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 :)

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).

Are CDS users planning to go social with their vigilantism?

As I got home from work today and brought up my Twitter stream, I came across this tweet from Ann O'toole which made my heart sink like a rock:

we need one of them oauth thingies to tweet copybot network detections so everyone will see the rate of shoplifting in #Secondlife

So, it's not enough that they're perma-banned everywhere Gemini CDS is used,  their info kept in a database forever labeled as "potentially dangerous"; now you want to add the internet equivalent of public stoning as a feature?


I do expect Ann to be a bit controversial, but this is beyond the pale. I could see this "feature" being implemented in one of two ways: on detection it either tweets to the user's Twitter account with a hashtag to enable CDS users to find all detections twittered, or detections get twittered to a specific account for the purposes of publicly browsing names. This idea throws the possibility of innocence or false detection even further out the window while extending the networked vigilantism beyond SL.

Here's a couple of questions that I would like to ask CDS users and Skills Hak if this idea were to get implemented:

1. If it were implemented as to tweet to the user's Twitter account, will there be a way to automatically delete the tweet if an accused avatar successfully appeals, or will they have to make their case with the CDS user or Twitter itself?(The question is similar regarding the second implementation, just replace "CDS user" with Skills Hak).
2. If you're so fed up with the Lab's "refusal to deal with the copybot anarchy", then why not involve the Department of Justice? Why turn to networked vigilantism when involving authorities higher than LL may get a better outcome(DOJ gets wind of rampant "copyright infringement" in SL, DOJ investigates and finds LL lacking in enforcement, DOJ threatens to sue on behalf of copybot victims, LL wakes up and gets strict on enforcement thanks to DOJ legal threat, everybody's happy)?
3. What will you do if a falsely accused avatar(or a group of falsely accused avatars) decides to sue the entire CDS system on grounds of defamation of character and vigilantism(The entire CDS system refers to the individual users all the way up to Skills Hak)?

Again, I'm not defending copybotters at all here, I'm pointing out the vigilantism and escalation being encouraged by this system and it's users, and it's clear potential to harm innocents and the falsely accused. If this idea were to make it into CDS, then it has the potential to make the JLU scandal look trivial in comparison.

Caveat emptor, folks.

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.

Second Life about to wall up content

Ann Otoole calls out Linden Lab in her latest blog post, spelling out how Second Life is about to become a completely walled-up garden starting on April 30, 2010. She frames the discussion in the context of textures, but her argument also applies to objects, clothing/body part items and scripts(to a much lesser extent).

From April 30th onward, the Lab will be vigorously enforcing Section 2(b) of the third-party viewer policy, which also happens to be a part of the Second Life® Terms of Service.

In the opensource-dev mailing list, Lindens are suggesting content creators who wish to allow inter-grid use of their content should host it outside of the Lab's grids and services. The implication of that is that Second Life is unsuitable as a host or distribution channel for such content. For LSL scripts, that's not much of a problem because if a script's code can be viewed in-world, it's simply a matter of copy/pasting text, the Lab can't really stop that. But for other types of content(especially prim and sculpty-based objects) made for inter-grid use, the policy and the ToS combine to form a content license trap.

For example, let's say I'm creating a prefab house that I wish to be used in both Second Life and other grids. I create and host the content on my own server, by using a third-party viewer to export it to a zipped archive. I create a specific license allowing inter-grid use(or use an open license). Someone who wants to use my content logs into Second Life and imports the content in-world. Now, here's the big question:

When my licensed content is imported into Second Life®, what happens to the license for that specific copy? According to the ToS and TPV policy as it is today, my license(parts of it at least) no longer applies to that copy and can only be used within SL and it's rules. In effect SL becomes a content trap and a walled garden, both for permissively-licensed content(Creative Commons, open source, public domain etc) and proprietary content with inter-grid use allowances. So to preserve the license and the rights to my content, I must have a clause in my license that prohibits import to grids whose policies or ToS conflict with my license, otherwise the importer loses the right to use my content.

