What happened to Kirstens Viewer?

Was trying to download the latest version of Kirstens Viewer and found out she totally disappeared, does someone know what happened to her or why she did gave up on it? I really liked the Viewer...

It seems that she didnt have the capacity or resources to commit to Sections 3b and/or 3c of the GPL License.

3 b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

3 c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

Most people interpret this to mean that if anyone gets a copy of a GPLed executable program then they can basically require the person they got it off to provide them with the source code anytime over the next 3 years. This puts to much of a demand on lots of individuals, like Kirsten, who just want to make stuff for fun.

So Kirsten stop making her version of the viewer available to the general public. I understand she just going to carry on making it for fun. Maybe she will give to some people but probably just her close friends. Friends who dont demand stuff from her that she just not in a position to give.

Thanks for your reply... darn I really liked her viewer... nice features and I like dthe look of it... what a pity... Kirsten if you read me I can be a close friend if you want just gimme the viewer lol

I wrote a long comment on the NWN blog but it seems it shows only the first few. What happend basically is:

Kirstenlee develops the viewer for OLG. Openlife tries to become closed source by forking and changing the opensourced code of Opensim and SL viewer. As such they now only allow their server to speak with their viewer and by doing so effectively locking the door for a majority of it's residents using other viewers like SL or a 3rd party one. KLee announced in the past that there will be no more SL/OS compatible viewers but changed after people kept asking and made the S16 viewer which was only a by-product of the OLG one.

It's legally ok to not provide the server source code which is based on Opensim and BSD licensed. OLG used a lot of know how and never really gave anything back to to Opensim community. They were kicked out some weeks ago.

On the viewer side however the code is GPLed and OLG would have to provide sources for their viewer. Until today they failed to do so and continue to violate the GPL license terms. Kirstenlee who makes that viewer announced his retirement from SL compatible viewer development yesterday. Stating he can't cope with licensing requirements and people asking for the source. Which in fact is only ~7MB of size and I don't understand why OLG is unable to comply with the license by providing a source download. To provide the code on a written offer is only an alternative for a download but requires to have sources available for 3 years (which is not a requirement for a download offer). So basically this is no excuse and doesn't change anything. KLee continues to make the OLG viewer which is still a GPLed software with all the strings attached.

I hope I can still use mine .........I am online with it now.

@Blot

Yes, it will continue working . KLee did a fantastic job with the viewer and it is really sad that the ugly discussion around it led to it's abandonment. People on the blog got very nasty and I can understand the reaction. However all this could have been so easily avoided. It's sad. But as I wrote there are other (commercial) interests of Openlife (KLee works for) behind.

cheers ! understand.

This is a shame. Kirstens Viewer is far superior to LL's own standard client.

i'm just glad i had the chance to download it because i use it all the time..
the whole thing is just sad because it's such nice work..

After reading a bit on this, it seems fairly evident that the GPL harpies whining about compliance and source when it wasn't packaged up yet is what made her hang it up for good.. I don't blame her. If I was hassled by impatient licence nazi's, I'm sure I would've packed it up and said f*ck you too.

Kirstenlee's S16 Build 2090 Source - 11,836 files - 75.1Mb
http://www.armyof4.com/Kirstenlee/S16%20Build%2090%20Source.rar


Last line of the source readme tells an aweful lot...
"And thanks to all the really helpful 'Community' Spirted sorts who have made my life a misery, enjoy the source.

Love Kirsten"

I don't really blame these "harpies" as you put it. A lot of different people did a lot of work and submitted patches under the gpl license fully expecting this license to be adhered to. Everyone needs to understand this, the viewer code is a collection of work by a lot of people not just one. Kirsten was using this work, everyone releasing viewers for us to enjoy use these patches. No one else has had a problem meeting the gpl requirements.

So yes, Kirsten did great work but by not releasing under gpl, she really was saying FU, but it wasn't directed to these so callled "harpies, it was directed to all of the people who put in thousands of hours of work creating the patches.

