From: Darien Caldwell
The kinds of responses I see here, are why this can't be rationally debated. "No, you're wrong." isn't a debate.
Neither is rehashing the SAME POINT over and over after it has been soundly refuted time and time again. At some point, all that is left is saying "No, you're wrong." because the "here's why" part has been repeated too many times already.
From: someone
This is exactly why more people don't speak up about their dislike for the fact LL pulled the rug out from under them by open sourcing the viewer, because they immediately get pounced on by all the open source people who *have their own agendas, too*.
No, the reason why is because most people DON'T GIVE A DAMN. They are happy to live their SLives blissfully enjoying what an OPEN SOURCE VIEWER gives them. Very few deem to take it on themselves to complain about something which ISN'T BROKEN, whether they know or care about it, or not.
In actuality, I am primarily a closed-source person. I SUPPORT FOSS, and occasionally contribute to it, but many things I do, many projects I develop are not FOSS-compatible. As such, my only agenda is practical and proper use of methods and practices where they apply in the most effective ways. In short, use the right tool for the job. Beyond that, my only other agenda is stopping the spread of misinformation, FUD, and lies, because it helps NO ONE, except the person(s) so spreading them.
If someone comes on here and expresses a genuine misgiving, and is willing to genuinely discuss, learn, and accept the facts of a situation, they certainly won't get jumped on by me. However, that is far from the case here with some people. They are going to repeat the same misinformation and FUD to promote their single-minded agendas until the cows come home. They've already made up their minds what is right; the facts and truth of the matter be damned.
From: someone
The fact is, the reverse engineering done was the usual geeky, poorly working stuff that hackers do. no documentation, didn't half work, and your average person couldn't understand how to use it.
You obviously didn't know much about libSL back in the day; yeah, it didn't yet have the polish of a product that you'd want to show to you mom, but it most certainly was anything but "poorly working". It also wasn't a simply a matter of libSL, but also of tools / bots written using it. Some of them were downright nice, as software packages go.
From: someone
But LL opening up the source and making it accessible to a broader range of coder changed everything. As Des said, sure, there have been positive benefits. But I stand by my analysis, having watched the SL Dev list, and watched the JIRA, that most of the work has, and is being done by LL's paid developers. Why do you think they hired so many?
It sure changed things, there's no doubt about that. Where the contention is found is in WHAT has changed. I maintain that it has changed for the better. MANY more bugs were found and fixed; new features were added that LL didn't have time to add; and the viewer is MUCH more stable than it was prior to open-sourcing the code.
ALL of the work of changing the code is done 100% by LL. I have already said that no one but LL has change access to the source tree that goes into building the official viewer, so you are right that LL does "most of the work", because they HAVE to. No one else can. HOWEVER, the work of finding bugs and fixing them has shifted to the open-source developer community. In addition, we've also gotten a few features out of the deal.
Why did LL hire so many developers? Umm. Because they could? Because they needed to in order to bring more new and exciting features to the ENTIRE platform. Not all developers at LL work on the viewer, ya know. In fact, the viewer team has been pretty stagnant in terms of new hires for some time.
From: someone
Now, anyone who can download MSC++ 2005 Free edition can compile the viewer and hack away at it. And in the process, hack away at the value the creators and builders bring to the grid.
I am not sure why, in one breath, you claim that people aren't going to go through the hassle to deal with "hacker code", like libSL, then in another, grab and install a development environment and "hack away at" the mountain of viewer code. For the vast majority of people, the development environment AND the viewer code is as impenetrable and uninteresting as libSL. I won't even bother with the absurd notion that the only reason anyone would want to would be to "hack away at the value the creators and builders bring to the grid". Many of those people also happen to be content creators themselves. Kind of stupid to undermine themselves, don't you think?
From: someone
I'm glad LL is working toward trying to stem the tide of sim stealing and content copying *they caused*. But it's too little too late really.
"They caused". See? It is a foregone conclusion that you've already judged and assigned blame without even presenting a case. Apple iTunes now sells DRM-free music. I suppose, using the same logic, "they caused" the music piracy industry to thrive.
As far as "protecting content" is concerned, it is a stillborn idea. It was "too little, too late" long before it was first used, because the concept is broken in its foundations.
However, it has NEVER been "too little, too late" to put an end to copyright infringement through remedial efforts, as provided by law. LL can clean up so much of the infringement right now by streamlining its takedown policies/activities, and providing ways for creators to properly (and indelibly) identify their content and associate a proper license for it. These are the SAME THINGS we talked with them about 3 years ago when this last came to a head. The ball is still in their court; they need to follow through this time.
