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.

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.

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.

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!

The NixTech Forge: My Own OpenSim

Less than an hour ago I was finally successful in compiling, configuring, running and logging into my own OpenSim hosted on a VPS. Currently it's just one small, empty sim and I'm the only avatar on it(I changed the terrain though; it's not a tiny bump of land over water). But creating avatar accounts is very easy, and I'm certain the sim can handle a few simultaneous avatars. So if you want an avatar on the Forge, contact my Second Life avatar "Antonius Misfit" in person or via IM with your desired avatar name and password, and I'll create it and send you the login URI.
P.S - I highly recommend using either the Meerkat or Hippo viewers to access the sim because they have a built-in grid manager to make logins to third-party grids very easy.

Some Resources for OpenSim Users

Just a quick post to list off some useful resources I've found for OpenSim users:

• Free Terrains(useful for new SL private region owners too;RAW file downloads aren't working tho)
• More Free Terrains
  
• CC-licensed sounds
• Meerkat viewer(A viewer with object import/export abilities and support for "grid-hopping")
• Public Domain Pictures
• A GIMP plugin for editing RAW terrain files
• A repository of ready-to-use OpenSim archives: http://opensimworlds.com
  

I've yet to find any public domain or Creative Commons licensed prefabs for SL/OpenSim via Google or XStreetSL, sadly. I'll come back to this post and add to this list if I find anything.

Squatter communities and Virtual Worlds

If you have followed my Twitter microblog for at least the past few days, you may have noticed that I have been traveling to certain places in SL that would seem "seedy" at first glance. Specifically I visited places that on some level or another, represent the favelas of Brazil and Portugal, such as Cidade De Deus(City of God) and Favela Do Capao Redondo.

I was inspired to do so after stumbling onto a video presentation by Robert Neuwirth, a journalist who has spent two years of his life living in squatter communities in four continents(quite an achievement, I'd say). He argues that these squatter communities are "the cities of tomorrow". To a surprising extent, he may be very right. In fact, Robert's argument is playing out right now in the context of virtual worlds.

When Second Life began as LindenWorld, everything was a blank slate to explore, build and develop on. The pioneers of LindenWorld began creating little communities, with merely a fraction of the creation abilities of today's Second Life. Yesterday's LindenWorld beared very little resemblance to Second Life. It was "the virtual world of tomorrow".

As Second Life became more and more mainstream, it simultaneously became more restrictive in certain ways. First it was the gambling ban. Then it was banking. Then ageplay became practically verboten. Most recently adult content is getting thrown into an age-verified only red light district called Zindra. At every point many communities complained it would strip a piece of their freedoms away, but they were ultimately silenced because Linden Lab "had to do this to stay legitimate".

As something of a response to the increasing restrictive complexity, other but less developed virtual worlds have emerged. Most notably is OpenSim, a clean-room reverse engineered implementation of a Second Life sim server. With this, you can host your own sim and hook it up to an existing online grid.

In this sense, OpenSim and it's derivatives can be seen in a similar light as the shantytowns and favelas Mr. Neuwirth talks of so fondly: it offers the kind of freedom Second Life does not. Everybody owns a sim, but property rights are either loose or non-existant. Everything that was once commonplace but now forbidden in SL can be seen on OSGrid or any number of smaller clusters of sims. They are the "virtual favelas" where those who have been disenfranchised by SL may wind up going. This is the competition to SL that it and its' residents must not shun, but rather engage with if SL and the virtual world community at large are to prosper in the long term.

Thankfully, we are seeing a bit or progress on that front, as LL's Content Management Roadmap blog post speaks of best practices for inter-virtual world content interoperability. It is a good first step, but much more engagement and debate must be made on all sides. Otherwise, SL may wind up like Vault 101 from the Fallout 3 video game: sealed off, isolated and left behind. On that, I hope I'm wrong actually, but that's what it seems to me.

So, what's your take? Does SL need these "virtual squatter communities", or am I simply being foolish praising "virtual slums"? Comments are open for discussion :)