Emerald vs Other 3rd-Party Viewers: Who Can You Trust?

Most of us know that the Emerald viewer is the most popular third-party viewer in Second Life today. Many of it's users will quickly tell you of its' dozens of features that put the official viewer to shame. But ask them this question and you will get some surprising answers: "Do you trust the Emerald developers?"

Those who quickly answer "Yes!" either haven't gotten enough information about them or are willfully ignorant of their shady histories. Those who answer "No" do know about the gang's griefing power plays, but think that there aren't any decent alternatives or "I can't live without Emerald feature X".

Whenever a person decides to switch away from the official viewer, trust in the developer(s) is a crucial factor. In this blog post, let's take a look at the Emerald developers and the Imprudence developers(the viewer that I use) and see how we can compare them in the context of trust.

Let's start off with the Imprudence developers(Jacek Antonelli, McCabe Maxsted and Armin Weatherwax). Okay, so they have a blog, a wiki, a forum, a source code repository, an issue tracker and a mailing list, for starters. So on the surface it's fairly professional. But wait, what do we see in the "Imprudence Links"? Ah, a privacy policy! Very nice. And also in the wiki we find out that the developers hold weekly public meetings(called ImpDev meetups) and publish full transcripts of the meetings. Bonus points on transparency. Another crucial factor is that all of the developers appear to have clean records in SL.

So it seems the Imprudence folks are on the up-and-up.

Now let's see how Emerald stacks up. Well, they seem to have the same basics as Imprudence(blog, wiki, source code repository, etc) and a privacy policy also, but let's dig deeper. Well, looks like the blog has completely disabled comments on all posts. They hold "office hours" but it appears the last thing even remotely resembling an office hour was posted Feb. 6th, 2010. Also, their latest "project" to be outed, Onyx, has gone from a public list of known malicious viewers to a page requiring a username and password to view. So that means they have chosen not to be transparent in the face of public scrutiny.

Then there's the illicit pasts of Fractured Crystal, and Phox/Lonely Bluebird. Fractured's history is that of a typical serial copybotter/griefer. Phox has been caught bragging about stealing stuff, loves to smoke weed, and claims to be able to have the ability to estate manage the entire SL grid. While the other Emerald members' pasts aren't entirely clear one way or the other, it's apparent they are complicit with Fractured and Phox's grid shenanigans.

So now I ask you folks: are all those blingy Emerald features really worth trusting a known copybotter, a kleptomaniac stoner, and a group who has the entire SL grid by the shorthairs(via Onyx)? Who can you really trust? how will you "weigh the scales"?

Update 6/20/2010: The Emerald gang has radically overhauled their ModularSystems site, restoring the comments feature. But all the old comments(and blog posts from April and earlier) are long since nuked, and now there is absolutely no mention of Onyx on the site(navigating to onyx.modularsystems.sl now yields a 404 error page). Oh, and the personal blogs of the gang on the site are gone as well.

Linden Prize Countdown: The Prokofy Factor

In about 24 hours from now(give or take), the winner of the Linden Prize will be announced. I await the announcement with not a sense of excitement, but actually with a sense of fear because there is a very real possibility that the Lindens will choose a finalist that frankly shouldn't have even made it past the gate.

Another reason why I'm dreading the announcement is that as of this point, the biggest chicken booster of them all, Prokofy Neva, has been pretty silent on the matter since the Linden blog post on the sionChickens where she vowed to "fight with every fiber of my being against those worldviews that seek to obliterate the normal, the ordinary, the simple, even the tacky, the mass-taste, the quick buck". Ugh.  I took this to mean that she'd come out swinging hard on her blog, doing everything she can to fight the good chicken fight and badmouth the actual deserving finalists more than she already has.


Her lack of commentary since the Linden blog post is unusual. It's just not like her to leave it alone when there's so much legitimate criticism of her beloved virtual fowl going even stronger now than before(over on SLUniverse, the Linden blog post on sionChickens got the most discussion of all the finalists).


So why the silence? Did she decide she's said all she needed to, and let things come as they may? Or has she somehow gotten the inside track on who will win the Prize? More likely the latter, but I suspect we won't find out until after the winner is announced tomorrow and Prok will inevitably make her own blog post either decrying or gushing over it.

