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.

Ubuntu Harshing on GIMP

I had recently heard that Canonical is going to remove GIMP from the default install of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS("Lucid Lynx"). At first, many people thought it was being removed for space reasons(you can only put so much onto a 700MB CD), but it was revealed that they are removing it and replacing it with F-Spot, a horrid photo management app. Seriously, are they kidding?

The reasoning behind the move, at least what they publicly say, is that they believe "average users" don't create/edit images or graphics, they do touchups on Aunt Selma's vacation photos. Also another reason for removal is that the UI for GIMP is too intimidating for new users. While I agree pretty much with the latter reason, I believe the former is really just a false pretense to prop up an ill-fitted Mono application over a more logical replacement for GIMP: gpaint.

I'm not alone in this sentiment, either. In a poll thread posted on the Ubuntu Forums, 58.89%(712 votes) believe removing GIMP is a big step backwards for Ubuntu compared to 41.11%(497 votes) think removal from the default install is a good thing.

So that means there's a ballpark 60% majority in favor of either keeping GIMP or at least have a better replacement app than F-Spot. Yet Canonical isn't listening to their users. I'm even convinced that when the GIMP finally gets that UI overhaul at the end of the year, Canonical won't even take one glimpse at it, because they are practically in love with F-Spot.

So how do we push back against this bogus Mono power play? It's pretty simple: On first boot to the desktop after installation, head straight for the Synaptic Package Manager, remove F-Spot and install GIMP or gpaint. Then go to "Software Sources" and check off "Submit statistical information", as it will report back that F-Spot has been immediately purged and replaced with GIMP or gpaint. If enough of these reports are made, then the developers will have no choice but to change the installation packages to reflect the preferences of the users.

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.

Blue Mars in Linux: I'd keep it, but...

After reading a tweet my friend Zauber put up a few hours ago, I decided to download and attempt to play Blue Mars in Linux via a beta of Wine v1.2. After the quick registration and activation, I downloaded and ran the Blue Mars installer.

The install went without a hitch. I launched the desktop link to Blue Mars, halfway expecting it to bomb out, like when I tried to run the There.com client a while back. To my surprise, I got the login screen working great.

I login, choose to download Caledonia, restarted the client as instructed, clicked go and then...

It works pretty well, as you can see, but there's a big problem here: it's too damn glowy for me to use. It's like Windlight on crack.

To be sure, the glow is due to Wine's DirectX incompleteness, but it's enough of a turn-off to keep me away from Blue Mars unless they make a Linux client, or the Wine developers work to make Blue Mars visually comfortable for my eyes.

Note: Before anyone suggests it, let me state for the record that buying a copy of Windows 7 at $200 USD just to play a game is incredibly stupid, IMHO. Between SL, my XBox 360 and soon a PlayStation 3, I'm perfectly sorted in the gaming department.

Quite a shame. Blue Mars, you almost had me.

The XStreetSL Commerce Forums: A hotbed of creator/merchant elitism?

<rant>
Yesterday I checked up on the Commerce Forums to see if anything hopefully interesting or positive was being discussed. What I found was something absolutely disgusting: A merchant championing the total abolishment of Basic accounts and "No Payment Info On File" account status under the paper-thin guise of content protection.

This is another example of the elitist attitude that has been boiling over in the Commerce Forums since the XStreetSL listing taxes announcement. While the OP of that thread got tremendous and firm pushback, it has emboldened some to suggest other economically destructive ideas such as requiring a premium account to be able to sell things, and even creating a separate grid for free accounts.

This elitist hate of Basic accounts has to stop. Now. It is ill-conceived, misguided and ultimately destructive.

What the elitists fail to see is that Basic(and NPIOF) membership is what gets people into SL, as it's the easiest point of entry to a virtual world compared to some competitors, and as a result Basic accounts are extremely vital contributors to the economy(Hint to elitists: In other words they are your customers). The Premium account status is a carrot-and-stick proposition for Basic residents who want some relatively small perks(not counting Linden Homes) in exchange for a recurring fee to the Lab. Lording premium status over the entire grid will result in an economic disaster that will see Second Life crumble faster than the current XStreetSL exodus, leaving only the few elitists left to wonder what went wrong.

Nobody who loves SL(including the elitists) would want that to happen, but that is the direction this movement is pushing the Lab. The only way to stop it is to vigilantly keep pushing back until the elitists give up. So keep on pushing back, folks. Stand up for your right to be Basic and proud!(Disclaimer: I've been a Premium account for over 3 years, but I stand with many of my friends and customers who are Basic accounts as I know they are the heart and soul of SL, as Prokofy eloquently put it.)
</rant>

LL goes begging for banner ads, again

In an earlier post I talked about yet another piece of fallout from the XStreetSL listing taxes scandal: Banner ads on XStreetSL plummeted like a rock and the Lindens went begging to Solution Providers to fill in the gaps.

