On Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:27:34 -0700, Yoz Grahame wrote: > Linden Lab has the final say in what goes into the Linden Lab viewer. A > third-party viewer team has the final say in what goes into their viewer.
Indeed, but if LL is so close-minded as to reject any change to the UI that would allow v1 lovers to adopt v2, then there is no chance that any v1 developer will migrate to the v2 code base... > Linus Torvalds has the final say in what goes into the Linux kernel. Excepted that: 1.- Linus Torvalds proved over many years to be extremely open minded, something we still have to see happening from Linden Lab's part, I'm afraid. 2.- Comparing an OS such as Linux with a client software is like comparing apples with nuts (and I'm not saying the viewer is nut... although... ;-). The controversial issues with a client are usually dealing with it's UI (which is exactly the case for the SL veiwer) rather than with its core features and algorithms. If you want to compare some other Open Source software with the viewer, then take, for example, Firefox and see how the lead developers of Firefox already said that the UI for v4 will have an option to revert it back to v3 look and feel. If you really want to compare the viewer with an OS, you should have choosen Windows: in Windows XP, I can still configure the OS so that its UI is reverted to Windows95 look and feel... Mozilla and Microsoft know for a fact that the UI is a very touchy matter, and that "old timers" hate it when you remove functionalities that they used hundreds of times a day, making them loose their productivity in the process, thus why Mozilla and Microsoft (among many others) provide full backward pathes to their users, UI-wise. > If you want something in the kernel that Linus doesn't, you can just clone > the main source tree and pull in updates while you make your own changes, > then distribute your own kernel. Distributed version control's great like > that, > and it's why we moved to Mercurial. It makes it much easier for third-party > viewers to maintain their own UI features, or contribute them back to us, > while regularly pulling in the improvements we make to the underlying > platform so as to make Second Life better for everyone. Excepted that, for now, it's easier for TPV developers to backport the few useful features from v2 (I did it already for Alpha and Tattoo wearables, as well as for inventory item links), than to build their TPV on the v2 code base and have to redo the whole UI to match their user base needs and wants. If their is no hope for convergence (even as optional, configurable UI switches), there is no hope to see the TPV developers contributing to Snowstorm and isntead of developing new useful features that LL could incorporate in Snowstorm, the TPV developers will waste their time redoing the UI in a way that, obviously, LL will never accept for inclusion in Snowstorm. This is a HUGE waste of coding efforts and power. Regards, Henri. _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/OpenSource-Dev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