Update: The winner has been announced, and it's not the chickens, thankfully. However as of yet there has been no reaction from Prok. Still, congrats to the Tech Virtual Museum Workshop. You guys deserved it.

More on why Sion Chickens should not win the Linden Prize

As I had stated in my previous post on the fowlness surrounding the Linden Prize(pun intended), sion Chickens do not deserve to win the Linden Prize, much less be on the finalist shortlist simply because they do not meet the stated criteria.

But there's two more reasons why the inclusion of virtual fowl isn't kosher.

First, there's the humanitarian/charitable nature of the Prize itself. Over on Massively, Tateru Nino hits all the regular beats on the subject. In the comments, Maggie Darwin postulates that the Lab may claim the Prize as a charitable donation in their tax filings, and awarding the Prize to such an overtly successful for-profit, commercial operation may endanger that claim. However nobody beyond the Lab itself, its' partners and investors are privy to that sort of information and the Lab is under no obligation as a private company to divulge it to the public.

Then there's the very vicious actions of Sion himself. When one chicken farmer threatened legal action after Sion released a botched update that harmed many farmers' businesses, Sion actually made the thuggish threat of cutting off the food supply to all chicken farmers unless the criticising farmer backed off. Under pressure from fellow farmers, the critic sheepishly did so. Then to make sure no farmer would ever dare again speak out against the Fowl Empire, Sion crafted a new EULA which allowed him to cut off a farmer's chicken-use rights "for any reason or no reason at all" and even blacklist those who were seen as against Sion "for any reason or no reason at all".

Doesn't sound much like a humanitarian, charitable, or at least benevolent person, does it? Sounds more like the actions of a dictator, really.

So let me ask the folks at Linden Lab, if they happen to read this before June 1st: Why are you considering an entry that not only does not meet the criteria, but also whose proprietor has engaged in behaviour that is completely against the spirit of the Prize? Or do you simply not care about the legitimacy of what you publicly outline as a humanitarian prize?

Why Sion Chickens DO NOT deserve to win the Linden Prize

I wasn't going to blog about this, as so many other bloggers have roundly covered it. But then Prokofy Neva wrote this bogus piece on her opinion on why SionChickens should win the Linden Prize and all other finalists are unworthy.

She believes that SionChickens make RL better because it's a "socializing, fun, and a money-making opportunity on line". If this is her reasoning why SionChickens deserve to be on the same list as Virtual Helping Hands, then I propose that every in-world creator/merchant should be eligible, from Stroker Serpentine down to the prankster selling a plain 0.5m plywood cube on XStreet.

This flies right in the face of the what the Linden Prize is supposed to recognize: "an innovative inworld project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world". SionChickens have as much positive impact on the real world as Tamagotchi babies do on parenting: none. Just because Prok believes they have an impact doesn't prove anything.

Chicken fans, ask yourselves these questions: 1) Has buying, raising and selling virtual chickens improved the way you work in RL? 2) Has it improved how you learn in RL? and 3) Has it improved how you communicate in RL? If you answered "No, it hasn't" to all three questions then kindly explain in the comments why it should still be considered worthy of the Linden Prize, because I just don't get it.

Note: As of this writing, Sion Chickens is due up next to be profiled on the Linden Blog. Perhaps then we'll find out exactly what the f*** the Lindens were thinking including such an inappropriate entry as a finalist.

Update: The Linden blog post has been made, and it utterly and completely fails to convince why sionChickens are Linden Prize-worthy. Here's my comment to that blog post, if the Lindens decide to censor it:

I'm sorry, but this blog post does not explain in any form how sionChickens can be representative of an inworld project that has improved the way people work, learn, or communicate outside of the virtual world, as the Linden Prize page so clearly tells us.

In fact, it actually confirms the objections of many who believe sionChickens are not worthy of the Linden Prize.

The technologies used in sionChickens and sionCorn are no doubt innovative, but the purpose of the chickens isn't to teach how to use these technologies(If it were then breeders would be able to scientifically figure out how to optimize breeding and such). "Virtual World Tamagotchis" would be fairly descriptive of the purpose of sionChickens.