I'm not sure I really understand what the complaints about her are about. From reading Dana's comment....Kirsten wasn't finished packaging the product, but the "GPL compliance" requesters were jumping the gun and hounding her before she even completely finished?

Even if it was fully complete....saying it only costs 7mb and is easily hosted when the file is actually 70+mb is a bit off the mark. That's over 10x the bandwidth that gets eaten every time one of these people decides they really want that source code.....0.o

I don't blame her at all for throwing in the towel, given that.

With all the nazi freetards hounding her and making her life a misery, I'm not at all surprised she would quit. Hell, I would too.

It's one thing to be gently reminded of licensing requirements and perhaps having fellow community members rally a small org that contributes to the hosting and other requirements for full GPL compliance, and quite another to be essentially dictated to and treated poorly when the intention was to provide a best-of-breed application for Second Life community end-users.

It seemed to me that Kirsten had a problem with certain overbearing people, not with licensing requirements, and could have moved toward full compliance eventually.


.

To avoid a misunderstanding. The complete viewer source tree is a bit more than 7MB in compressed size. That does not include (standard) libraries but these are not required to include. So no, it is no big issue to distribute sources even with small hosting space only.

All of this is a pointless discussion. The GPL requirements are clear. Many people reminded her many times in a friendly way, some not so friendly. You may call the latter ones "GPL nazis", I'd simply call them a**holes. KLee provided sources every now and then though.

But please don't forget that KLee is a paid employee of 3DX, the company behind Openlife Grid. Have a closer look at them and you will easily find out that OLG has different interests than providing their arch enemies as they see SL and OS a nice viewer. KLee does not stop to work on the Openlife viewer. After all the discussions the only conclusion is that OLG intentionally violates the GPL licensing.

It sounds to me that there's bad faith on both sides.

If they were trying to require that they use ONLY their viewer to connect to the OLG, then they would have to write that viewer from scratch or use some component outside the viewer to ensure that you were using their viewer.

It sounds like they were trying to put that restriction inside the viewer, instead. They can't do that without revealing the source code to the restrictive component.

I was willing to wait and see what they did. Other people apparently decided not to give them enough rope to hang themselves and forced the issue.

Hopefully OLG will follow one of the legal paths open to them. Ideally, someone could create a new viewer from scratch, the way the OpenSim folks created a new BSD-licensed server from scratch.

Keep up the great work you are doing Boy Lane. For those who have not tried the various flavors of her compliant viewers, give them a try.

When you get a chance, update the wiki here to show your info:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Alternate_viewers

Jesse, thanks for that link. I need to try Henri's viewer again (I've grown totally dependent on 1.22 internals now). But this got me wondering (totally off-topic) :

Do we know what's to become of the sheepviewer after OnRez is officially defunct? Did LL assume ownership of that in the takeover, or did the sheep retain it for something else?

They could even have bought their way out of the drama, LL still sells commercial licenses.

Good point. That's how Trolltech made their nut before Nokia bought them, releasing Qt free under the GPL, and selling licenses for people who didn't want to use the GPL, and I don't recall anyone calling them out on it.

Here is what I don't understand. Why is producing the file upon request not compliance? It is still freely available. The license does not explicitly require that the source be downloadable, if you want to be a stickler about it. I'm not going to bother to look but is there a court case that says that this method is not compliance?

If it's just 7mb, yeah, I don't see the big deal either, but still - comparatively few people will actually want or need it, and Kirsten was willing to provide it to anyone who asked.

According to that story, people did ask and she couldn't produce it. Because she lost the source or something.

Correct. However the executable "product" has to be accompanied by either that written offer or a machine readable source provided on the same media (here download). In case of a written offer one has to provide sources for the last 3 years for each and every binary that was produced which is enormously troublesome.

The easy solution to hosting the source is to host it at Sourceforge.

Thanks for clearing that up, Boy.