On 08/07/10 22:20, Drew Hart wrote:
I will contact you offlist Wordfromthe Wise. And what was said makes
sense. I guess my only concern, and I am serious about doing some
serious fundraising, is the use of the name Open Simulator. I guess if
I raised money and laid out my position, that I am an independent third
party interested in hiring coders to contribute to OpenSim, that should
make using the name okay (people would know I am not officially
conected)? Also, we would need some independent "observer/accountant"
to make sure everything is cool and the money spent wisely, but I know
several that would volunteer their time to do that
(attorneys/accountants). So if anyone else wants to work on
fundraising, etc., contact me at dreweh...@gmail.com
<mailto:dreweh...@gmail.com>. Or if anyone has other ideas on how
non-programmers can help the code move along, I am open to anything.
Even if some of the experts want to hold some training sessions so we
can learn coding - though I am not sure if that is practicable. Thanks,
Sorry to start off heavy, but please could you not use the name "OpenSimulator" as part of any external project name. I
have to disagree with Melanie about this - I think that this has to apply to all projects whether commercial or not. We
need to avoid confusion about what is directly OpenSimulator - as far as I understand if we don't defend this name then
anybody could start using it since we could not subsequently protect it as a trademark.
I don't think there's any issue with using "OpenSimulator" in any support text.
I don't think that the comparison with Diaspora really applies. Diaspora are starting from scratch with a set of
friends who can create a structure that can easily handle funding. OpenSim has been going for quite a while with a
diverse set of developers with different interests where it becomes much harder to retrofit certain kinds of organization.
Diaspora are operating in a space with huge interest. Virtual worlds/environments, though there obviously are
passionate people involved (not least on this list) are very much less popular.
Diaspora, as Michael mentioned, are tackling a fairly well-defined problem, albeit in an innovative way. Virtual
environments servers, on the other hand, don't really solve a problem in themselves but provide a platform for doing
lots of other diverse and interesting things, which I feel makes incorporating all these interests in a funded
environment much harder.
Moreover, money brings with it organizational overhead. You've already mentioned the need for independent
observers/accountants and attorneys. And when one starts employing developers directly the question becomes who sets
their agenda and who decides who is employed. This is why direct employment and bounties tend to be easier (though I'm
not a great fan of bounties).
In fact, if there really is money and interest out there, one thing that I would suggest is setting up a downstream
distribution project of OpenSim, much like the Diva distribution. In miniature, this is like Debian's (or other Linux
distro's) relationship with Linux. That way, there wouldn't be the high difficulty of trying to change an existing
developer-oriented culture - instead the distro could start off with whatever structure and philosophy it pleased. It
could still fundraise and contribute changes/features back to OpenSim but at the same time it could do stuff which is
always going to be hard in OpenSimulator itself (such as incorporate certain library content by default or add on web
admin code).
On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Michael Cerquoni <nebadon2...@gmail.com
<mailto:nebadon2...@gmail.com>> wrote:
One of the problems with OpenSimulator project doing this, is it is
not an established company. There is no central office or managers
for this project. That aside if you wanted to try to raise funds to
hire programmers who will submit their code you could certainly do
that, you do not need OpenSimulator project to do this for you. You
could also ask some of the OpenSim developers directly if they are
interested in working for bounty if you can raise the funds.
Another problem right now is most of the developers are way to busy
to organize fund raising events, and from my experience Money doesnt
always solve problems, and can tend to complicate things to the
point they never actually get done, because once the funds run out
work just flat out stops and is very difficult to get going again.
One thing you do not mention is what you would like to see finished
or what you feel is missing or incomplete. OpenSimulator is a very
open ended project and will likely always be morphing and changing,
there will likely never be an end to its development, unlike a
facebook website which has very limited purpose to its goals. I am
going to assume you mean Second Life compatibility, this is really
just a small piece of opensimulator and I will think that you will
find that most of the people directly involved in OpenSimulator are
not that interested in recreating second life, there are many
avenues being pursued right now that look nothing like Second Life,
one of the major factors really holding this project back is the
lack of a Open-Source viewer that the OpenSimulator developers can
work on that is in a usable state, the Second Life viewer source
code is off limits to OpenSimulator developers and because of this
making OpenSimulator be second life compatible is not always easy or
even possible at all in some cases. I think once we see viewers
like Realxtend Naali and others become more usable you will see
OpenSimulator move even further from trying to be a second life
clone. But these are just some of the reasons that I see
OpenSimulator is taking as long as it has, and it will likely
continue to take just as long no matter how much money you throw at
it, but like i said, anyone who has the desire can raise funds and
hire developers to get involved and contribute the code to this
project, so please do not wait for the OpenSimulator developers to
do this for you, as some of the developers that work for Intel Corp
and IBM Corp, and others like Melanie and Justin have been paid to
develop and create patches as well as for profit grids like Reaction
Grid, so its not like this is really something that is not currently
happening. Hope this helps to explain atleast a little of why
things are the way they are.
On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 7:38 AM, Drew Hart <dreweh...@gmail.com
<mailto:dreweh...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Okay, that was my catchy title that in no way means any
disrespect. I love OpenSim, have used it for years, tell
everyone I meet about it and am a huge fan and supporter.
Recently a question was asked about a roadmap and progress. I
would like to expand on that. OpenSim has now been around for a
while - like years. Yet I can't really use it for clients. So
here is my question. As a non-coder, how can others help. For
example, I would gladly donate some decent money if there were a
coordinated fundraising event and a plan to hire a couple of
full-time, very qualified developers to really move this along.
Please, please, please don't take this the wrong way. This is
NOT a criticism. I know this is done by volunteers and I know
that this is more ambitious than Second Life, but have we looked
at other solutions to move the process along. I think there are
a lot of people like me who would contribute. But, and I stress
this. Me donating say $1,000 by myself isn't going to do
anything. We would need a serious fundraising drive, and
specific and talented people that we could hire full-time as
consultants/coders to really move this along.
I would imagine I am not the first to suggest this. But every
day I see this awesome product I want to use, yet it seems
months or years away from stable wide-spread use.
There are now several web sites that help in fundraising. I am
sure many of you read about the NYU students that raised several
hundred thousand dollars in a short time so they could spend
their summer coding a Facebook clone (sort of). Now if 4
undergrads can get that kind of money for a Facebook clone, why
hasn't OpenSim tried something similar. These fundraising sites
are hot right now - let's take advantage of them!
Please read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.html
The article was written before they raised much more money.
<http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.html?scp=3&sq=nyu%20programmers&st=cse>
Drew
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