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 Axe Falls on Woodbury, thanks to... Emerald?!

The news about the massive banfest against Woodbury members has been getting major discussion over at SLUniverse and on Prok's blog, and it turns out what did them in was that they decided to grief the wrong griefers. Allegedly, Tizzy Teardrop put a bounty on taking down Emerald's beloved CDS, which got the ball rolling. But what most likely pushed the Emerald devs into throwing WU under the bus was the recent video made by Cam Scientist, a Woodbury member who publicly outed the fact that Fractured Crystal should not be anywhere near SL according to the TOS, starting from the first time he got an account banned and also that Onyx is a griefer/copybot viewer.

This, of course, embarrassed the Emerald devs and even put a few holes in their perceived reputation. So they obviously decided to offer up Woodbury as a condition(or leverage) to get on the third-party viewer directory. It's definitely no coincidence both events happened nearly on the same day.

My personal opinion on this is, "I don't really care". I have no sympathy whatsoever for the banned Woodbury griefers, and this doesn't change my opinion of the Emerald devs one bit. It's just a classic case of no honor amongst thieves.

The Second TPV developer brown-bag meeting: Wow, what a difference!

As noted in the previous blog post, the second brown-bag meeting between third-party viewer developers and Linden Lab has happened earlier today and from reading the transcripts, this time around it went way better. No griefing, sim crashing or voice problems, and the consensus is pretty much that the policy is much more agreeable as a whole.

What was discussed this time around is more "small stuff", like issues with the policy and content import and export. While Section 2(b) hasn't really changed at all, Joe Linden did recognize that there is a genuine need for extended metadata to help address legal uses of non-creator export, but the policy won't change until that happens. Fair enough, in my opinion. There are ways for creators of permissive content to get around it(host it outside of SL, collaborative builders can export their parts of builds and share it with their collaborators until the build is completed).

Also, Joe specifically wanted to address the Imprudence team about their plans to drop support for SL. This is a very positive sign for me personally, as I do prefer Imprudence not just for the viewer itself, but because I find the developer team to be very professional and upfront. It's also a positive sign for SL in general as well, as it shows the Lindens do not want to see a mass exodus of development support to OpenSim-based grids(although they have inadvertently strengthened OpenSim viewer support).

The only thing about the meeting that didn't change, sadly, was that again it seems no developers who are already listed in the TPV directory were in attendance. Maybe some of them didn't want to attend out of fear they would get the third degree, although it seems that given the policy changes it's just water under the bridge now and their input would be welcomed.

All in all, though, it's a 180% turnaround from last week's debacle and the first positive change I've seen from the Lab in a long while. I feel like doing a headbob:

The New Third-Party Viewer Policy: A Thing of Beauty and A Joy Forever

As noted in the previous blog post, the Lindens have quietly changed their third-party viewer policy. The changes, unlike the previous revision which amounted to nothing, address the majority of the issues raised by TPV developers and results in a more clear and simpler read for those who it's intended for.

The single biggest change is in Section 7(d), which now reads: "You assume all risks, expenses, and defects of any Third-Party Viewers that you use. Linden Lab shall not be responsible or liable for any Third-Party Viewers" Previously, the first sentence had ", develop or distribute" tacked on at the end, which put the sort of legal liability that LL themselves disclaim onto third-party developers. The new wording now makes it clear that was not the actual intent of the clause.

So with this change, for most legit TPV developers, there's nothing to fear from this policy anymore and it may even be totally okay to go for self-certification into the viewer directory(IANAL, of course, but that's my personal opinion).

There may be a few nagging issues left, such as Section 2(b) which restricts content export capability to creator-only. However, that merely applies to when on the SL grid. So it's possible to either simply have creators host permissive content outside of SL, or just have full-perm content export disabled only when on the SL grid. However for non-SL content exporting, I'd strongly recommend some sort of mechanism to convey usage beyond SL's crude C/M/T checkboxes.

