Hey everyone. I've been away from OpenSim for a while but got back. Since last
time I've been around, I read about Linden's decision to cut OpenSim support
from their viewer due to some crazy licenses with their physics engine. The
rights and wrongs have been discussed and are not the point of this email. But
this decision means that in some senses, OpenSim will become completely
separate from Linden's SL, and some fundamental things might change. I wanted
both to ask what exactly is going to happen, but also post my own suggestion.
Obviously I'm not someone who can say what's good and bad, but personally this
is what I strongly believe OpenSim should do and go for.
The way I see things, OpenSim has primarily been a server-side for Second Life
during its existence. Even if its purpose is a general virtual worlds platform,
SL was the only usable viewer in practice. Now that LL cut its support, it's in
the situation of having no exact client to be used with. There are many
third-party viewers that will continue supporting OpenSim, but IMHO they can't
be considered a reliable source in the long term. I assume most of them have
their own developers which take decisions independently from the OpenSim team.
If one of those viewers dies for instance, it's up to the user to go looking
for another one that's still under development. Apart from the fact that people
have to hunt for a viewer, this
situation also kept OpenSim from being able to make changes that would
require viewer modifications as well.
My opinion is that OpenSim won't get far if it relies on random viewer forks to
be used with at this point. We are not a clear standard technology, unlike web
browsers for instance where you can use Apache to host and FireFox to browse,
both unrelated and a variety of choices available for each. This is not to say
OpenSim should be unusable with viewers unrelated to SL, since that would go
against its purpose. But the SL viewer is a very large and complex thing, and
there will surely never be anyone making a client from scratch which will
implement all of its features, look as good, be as fast, as bug free, etc. The
building and prim editing tools, the terrain editor, the avatar and mesh
system, the rendering features, the GUI... it's unlikely anyone will properly
re-write all that from zero when the SL viewer exists and works fine.
This is why I believe we need our own official viewer, developed by and with
the OpenSim server, and based on one of the Second Life viewers. Apart from the
fact that people will know they don't depend on someone else to make them a
viewer, it would allow client + server changes to be done for the first time,
rather than having to stay within the SL viewer's limits. If that doesn't
happen, I don't believe we'll ever become a better virtual worlds platform
outside of SL's shadow. I remember the days of RealXtend (I heard it's dead
now) which took the SL viewer in one hand, OpenSim in another, and created its
very own project which was completely amazing for those days (SL now has mesh
support and better graphics so it makes RealXtend less special at this day). My
personal opinion is that it's time OpenSim does something similar.
If it was me, I'd say grab the latest SL viewer without the restrictive Havoc
library and make OpenSim viewer from that. If Linden adds a nice feature to
theirs which we can copy over, sure thing, but otherwise it can go its own
separate way. On the other hand, it would be a good aim to allow previous SL
viewers to still connect to OpenSim, though they wouldn't recognize some of its
specific features then. I know OS and SL and under two different licenses, but
that doesn't make it wrong to distribute both on the same website and as part
of the same project.
What does the core team of OpenSim think about this? Are there any plans or
will to go in this direction? Or does anyone believe that instead we should
continue providing support for SL's features and have OpenSim users find their
own clients like until now? I believe this is an important question, and would
like to know what to expect in the future. Personally I really hope something
in this direction will be decided, but I'm not one to know best.
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