That kinda sucks, right? Well, not all hope is lost and in my next post I'll detail the painful choices third-party viewer developers and their users may have to make in the wake of the third-party viewer policies, and how this ties to content creators.

The Third-Party Viewer Policy: The shoddiest policy from the Lindens

As I noted in the previous post, coinciding with the release of Viewer 2.0 was the release of a third-party viewer policy created by Linden Lab. At the time I had read it, I did not think much that it was a bad policy nor think it would negatively impact third-party viewer developers.

I was wrong.

In fact, there's so much wording in the policy that not only negatively affected developers, but also violates terms of the GPv2.

For example, the GPL explicitly disclaims liability of a developer, yet the policy puts it on after the fact. Also, the GPL states that you may not impose further restrictions, conditions or terms of distribution beyond what the GPL specifies. The policy does exactly that.

But my biggest beef with the policy is Section 2(b), which flat out bans export of full permission content without the legal consideration when the creator of a piece of content grants exportability to the content's users. This effectively kills content licensed under Creative Commons, open source, public domain and other content whose license allows exportability.

There are other issues as well. In fact, as it stands no third-party viewer can be in compliance with the policy and be able to distribute. But thankfully, as Tateru Nino's Massively article points out, the Lab has brought the policy back to legal for a rewrite(this has been confirmed in the opensource-dev mailing list). Here's to hoping they get it right this time!

BTW, the only folks who are seriously lauding the policy as it is now, are those who are opposed to third-party viewers in general, so that should be a clue as to what's wrong with it if still in doubt.

My Impressions on SL Viewer 2.0: the good, the bad, and the ugly

The other day I had gotten the word that Viewer 2.0 had finally been made available to the general SL community. I've had the chance to give it a test run and while I generally approve it as a major step forward, there are a few annoyances that I found. So here's my quick rundown of the good, the bad, and the ugly of Viewer 2.0:


The Good

I'll start with the new features introduced besides the new UI. The most welcome new feature is Shared Media. Ho..ly... crap! A truly functional web browser on a prim. It's per face, per prim, can have several media elements, and puts parcel media to shame. Flash content works(though I've yet to test on something HTML5-friendly like Theora). I've used it to do a tweet completely within a prim that has Shared Media enabled on a face. So we can expect some pretty crazy media mashups from machinima makers and artists soon.

There are two new clothing pieces introduced in Viewer 2.0: tattoos and alphas. Tattoos are pretty self-explanatory. Alphas are basically the replacement for invisi-prims on avatars to hide body parts, used for non-human avatars like tinies and dragons.

Now I'll get right down to the new "web browser" UI design. While residents who have become very used to the old viewer's design will no doubt find the redesign frustrating at first, once you start to find where all the menus have moved to, you'll find that virtually no feature sets have been actually removed. Landmarks are still in your inventory(as some like Prok feared they would get replaced with a "bookmark"-like feature), the build tools are practically unchanged(with the exception of adding Shared Media settings to the Texture tab), and chatting/IM has gotten a bit easier to keep track of: profile pics are shown before each line of chat and when an avatar says multiple lines of chat in an IM before anyone else, those lines are grouped under that avatar's name automatically instead of having the name repeated every single line.

There's more stuff about the viewer that I like, but I'll defer that to this blog post from Second Tense, as it is covered in pretty good detail.

The Bad and The Ugly

I have to lump the two categories as one because quite frankly, I don't see any serious UI or feature issues that would put me off using Viewer 2.0 when it becomes the mainline official viewer. That being said, there is one major thing that needs to be addressed: it's seems pretty laggy that it's consistently sucking up over 100% CPU usage. Granted, it will get worked on, but it has to be said now because it can be enough of a turn off for some folks.

And while I said that virtually no feature sets have been removed, there does seem to be one thing missing, though I'm not going to crumple up in despair about it nor ignore it either(Well, it's still there although not as clean as in 1.23 according to Prok).