Of course, certain folks who are against third-party viewers as a whole will be decrying the changes as "LL caving in to TPV developers" and "they're giving the store away to the copybotters". Reading through the policy, it's clear that's not what happened. The policy now more clearly delineates the difference between a compliant viewer and a malicious viewer(see Sections 2 and 7) and the enforcement terms(Section 8) have not changed(not counting the addition of 8(f), which merely makes clear the policy isn't intended to screw with the GPL).

Given these changes, I may not have to close down my store in SL after all. But I will continue with my current plan of opening up on other grids. It's a happy day for me :)

Update: BTW, the second brown-bag meeting has happened today. The transcript of the meeting can be found here(big thanks to Latha Serevi for the transcripts!).

Updates on the Third-Party Viewer Policy debacle

Joe Linden recently hosted a brown-bag meeting for third-party developers to discuss the TPV policy. Unfortunately the meeting accomplished very little in terms of reconciliation or possible policy revision. This was due to griefers at the meeting teleporting around and crashing the sim(those griefers sadly being some of the people attending the meeting), and expected major problems with voice.

What was interesting about this meeting is that as far as I can tell there were absolutely no third-party developers in attendance who were listed in the Lindens' third-party viewer directory. That left Joe with virtually no solid support on his side. Also there were a few people there who weren't developers at all: Wut Moorlord of Woodbury/w-hat(a known griefer) and Angela Talamasca, who basically represents anti-open source folks like Prok. Then there's the shady trio of "ex-griefer" Emerald developers Discrete Dreamscape, Fractured Crystal and Lonely Bluebird. So with that unique blend of folks there, it's no wonder it came out a disaster for both sides.

What I took away from the meeting transcripts, however, is that the Emerald devs are going to do exactly what I theorized to several friends: that the Emerald developers are going to secretly negotiate a deal with the Lindens to become the only allowed general use third-party viewer on the directory(KirstenLee's viewer doesn't count as it's meant as a specialist viewer for photographers and machinima creators), with a side deal that Onyx(the copybot/griefer client the Emerald devs use amongst themselves) will be exempt from the policy, making it a Linden-blessed copybot/griefer client under the veil of "penetration testing for the Lab". Meanwhile all of the honest devs of general use third-party viewers will get bullied out of SL to appease the Lindens and their Emerald buddies. I have very little hope that the next meeting will be anything different or produce anything positive.

So in a nutshell, for general SL use it's either the still-craptacular Viewer 2.0, Snowglobe or risk your data and privacy with the Emerald devs in exchange for jiggle boobs, fancy selection beams and lag-inducing extra attachment points. Ugh.

Update: Regarding Emerald, Prok has a new blog post up which connects almost all of the dots about these folks who, in all honesty, should have been perma-banned from the first TOS/CS violation they committed(feel free to skip her usual open source=evil BS, of course). What Prok misses, however, is the connection between Onyx and Gemini CDS. Yes, CDS will ban all copybot viewers detected, except Onyx since it's an Emerald "project". Combined with the TPV policy going into effect, the Emerald devs can run roughshod over SL with no one the wiser, with only the above choices left for SL residents.

Update 2: Surprisingly, the Lindens have quietly amended the TPV policy. From what I'm reading of it, the changes are precisely what the TPV developer community asked for. I guess that blows apart the piece of my theory of Emerald colluding with Lindens to run all the other legit TPVs out of town. However that doesn't change the likelihood of CDS and Onyx collusion.

Update on MetaGridNet

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

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

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

Leaving Second Life and embracing OpenSim

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to access MetaGridNet sandbox via Hypergrid

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


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

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

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

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

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

1. No griefing, harrassment or drama.

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

Otherwise, have fun!

MetaGridnet: A social ecommerce website and OpenSim sandbox

If you recall, I had previously blogged about my successful, but laborious attempt at setting up an OpenSim installation on my hosted VPS server. Well, recently I redeployed my server and decided to do something bigger as a challenge: create an OpenSim installation, but with a social networking site to accompany it. The result is MetaGridNet.

MetaGridNet's social networking features include user blogs, Twitter-like microblogging, user pages, a forum, file uploading, and an online marketplace. And now as of this writing, MetaGridNet also has its' own 2x2 region OpenSim environment. Currently, you can set up an MetaGridNet account via the website, but there is no website page to create accounts for the sandbox(yet). To get a sandbox account, you must contact me via email and provide your avatar's name and password(Your data will be kept private). The login URI for the MetaGridNet sandbox is http://metagridnet.com:9000.

