We don't need a customizable client

Since Sunday night -- I think it was Sunday -- when it was pointed out that being an armchair developer was easier than actually developing software, I've been thinking about my past, present, and future position in SL and my voice in the forums. In the past, I've been rather vocal about features and open usability, but I think I was wrong.

That said, I think Linden Lab needs to ditch working on a customizable client and I think we users need to stop asking for it. The most obvious reason is that Linden Lab coders are busy fixing bugs, which is what they need to be doing. Second, there really isn't that much interest in it outside the techie/wiki group. So, socially speaking, it's not like there's a huge demand.

More importantly, I think a customizable client could end up being more trouble that it's worth. Allowing people to plug in components would easily lead to the client being more cumbersome to people who weren't as technically inclined as the techie/wikis. Letting just anyone create plug-ins and modify the client would be a terrible security risk. Giving people access to the uncompressed data streams would make texture theft much easier; allowing people to have direct access to streamed, prim measurements would make the problems of IP theft via Linked Editing seem trivial by comparison. And that doesn't even begin to get into the dangers of key loggers, adware, and inworld popups that could reselt from giving people access to the client internals.

My "feature suggestion" is that Linden Lab abandon the idea of a customizable client -- and by extension/inclusion a client-side API -- and concentrate on safe, standardized features that people want.

Well bugger all. I just removed five votes from the Pinpoint Teleporting proposal. Now I have to go remove the other five from the Customizable Interface proposal. Doh. What am I gonna vote for now? Trying on clothing before I buy it ha ha ha ha ha sorry.

You're right. We placed an unduly heavy burden on LL thinking that it would be better for everybody concerned. I think I'll just vote for nothing for the time being. Second Life is just fine the way it is and the Lindens will develop it in due time with the wisdom and insight that their collective experience grants them.

I removed my 10 votes from the customizable client proposal. I feel kind of guilty about it, but you have to go with your gut, eh. I'm going to hang on to my votes for a while, although that in-world texture editor sounds like a good idea.

I agree that there are dangers.
But the customizable client doesn't mean we will have acces to those streams.
I think we will only be able to customize the GUI. Only the buttons, where they are and how they look, And probably some simple scripting to include something like a calculator. LL can very well limit the things that will be custimizeable.

But if you aren't useing your votes, vote for something nice and simple, like:
Prop: 82
Name: Default Audio to Stop not Play (like Movies are)
Feature Detail:
Don't you hate flying over plots and having them play snips of music, wasting your bandwidth, while your just trying to get somewhere else? Vote NOW ! Please can we have audio streaming default to Stop, like Movie streaming does? We are all capable of pressing the PLAY button if we want to listen to an Audio stream
https://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=82