Also, it appears they are changing their open source release strategy by attempting to label Snowglobe 2.0 as the source code for Viewer 2.0 and onwards. That may particularly irk third-party viewer devs a bit, especially in light of the new third-party policies and registry launched alongside Viewer 2.0. I'm irked simply because there are no Linux binaries of Snowglobe 2.0 available yet(this has happened before, and I'm not gonna slog through trying to compile it). Also, Linden Lab needs to be reminded that when you release any GPLed viewer to the general public, you must provide the exact sources used to make it, not the sources to a distinct derivative, as Snowglobe is(unless it is the exact sources with just the name and logo different, then it's okay).

Verdict

Viewer 2.0 is a big step forward, though there will be shock and adjustment pains. If you can get through the initial shock, then you'll find there's a lot of stuff in 2.0 you'll like.

More on the CDS controversy

Thanks to a tip received in the previous post, I've found out that there potentially may be more to CDS' database than simply an avatar UUID/name and viewer info. In a very long thread over at SLUniverse, Skills Hak makes the claim that "pc info" gets stored(IP and MAC addresses*), as another method of detection once the copybot viewer makers figure out ways to get around CDS. If this is the case, then that's completely against the TOS, if not flat out illegal. The only way to conclusively find out for sure, is to have the whole CDS system(client, bots and database) submitted to Linden Lab for a full audit, as Skills' word is proving to be not enough.

Also, CDS users apparently have the ability to set up their system not to ban on detection, but observe and record into the CDS database. Although seemingly a much more benign option, this is still a sort of networked vigilantism, as while the detected avatar is not banned from that particular parcel or sim, he/she is wherever a CDS is set to automatically ban, and the avatar's info is still propagated throughout the CDS network.

If I find out more or new developments arise, I'll be sure to post it here.

*Update: It appears Skills put up a FAQ where she says that "The specifics of the data cannot be disclosed. However, no MAC or IP addresses are stored, nor any other sensitive data. The most personal data is the avatar key and which viewer was used." However, I'm not convinced unless she submits CDS for auditing, as I mentioned above.

How CDS is engendering vigilantism among paranoid content creators

It didn't take long for it to start hitting the fan. Within days of releasing a scripted product that claims to 100% detect and ban users of copybot viewers, we're starting to see how this item can engender vigilantism in content creators who want a quick, zero tolerance "solution" over the lengthy legal procedures recommended by Linden Lab and copyright law itself.

What brings the point home are the comments by the sim owner whose CDS initially banned the blogger's avatar, and the very enlightened comment by a Mr. Peter Stindberg:

sabinagully said...

Hi everyone! I am Sabina, the owner of Magika. I wanted to clear this whole thing up. I hope many people get to read this post.

Arora Zanzibar have indeed been banned from Magika for the use of Neillife. Skills have taken the time to double check and it is true. Arora is just trying desperatly to clear her name, therefor this blogpost and all the fuzz that comes with it, fairly annoying if you ask me. It has come to her attention several times by other people on here to contact ME about it. She has not contacted me.
Arora might not be a frequent user of neillife, but she has been caught at some point using it. Anyone using Neillife, Cryolife, Fucklife etc is not ever welcome at Magika. There is no use blaming Skills for this. It is MY choise and my choise alone to use this system and keep her banned. Anyone who disagrees. well buhu lol.

Peter Stindberg said...

It gets even more bizarre when you see some strong advocates of shutting down 3rd party viewers in general now praising this system.

What this whole debate shows, however, is that content creators feel the pain, and feel the need to turn to take the law in their own hands out of frustration that LL does not do anything. THIS is the REAL issue here.

