terms of Service, this may be the only feasible solution.

Thoughts?

Getting a Standalone OpenSim up and running on a Linode VPS: A tutorial

Ok, I know there are several tutorials out there that detail how to do this in general, but there are none out there that are specific to Linode, and I have encountered enough speed bumps on the way to warrant a specific HOWTO. So here goes:

1. Go to Linode.com and get the "Linode 540" VPS solution. It's $15 more per month than the cheapie Tektonic VPS, but I found OpenSim runs very smoothly on it.
2. Deploy a Linux distro on your VPS. I prefer Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty", and for this tutorial that's what I'm going to assume you will use. Make sure your distro is at least over 10GB(I used almost the entire disk) and have a swap size of 512MB. Also set the root password on your deployed distro, as you will be using it to login to your VPS in the next step.
   
3. Remotely login to your newly created VPS. You can use PuTTY, as referenced in this old tutorial or use the ssh command-line client like I did: [ssh root@my.ip.address]. Enter the root password for your VPS, and you'll be logged in with a standard shell prompt.
4. 
   Add the "universe" and "multiverse" repositories. First install the text editor nano so you can edit files: "apt-get install nano". Then do "nano /etc/apt/sources.list" to edit your APT sources. Here's what mine's looks like after editing:
   
   
   
   
   
   

   ## main & restricted repositories
   deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted
   deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted
   
   deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted
   deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted
   
   ## universe repositories
   #deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty universe
   #deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty universe
   #deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates universe
   #deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates universe
   
   #deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security universe
   #deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security universe
   
   deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty universe multiverse
   deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty universe multiverse
   

   
   
5. Update your distro. Now do "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade" to get the latest patches to keep secure.
6. Install the packages needed to build and run OpenSim. The packages required are listed in this old tutorial(You can replace "mono-gmcs" with "mono" as it now includes the gmcs*). Also do "apt-get install git-core" to install the git distributed source code manager. You'll need it to download the latest stable OpenSim source code.
7. Download the latest stable OpenSim source code. Follow the instructions on the OpenSim download page.
8. Within the OpenSim directory, do these commands: "./runprebuild.sh && nant". If there are no prebuild or nant build errors, then OpenSim has been properly compiled.
9. Follow the steps in this tutorial from Step 7 onwards, and then you can exit your ssh session and login to your shiny new OpenSim!

So now you ask, "What's next?". In the next few posts I'll show you how to administrate your OpenSim to do stuff like properly startup/shutdown your sim, add user accounts and even perform sim backups.

*Update: I just remembered about that nasty bug in Mono I blogged about earlier, where I described how I fixed it. Details about the bug and the patch for it are available here.

Struggling with Hypergrid

Now that the process of getting my sim up, running and add accounts for my friends from SL is done, I've attempted to Hypergrid my sim. But so far it's been mostly fruitless. First it was a "Region too far" type of error, caused by a bug in the Hypergrid protocol that only allows a jump up to 4096 coordinates in both dimensions. But after editing the [Network] section of OpenSim.ini and the coordinates in /bin/Regions/Regions.ini, I can link to most regions listed, but then I get an error like this when attempting to go there: "Destination is not allowing teleports. Failed to authenticate user Antonius Misfit@xx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9300".

I have tried every available Hypergrid address listed on gridhop.net, but with no luck. Am I missing something? I've been going a little nuts trying to figure out the problem. Help!