It seems that trick didn't work, since the Lindens are now extending a half-price ad offer to all merchants(well, those who still haven't jumped ship yet) for the holidays. Unfortunately, this will suffer the same problem that the SP offer had: What good is a half-off ad offer when the consumers are leaving the ad providers' site in droves? It doesn't matter if it's the holidays, the bottom line is what counts.

The Lindens are obviously trying to at slow the bleeding from XStreetSL, but they're applying relief to the wrong area, and they know it. Until Colossus and Pink publicly acknowledge that they royally screwed over customers and merchants, the result of this second round of begging will remain the same: FAIL.

Down to the old (e)Pub instead

Lately I've been thinking about writing a book or two. Nothing serious or professional. Just for fun. And since digital distribution to mobile devices(smartphones, Kindle, Nook, etc) seems to be a good way to get out there without a dead tree publisher, I want to make ebooks in the open and mobile-friendly EPUB format.

The first step on my digital publishing journey was to find and grab a decent open source ePub creation program. Dredging through Synaptic on Ubuntu shows only the Calibre ebook management and conversion program. I'm not looking for a converter. So I hit up Google and I get hits for eCub, Sigil, Feedbooks and some others that I won't mention because they're not available for Linux.

First on the list was eCub. I had quickly downloaded and installed it, but then I noticed it isn't open source. So eCub gets the uninstall from me.

Next up is Sigil. I download and ran the .bin installer and get "You must be root to run this installer". My response: Why? I absolutely hate .bin installers that insist on getting root when the application it's meant to install doesn't need root access to run. A local install within the $HOME directory should be perfectly fine for .bin installers. So Sigil isn't getting installed unless they fix their installer or provide a proper .deb package.

Finally, there's Feedbooks. Feedbooks is primarily two things: a place to download public domain ebooks and a web-based epub creation and publishing tool. I've bookmarked it, but I'm looking for an offline creation program.

So, where does this leave me? Well, I said "screw it" and wrote up my own epub creator based on the Wikipedia entry on ePub. It's a menu-based shell script that can be used to create ePub books from start to finish.

The script(called "Skelepub.sh") is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPLv3 or later and can be downloaded here.

Update: I've also made a GUI-fied version of Skelepub for those who are averse to command lines. They're both functionally equivalent, but the console version is more portable across Linux distributions.

Now, what to write for my book... hmm, that's gonna take a lot longer than two days to figure out...

Note: If you read the title of this post and thought "Hey, isn't that the name of a song by singing comedian Stephen Lynch?", you are indeed correct, laddie:

More XStreetSL Fallout: LL goes begging to Solution Providers for banner ads

In yet another telltale sign of XStreetSL's business losses due to their own greed, Prok dishes the dirt on a "limited time complimentary banner ads" program to Solution Providers. While I don't really care about banner ads on XStreet anyhow(I rarely, if ever, clicked on one anyway), in the comments it's revealed that non-LL banner ads have dropped faster than a rock.

I took a quick look at XStreetSL for old time's sake, and sure enough a LL ad shows up quite often each time I reload or navigate around the marketplace. Before the listing taxes announcement, I would rarely, if ever, see a LL banner ad on XStreetSL.

I'll let the commenter who blew the whistle on the XStreeSL ads sum it up for me:

I would suggest this is a combination of desperation at trying to get some fresh ads up there and the beginning of their push to make xsl work friendly - which is never will be.

Until the Lab comes clean and kills the listing taxes in favor of a more balanced solution, expect things to only get worse for the Commerce team.

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.

The "unintended" consequences of XStreetSL's listing taxes

As the first of the big changes to XStreetSL(L$99 freebie monthly tax) will be coming soon(sometime between Dec. 18 - Jan. 18), "unintended" consequences are already being clearly seen.

XStreetSL now has a big rash of active item listings that no longer have any items associated with it. This was due to merchants neglecting to de-list their items before trashing their XStreetSL magic boxes. This will force the Commerce team to eventually do a sweep and remove the "dead" listings, but until then these listings serve as a proof of lost income for the Lab: customers can't buy them, the Lab can't get a commission, and heaven help them if they try to extract listing taxes from those dead listings.

So many of the merchants who left now leave the Lab with a significant liability in terms of both monetary and reputational value. XStreetSL's primary strength was it's ability to buy items in a browser and not have to go through the trouble of finding them in-world. With these dead listings, the departed merchants have effectively undermined that strength and simultaneously made alternatives more appealing. And it may get worse when the listing taxes go in effect, causing more merchants to leave abruptly when they are truly faced with the Lab's greed.

Congratulations, Commerce team. You've fostered the creation of content black holes on your site.

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.