I do not trust a fully automated system. I work in software development and have quite a critical distance to fully automated systems. The question is not IF they screw up, but WHEN they screw up. But I can't blame a single content creator to buy and use such a system. However the deployers of such a system take on a HUGE responsibility. LL gets blamed a lot for the intransparent shoot-first-ask-questions-maybe-later process of Abuse Reports. The developers and deployers of this system seem to run into the same trap. An automated system without a clear, transparent appeal process is a loose weapon. This whole incident has made this very clear.

I am a marketing and PR specialist, and from my professional view this was a close call to a complete PR disaster. The developers of the system have a great chance to give the community an effective tool. But it needs transparency of procedures and clear communications.

Maybe this incident was a warning shot.

The plain truth here is, is that not only did Arora have to appeal to Skills, she may very well have to appeal to every parcel/estate owner who is currently using CDS, because it is designed to operate like BanLink, a previous product that engendered vigilantism among land owners. Also, it seems plausible that at no time did she actually engage in the act of copybotting. For the purposes of comparison, Linden Lab won't ban users for using copybot viewers, but they will ban a user if found to engage in copybotting or any other illegal activity. CDS, and its' growing network of users, may in effect interfere with the Lab's ability to properly mitigate copybot claims, particularly when automated AR functionality is implemented into CDS.

If CDS instead detected copybotting activity rather then copybot viewers, then there wouldn't be much controversy about it right now.

I should note, btw, that Arora was successful in clearing her name from the CDS database, after taking her case to Skills(Her name may still be in many banlists affected by CDS, though).


I should also say that I am in no way defending copybotters here, I am simply making the case that CDS poses the danger of networked vigilantism and escalation in SL. Think of a forming "JLU of content creators minus the spandex", and you get the picture.

Avatars United: A safe haven from Facebook's "Avatar Hit Squads"

A few hours ago I read the announcement that the Lab has acquired a social networking site that is specifically geared for MMO game avatars. While this could be seen as a distraction from the Lab's recent controversial policy changes, this can also be seen as something of a godsend for SL Residents who try to use social networking sites, but attempt to keep their RL information totally private.

In particular, there's been a recent rash of SL-related avatar account deletions on Facebook, as reported by the Alphaville Herald. This has caused many Facebook users to search for an avatar-friendly alternative, lest their accounts get silently zapped.

Cue Avatars United, which not only caters to SL Residents, but for players of a huge number of MMO worlds and games(even OpenSim surprisingly) who would like to keep their RL private. It's very Facebook-like, but without the insane jungle of apps that currently plague Facebook. It's still in Beta, but the Lab is planning some nifty things for it and hopefully a developer community will spring up to add more goodies to the mix(think apps that integrate AU with SL in various ways).

I've already set up my account and page, so feel free to friend me on AU. I don't bite... much. ;)

The axe falls, but when?

I just came across this blogorum thread where a resident decided to take one last look at the freebies on XStreetSL, knowing that they may disappear within the next few days.

The OP of course seen "junk that needed to be cleaned up, but quite some jewels", but that became irrelevant when the first replier asked a poignant question: "So when does the axe fall?"

What makes this question good is that, according to the original announcement, the freebie listing tax should be in effect by January 18th, and in the FAQ accompanying the announcement they stated residents will be given 2 weeks notice before the changes go in effect. There are four days left in the expected delivery time span and so far there have been no notices at all from the Lab. In fact, the Lindens have kept very quiet on the matter since Colossus Linden got burned in the blogorums(in two threads) after the announcement.

This has caused a bit of confusion and speculation about what will actually happen. Some say they have quietly backed down after feeling the backlash resulting in the increased prominence of third-party marketplaces. Others say that it's merely been delayed because of implementation problems. While I would hope for the former theory, I'm more inclined to believe the latter.

Why? It's quite simple, really. If the Lab finally decided to back down, no doubt they would loudly announce it in an attempt to recoup the losses incurred from the previous backlash, and to blunt the newfound popularity of XStreetSL's competitors. Since that has not happened, it's clear that the Lab is still in the process of putting the listing taxes in place, it's just taking longer than planned.