P.S - I do have Hypergrid enabled as the sandbox uses the Diva distribution of OpenSim. I'll provide details on how to Hypergrid to MetaGridNet in a later blog post.

Skills Hak files bogus DMCA takedowns on Youtube

In the last post I made about Gemini CDS, I had linked to a video on Youtube that shown an instance of copybotting being done while the content that was ripped was supposedly "protected" by Gemini CDS(Before anyone accuses me of anything, no I was not the one who made the video). Shortly after I published the post, the video was taken down from Youtube "due to a copyright claim by Simone Phuc".

At first, I had merely thought that the takedown was because of the music track that was in the video. Later I remembered that in those sort of cases, Youtube merely removes the audio. So it wasn't the music track.

So then I started searching for similar videos. There were a number of videos, yet all were completely taken down by this same "Simone Phuc". Why? The videos themselves did not violate anyone's copyright(music tracks notwithstanding). And for certain, the person who made all these takedowns could not own all the products that were shown copybotted. But there was one obvious link in all the videos: These videos documented Gemini CDS failures.

So the only possibility is that Simone Phuc is Skills Hak, and she is attempting to stop embarrassing evidence that her product is failing from reaching enough of the public.

This is absolutely wrong, not only for Skills but also for her clients because those videos are clear, documented proof that copybotting had occurred, and the victims affected could use them to prosecute the thugs. Skills/Simone's takedowns then amount to obstruction of justice, and also abusing the DMCA(even if Skills tries to claim trade secrets, DMCA is *only*for copyright claims).

To Skills, I say this: Do the right thing and stop abusing the law to hide what are obvious product failures. What you should have done was inform the victims of the copybotting incidents and show them the videos as proof. This would actually help you and your product because it would show customers you actually care about them and their investments in SL.

To Gemini CDS users, I say this: Because Gemini CDS doesn't detect or prevent the actual act of copybotting, you may or may not have been the victim of copybotting in those videos. But since Skills has taken down the videos, you might never know unless you come across copybotted versions of your content in SL(which at that point is too late). There's no good reason to be victimized twice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My comment on opensource-dev maiing list

Just a quick post to show my first comments in the opensource-dev mailing list. It's a response to Joe Linden about his views on the current controversy surrounding the third-party viewer policy:

Tony Agudo to Joe, opensource-dev

(Delurking here just to throw in my $L2; standard IANAL disclaimer)

Joe, most of the TPV Policy *is* reasonable and nobody(except obviously malicious viewer creators) is disputing that requiring reasonable, common sense responsibilities to keep viewers honest is bad at all, it's simply that Section 7(d) can open a can of worms for third-party viewer devs by not clearly stating something along the lines of "You assume all risks, expenses, and defects of any Third-Party Viewers that you use, develop, or distribute in the context of the broader sections of this Policy. Linden Lab shall not be responsible or liable for any Third-Party Viewers". Without a clarification such as that, as an example, a third-party viewer user who believes the viewer is causing harm to his/her SL experience(supposing the "harm" is merely a glitch or bug that occurs in normal development, or even if it's not the viewer but the user thinks it is), that user can point to specifically that section of the TPV Policy and claim "By this, you *are* legally liable for my problems, I can actually sue you". The Lab's own ToS completely disclaims responsibility for the official viewer and has pretty much protected the Lab against such actions in a majority of cases. It's what has kept the development cycle in the Lab from becoming a legal minefield, I'm sure you agree. What the third-party devs are asking is that that legal threat shouldn't be thrust on them via the TPV Policy and it be made clear and unambiguous if they're to continue developing for the benefit of the SL grid without fear of nagging lawsuits. That's not an unreasonable request, is it?

(*going back to lurking*)

The Third-Party Viewer Policy: Take 2, but still as shoddy

According to Tateru Nino at Massively, the Lab has made and released changes to the third-party viewer policy at the request of the opensource-dev community. Sadly, however, they still f*cked it up.