Regardless if the Lindens roll out the taxes this month, May, or whenever this year, I still believe I made the right choice and I will continue to boycott XStreetSL until this policy of pure greed is eliminated.

Finally, an SL client for Android

The other day I got a tweet from my Raglanite friend @chaffro about an Android chat client application for SL he's using. He told me the name of the application and I immediately downloaded it to my G1 phone.

Mobile Grid Client(MGC for short) is the Android-to-SL client I've been waiting for. Until now if I wanted to access SL from my phone, I'd have to put up with the lousy mobile version of ajaxlife.net where all I could do was chat and IM avatars. MGC puts ajaxlife.net to shame. You can teleport via landmarks and friend teleport requests*, look at avatar profiles, send and receive L$, see where you are via map, friend and de-friend avatars, and of course do chat and IMs with avatars and groups. Granted, it's not as polished as Touch Life for the iPhone, but it's way better than what I had before.

MGC is offered free in the Android Market, but there is a monthly fee of $L450(close to $2 USD) due to MGC being a hosted service and not just a client. It's well worth it, IMO, and you can try it out for ten days before the monthly fee kicks in, so feel free to give it a whirl.

To get it, just do a search for "Mobile Grid Client" in the Market app and it should show up at the top of the results. I think you'll like it as much as I am.

*Update: I just found out that the next release of MGC will include the ability to teleport via secondlife:// and SLurl links. So it's getting pretty close to being the perfect mobile client for me.

Why the "Linden Homes" program is not a threat to mainland rental business

In my previous post I mentioned the new "Linden Homes" program announced by Jack Linden as a Christmas present for new Premium account signups. I also noted that the expected outrage post from Prok claiming that this will demolish mainland rental businesses is pure BS.

Prok claims that the Lindens have been methodically destroying mainland in favor of private islands. She attempts to buttress her claim on numbers based on a thrid-party grid survey, as there are way more private islands than mainland sims. The numbers actually tell a surprising story about mainland rental business owners/landlords, rather than the Lab.

Of course the Lindens would like to grow more private islands. That is the biggest money-maker. So given the practically anaemic state of the mainland, despite all the recent moves to clean up the Mainland from ad farms and land extortionists, why haven't mainland rental business owners demanded more mainland sims be made? While mainland sims clearly don't make the kind of money for the Lab as private islands do, they are still quite profitable, especially in combination with mainland rental businesses coming along to hustle the land for them.

Yet Prok takes the familiar and tired "I'm a victim" tack here. She blames the Lab for her and her peers' lack of action in trying to grow their mainland investments. Instead of collectively pushing the Lab, they whine and complain that the un-terraformable, un-joinable, un-sellable 512 plots with an un-removable small home, only available to Premium residents will destroy mainland rental businesses.

No, they won't. They're not designed to compete with mainland rental businesses. Unlike mainland rentals, Linden Homes aren't available for Basic accounts. Unlike mainland rentals, you can't create events or classifieds for it. Also, the Lindens may consider a time limit for Linden Home residency(to reinforce the fact that a Linden Home is an introduction to land ownership), unlike with mainland rentals where people can remain as long as they remain tenants in good standing.

Would I get a Linden Home? Nah, I'm an oldbie Premium member who would rather be more content with a regular mainland 512 plot or higher. But as I mentioned in a response to an anonymous commenter, still I'd love to just see the themed Linden Homes and who made them. It would be a great way for me to discover other builders and businesses.

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.

Some proof of how XStreetSL's listing fees are anti-competitive

I just stumbled onto Massively's latest article covering the XStreetSL listing tax announcement, and I found a revelation in the comments, courtesy of Imprudence developer Jacek Antonelli: By XStreetSL's own rules, they are engaging in anti-competitive practices. To wit:

Anti-Competitive or Abusive Behavior. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• inflating prices on Xstreet SL compared to in-world or other e-commerce sites,
• hostile reviews or comments on a competing merchant's items, and
• item listings which are abusive against another merchant or their products.

Okay, let's apply these rules when the listing fees kick in, particularly for freebies. You list a freebie, and get hit with a $L99 fee. How do you compensate for that? Assuming it will actually remain a good seller, you adjust the price to, say $L4, which subsequently lowers the fee to L$10. You then decide to note in the listing "this item is free if purchased at my store in-world". Guess what? You just violated XStreetSL's rules and if caught the listing will be de-activated until you either change the XStreetSL price to match the in-world price of $L0(thereby incurring the $L99 tax again) or change the in-world price to match the XStreetSL price(effectively making the freebie "free no more").

So where is XStreetSL itself violating it's own rules? Look more closely at the above scenario, and extend it out by adding that the merchant has also listed the item on other marketplaces that do not have listing taxes. According to XStreetSL's rules now, the merchant must also bump up the price on the other sites to maintain the XStreetSL listing. So XStreetSL is, in effect, using the listing taxes in combination with it's own rules to extend it's reach beyond it's own marketplace to their competitors. That sounds pretty anti-competitive, yes? Monopolistic, even.

So now the merchant only has two choices: either grudgingly comply with XStreetSL and make the freebie a non-freebie everywhere, or de-list and remove the freebie item from the XStreetSL marketplace forever in order to preserve the merchants' freedom to price as he/she fits.

Oh, and lest you think this is all just bitching about "paying the equivalent of a nickel more", take a look at this breakdown of how the listing taxes build up for one merchant and tell me if it's still peanuts.

The New XStreetSL "listing taxes": WTF are the Lindens smoking today?

Today the Lindens delivered a swift kick in the stones to both Second Life Mentors and XStreetSL merchants.

First, they are going to disband the Second Life Mentor Volunteer Program. Taking the long view on the move would seem it's not too bad as it won't affect the ability to create and run volunteer groups in-world, but from a PR standpoint it's a spit in the face to the volunteer community, no matter how much the announcement is sugar-coated.

But the really big Linden blunder announced today finally exposes the real reason behind the merchant survey Pink Linden recently sent out: They want to further tax residents for use of XStreet and pander to only high-volume merchants.

Don't let the "it's just to manage freebies" lie fool you. All listings will be charged a monthly tax(and it is a tax). This will effectively kill, not "manage" freebies on XStreet and lock out residents who previously used XStreet as a way to sell inexpensive products or give away creations as a gift to the Second Life community. It may also wind up screwing over shoppers too, as merchants who choose to live with the listing taxes may simply bump up prices to cover it.

For me, this means that I would wind up paying XStreet L$490/month for all my non-freebies and $L198/month for my two freebies. That comes out to $L688/month + the already existing 5% commissions. And let's factor in that my most expensive listing is only L$175 but rarely sells and I find out that a pretty big chunk of sales gets gobbled up by XStreetSL "listing taxes". So what will I do?

The Silver Lining

First, I will remove every single listing I have on XStreet, as doing business on it has now become untenable. Only the big business merchants can play on XStreet, I get that now.

After I remove my listings, I'll save my products in an inventory folder, trash my magic box and XStreet merchant vendor signs, and only list my products on meta-LIFE.They don't charge for listing freebies, and have a great vendor branding system to promote your business with(also free). I may look into others like SLapt.me and Apez(even though the site design of it is beyond ugly).

From the discussion thread, it seems that a majority of other merchants will follow suit, and hopefully shoppers as well.

Goodbye XStreetSL, it was a great run:

Update: I got word that there have been at least 3,000 de-listings from the Apparel section alone on XStreetSL in less than 24 hours. The income loss from these de-listings are most likely very significant. While other section de-listings haven't been quantified yet, it's safe to say that this is one of the biggest disasters the Lab has pulled on us.