The only change I see, on a casual read is this sentence in the third paragraph of the preamble: "This Policy does not place any restriction on modification or use of our viewer source code that we make available under the GPL."

But still, that sentence directly conflicts with Section 7(d), "You assume all risks, expenses, and defects of any Third-Party Viewers that you use, develop, or distribute.", which violates the GPL's disclaimer of liability.

The best and shortest response I've heard from the open source community makes what they think of the "rewrite" crystal-clear: "You first", as in "If you want us to take responsibility for our viewers by violating the wording of the GPL, then change your ToS(Section 5.4, specifically) to do the same for your own viewer as well".

Now that the Lab has stated that they will not be planning any further modifications to the policy, the ball is now in the third-party devs' court to decide what to do in light of it. Boy Lane(developer of Rainbow viewer), and Fred Rookstown(developer of the Luna viewer) have already stated their intents(Both have simply called it quits on their viewers). Tomorrow the Imprudence developers will meet in-world to discuss what to do regarding the policy, but there's a strong possibility that most popular viewers may abandon SL altogether and throw their weight into OpenSim-based worlds in order to avoid being shackled down by LL.

As TigroSpottystripes Katsu put it: "It's own-foot season, and this time LL brought the big guns."

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.

How Gemini CDS fails to stop copybotting

Yet again, there's another cache of apparently copybotted content being sold on XStreetSL. And this has been discovered long after Gemini CDS was released into the wild to prey on the paranoia of content creators. Wasn't this "wonderful tool" supposed to be the "silver bullet" against copybotting?

No, it's not, because of it's biggest and intentional flaw: it does not stop or detect the act of copybotting at all. Yes, it's stated purpose is to merely detect "copybot viewers", but users are hyping it up beyond belief(see "silver bullet" reference above).

A copybotter can get around CDS via a few methods. The easiest (though costly) method makes use of online marketplaces that use "magic boxes" for delivery. All the copybotter has to do is go to a sandbox or other place where CDS is not used, purchase a copy of the content to be copybotted via website, then copybot the item once delivered and sell it to recoup the monies used to purchase the original copy. So if you're a merchant at XStreetSL or any of the other major online marketplaces, CDS won't protect your online listings, even if your "magic boxes" are within proximity of a CDS.

Another method of course is to play the cat-and-mouse game where copybotters continually update their ripper clients to avoid CDS detection, and Skills Hak has to update CDS in response. This will eventually end in one side "giving up" out of frustration or exhaustion, as all cat-and-mouse games do. My bet on this is that Skills will eventually give up, once people start to realize what a sham CDS is, given the other methods below.

Also CDS cannot prevent thieves from camming into a CDS-protected parcel and copybotting that way. Or stealing textures, animations and sounds by obtaining the UUID of the content via LSL or digging through the texture cache directories of any viewer.

Then there's using GLIntercept in conjunction with the official viewer. It's highly doubtful that CDS can detect GLIntercept, unless CDS does somehow force a user's viewer to peek around the filesystem and report to the CDS webservers what it finds. This would be in violation of the Second Life ToS if it were the case.

If you're still thinking CDS does work, take a look at this video I found after Googling "Gemini CDS Ban Relay":


I rest my case, folks.

Update: Apparently the main detection method of Gemini CDS has been discovered. It triggers the viewer to contact a specific URL, where the site weakly encrypts the details of the avatar and the user-agent HTTP request header details(which is how the viewers are detected), then sends the information off to Skills' secret database. This means defeating Gemini CDS detection(at least at this level) is now as trivial as blocking the URL at the router/firewall level(or by disabling Quicktime with the -noquicktime command-line option).

Update 2: The video I linked to has apparently been taken down due to a DMCA copyright claim. At first I thought it was simply because of the music track that accompanied the video, but normally that would just result in the audio of the video being disabled. But apparently Skills Hak and the Gemini staff are actively trying to suppress videos that demonstrate how ineffective CDS is at stopping copybotting. The videos themselves do not infringe *any* of Skills or Gemini's copyrights, so the takedowns amount to abuse of the DMCA and as suppression of free speech. <snarky sarcasm>I guess Skills has been taking DMCA lessons from Kalel Venkman</snarky>.