The Spectrum of Open Source Viewers

The other day, Dale Innis posted a piece about the leaked Viewer 2.0 testing comments and how it relates to third-party viewers. A good read for sure, but what got my brain neurons firing off was from a part of a comment in a humorous response post from Adric Antfarm, about third-party viewers and Prokofy Neva's views on them: "The truth is in the middle. They are neither the savior you claim or the devil she does."

I was going to put up a comment on Adric's blog responding to the statement, but it got too TL;DR-ish, so I'll put my thoughts down below(don't worry, I'll try to keep it concise and brief).

I think the answer isn't in the middle, but rather that the answer is all three due to the fact that there are viewers that fit in each category. A spectrum, if you will. For example, let's look at viewers like Hippo, Imprudence, Meerkat and Snowglobe. The first three have third-party grid login management far superior to the official viewer's clunky "--loginuri=" command-line method. Imprudence and Meerkat have legitimate object backup capability(creator or full-perm only). Snowglobe recently gained text chat translation, Open Grid Protocol login support, and LLMedia API support(my favorite feature). These viewers, as well as some special viewers like omviewer-light and ajaxife.net are clearly beneficial to the metaverse community as a whole and should be held up as excellent examples of open source community at work.


Then there's the undeniably malicious viewers. First it was Copybot, now we have an unholy trinity of Cryolife, Thuglyfe and Neillife. All three are at their core a continuation of CopyBot's malicious intent(copy objects with no regard for the Second Life permissions system). Thuglyfe goes a step further and includes features designed to avoid parcel and estate bans. These are the kinds of viewers, open source or not, that should be fought against vigilantly.

And currently straddling the middle of the spectrum is Emerald, the most popular but controversial third-party viewer(Disclaimer: I have used Emerald, but as of late I have been using Snowglobe and Imprudence instead). There are so many cool features of Emerald I can't list them without turning this paragraph into TL;DR, so I'll go straight to some of the controversial features. First there's de-friending notification. It's okay in SL to de-friend someone and letting it pass quietly. Getting a notification that you've been de-friended is a quick way to cause drama and grief. Showing real online status and avatar keys in profiles can also be griefing-enablers.

Also the past activities of some Emerald developers don't help their viewer. However, the Emerald developers seem to be willing to work with Linden Lab on viewer policy, and they are now keen on combating malicious Emerald derivatives such as Neillife, so the jury is still out on Emerald. It can go either way.

So to either wholly allow all viewers or condemn them as Prok does are completely irresponsible and one-sided views. It will lead to either rampant copyright infringement and crime or feature stagnation, greatly harming the value of SL. A balanced view of the spectrum, however, will ensure that Second Life and it's derivatives will continue to succeed for a very long time.

Ogg Vorbis Audio Streaming *finally* comes to Second Life!

Yesterday, the latest release candidate build of the Snowglobe viewer was released with relatively little fanfare. But for Second Life residents who use Linux as their operating system of choice, yesterday marked the arrival of a feature long desired: the ability to stream an open source audio format(Ogg Vorbis) within the virtual world.

The crapiness of FMOD and the awesomeness of LLMedia

Ever since the Second Life viewer had the ability to stream music, it did so through an audio library known as FMOD. FMOD was great for streaming MP3 music, but wound up crashing the viewer when attempting to stream Ogg Vorbis. Yet according to FMOD's product description page, Ogg Vorbis is supposedly supported. This situation prompted a JIRA bug to be filed, where it never got fixed at all, despite Tofu's insistence that OpenAL fixed it. For over two years, nothing. Then hope came with the coming of the LLMedia API: a media-rendering plugin system for the viewer. Initially, LLMedia was built for Windows and Mac viewers, but as of yesterday it finally hit Linux, and it works pretty damn well.

Testing it out

Testing it out is pretty easy if you own a plot of land in-world(alternatively you could try it with your own local OpenSim installation): just grab the RC, set the audio stream in-world as you would normally do, but be aware that parcel audio settings now have their own tab in the "About Land" window. Then just hit the play button on your viewer HUD.

There is a spot of bad news, though. While Ogg Vorbis streams wonderfully without any extra plugins, Theora video does not(perhaps a Theora plugin may come out soon). Plus, rendering web pages on prims uses qtwebkit now instead of Mozilla, so depending on your Linux distribution you may need to install qtwebkit via package manager.

All in all, this is a greatly welcome development for Linux-using residents. Bravo, Linden Lab!

Update: Oh, I forgot to mention that Snowglobe also has built-in text chat translation(no more language HUDs!) and Open Grid Protocol login support.

The Biggest Spectacle of Bawling I've Ever Seen

The Lindens just announced an open beta of their "behind the firewall" enterprise solution, and announced a "Work Marketplace" for enterprise customers to get content from third-party providers(such as Gold Service Providers and others who qualify;down the line they might open it up to non-GSPs).

Sounds like a reasonable next step to cater to enterprises.

Of course, almost anything the Lindens do will inspire a typical Linden/chicken killer/Woodbury/FIC/communist conspiracy rant from Prok, no surprise there. But this time she's gone way, waaay off the hinges. Not because of an in-world griefing/chicken-killing, but because she got caught violating Linden blog discussion rules by listing a bunch of in-world furniture companies(one she admits is owned by one of her tenants) and Blue Linden removed the offending post on grounds of advertising.

What resulted is, in my opinion, the biggest spectacle of bawling in Second Life over nothing. Prok declares self-exile from the Linden forums and blogs, claiming that her rabid posts are a benefit to the Lindens. Yes, she's that deluded. She's welcome to exile herself, however short it may be. Update: I just found out just how short that exile was: less than 24 hours. She made a post on the discussion thread about SLE here, trying to bait Blue Linden or Maggie Darwin. I guess Prok can't go a day without getting her forum fix, lol.

Next she says she'll boycott the Lindens by severing communication with them. No "dearie", you boycott the Lindens with your wallet. But she won't do that because then it means she has to give up her mainland rental business. So severing communication with the Lindens won't affect them one bit, but she's opening herself up and potentially her tenants to major griefing with impunity. I doubt that "boycott" will last long.

Speaking of her tenants, she's also attacking two of them who happen to be Gold Service Providers: Gwyneth Llewelyn and Kim Anubis. Discriminating against successful tenants? What message does *that* send to current and potential future tenants?

Prok, quit bawling and overreacting, grow up and accept that the Enterprise offering is, and should be, for enterprises and not for the majority of us. Whether or not it becomes a successful venture for the Lab isn't going to affect the main grid residents much. It may even open up a few new opportunities. Second Life will go on. The sky is not falling.

On the other hand, don't stop bawling. It's comedy gold.

Update: I just seen Kim's responses in Prok's post comments. She's got no problem knocking Prok down a peg. In fact, she does it better than I could. Way to go, Kim!

The 1st Brownbag Meeting: Looking Pretty Good so far

Yesterday, I stumbled onto this wiki page with a transcript and an MP3 recording of the first brownbag meeting between Linden Lab and third-party viewer developers. The third-party developers were well represented, with some people fairly well known(McCabe Maxsted of Imprudence, Fractured Crystal, Chalice Yao and Lonely Bluebird of Emerald) and several other developers who I'm not familiar with. The Lindens were equally represented, and the discussion in text chat and voice was pretty formal and informative.

The meeting opened up with "What 3rd party viewer features do you think are very useful to users?" and then a Q&A with the Lindens about how the registry process might work out.

From the tone of this first meeting, the Lab might cook up a registry that is fair to all parties involved, including users. The Lab might work closer with 3rd party devs, but not get heavy-handed like the devs feared. Users could get a detailed description of approved viewers along with user reviews and ratings. And perhaps most beneficial, the Lab may finally incorporate some 3rd party features into the official viewer.

So now I'm less cautious and more optimistic about the registry, but there are more brownbag meetings to come and nothing's finalized yet. I'll post when more details surface.