Servers going Open Source?

Hmmm.... Well, I guess you can make any statement you want by taking a small piece of a quote completely out of context.

That's pretty neat! Thank you for that




Original quote below:.

No, seriously. Just how in the hell is wanting a sim to run on my own local machine a problem for anyone in the world?

You are a troll. A misquoting, ignorant, superstitious troll.


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Yeah, I am a troll, because why again? I don't understand, because I did quote you in context. All this open source stuff IS about "I want", without regard for how these things affect others.

Someone's getting awfully defensive, what with all this name calling... I wonder, why that is?



You can't see the security issues, or you simply ignore them, because you WANT your own local sim. The software is a LONG way from being safe enough to trust Joe Blow with it. It's got literally hundredsof bugs and quite a few vulnerabilities, many of which are exposed on these forums, daily.

I'm not superstitious. I just don't trust people who demonstrate, in public, while leering and jeering at us "hoi polloi", name-calling, and ridiculing, that they aren't trustworthy, with the server code.

*Remembers someone who called others yesterday jerks and alike... and made assumptions about people the person don't know at all, as my boss*

Morwen.

Sure, I see the possible security holes. Unlike you, though, I am willing to take those on and make it better. Are you willing to do *your* part to make this world a better place? Or are you perfectly content to mock me for my desire to do so?

So I am to be lambasted for being optimistic and thinking that it could work? That it might someday actually be as ubiquitous and powerful as the Internet that we all know and love today? Do you know the extent to which open source software RUNS the internet? Do you have the slightest clue whatsoever how much open source affects many of the things in this world that you take for granted? Do you even know how this would not be at all possible without open standards and a huge brain trust of very smart and passionate people all around the world who were driven to make it happen?

I don't think you do, from what I can see here. And you clearly don't trust people who want to make it better.

Not everyone in the world is a criminal hacker, you know. And not all techies are bad people. Many of us want to live in a world where technology advances and is embraced, and are maybe just smart enough to know that it will only happen when there is high enough consumer confidence to drive mass adoption.

And if we happen to enjoy the hell out of the process, and love technology for it's own sake, that's probably just a piece of why we are passionate to make such a world. Forgive me, but I want to actually love my job and still feel like I'm doing something worthwhile, and I don't see how that's a bad thing.


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Eh, I see just as much, if not more "lambasting" coming from the techies.

Consumer confidence is your issue. Right now you folk aren't doing a very good job of instilling it, not in SL. The rest of the web is a different story to an extent, but rest assured, if SL is to become as integrated into it as people seem to want, the white hats are going to have to start putting a little more forethought into the side-effects that may arise as a result of their endeavours.

You don't have the bead on me you think you do. I am not anti-technology, I've been online since I was 8 years old and am now 21, if that gives you any idea. I fully and gleefully embraced Mozilla over Exploder, and continue to do so, using Sea Monkey, Firefox, GIMP, scripted my own Neverwinter Nights server, and on and on.

Just because I am saying that I think this advancement we're all keen on needs to be tempered, does not, in any way, mean that I am an idiot or have no clue about open source. It's when people get carried away, and want it now, without much forethought as to the consequences, and indeed justify it because the "good" that comes of it outweighs the "bad", that I get my hackles up.

Look, I apologise for my tone in my first few posts to you -- I have a tendency to embrace snark when I see it. I have seen a lot of condescending talk from the tech types in here lately, and I understand that you feel you're dealing with ignorance, and are frustrated likely, by that, but the average SL user (I have found anyway) is usually a bit more tech savvy thamn your average internet user. So, I don't see the need for all the sarcasm, the tinfoil hat comments, and "you are incapable of discerning the difference between RL and SL" rubbish.

well, I do try to stay away from the "RL != SL" comments, as I hope one day that Second Life is so ubiquitous that the line is blurred even further.

In fact, I was watching something on television recently where a program was set up for public libraries to train the employees and libraries on tech issues so that (and I quote) "they won't be confused when someone comes in asking about Second Life and Flickr". If that's not a sign that Second Life is gaining momentum, I don't know what is.

Yeah, us tech-lovers make mistakes that sometimes seem catastrophic, but we are human. And if we have good intentions and motives, we work our ASSES off to fix them. And most geeks follow this stuff more closely than even the most talk show addicted stereotypical ... something... follows the tabloids.

Whatever It's late and my analogy broke. But what I mean is that we follow tech news with a passion, and honestly I too want to create a search bot. There are huge benefits to us *ALL* when we can have rich data at our fingertips, and be able to extract meaningful information from it. You can bet I'm following this SearchBot story very very closely. And you can bet that I have made a vow to myself to learn from it and do my best not to make similar mistakes. I may in fact just work on something else altogether, as I am not sure I'm smart enough to not make any mistakes.

The problem is that these mistakes have rather broader consequences than say calculating your grocery bill wrong, because they affect more people. But that is largely in many cases because we are trying to benefit many people.

In any case, I hope we are at peace, 'cause it's bedtime. Until the next verbal spar, I hope you have a great night.


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Night. And I apologise for being overbroad and lumping you in. I find myself in a weird position, because I have strong ties to both the tech and not-so-tech worlds. As a result, I am definitley still learning and formulating my position, I grapple with myself over some of these issues. Hehe, I guess that makes me weird... Oh well.

That and your signature line


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hehehe well knowing where your logging IP from. What your wearing and etc.......There is alot of possiblites for those Open source hackers.......and you where LLabs will be saying after there is another is a meltdown due to the fact they can access llabs codes..........well i on`t want to think about it........

Usagi

To gain a vision of what the potential of a 'offgame' private sim/world could be like when the open source is released, and it has to be so, to maintain the growth of SL/LL, it would not be unlike using Beta Grid and the Main Grid senerios. Some elements would be linked, others may not. In the long term the road for LL would be to have sole control over the core elements such as inventory, L$'s, passwords and account details etc...

There is nothing to stop corporates such as Coke Cola, Google, IBM etc from having a potential 3D Intranet for their companies, will limited 'public' access. My only personal concern is, the part that is left in the hands of LL is the part which is the most frail.

No doubt there will become 'branded' sims/worlds that will grow, but I have to wonder one thing more than anything else, how will this effect the stability of land prices in SL. Someone with a 'spare' server suddenly becoming a land baron and a healthy income by selling off cheap sectors of their hard disc.....

With so many pipelines being created to outfacing and inward facing content from within SL, it's only natural this will develop beyond what it is now. The very internet developed from a closed intranet between education networks, which has become open to the public and flourished, despite all the 'clever little script kiddies' looking for loopholes. No doubt private sims/worlds will come under the DOS attacks and be shut for maintenance.

"There is nothing to stop corporates such as Coke Cola, Google, IBM etc from having a potential 3D Intranet for their companies,."

Again with IBM......really............ Someone better tell their stockholders. Because If IBM IS involved here they sure don`t know it at this point.

Reading this thread has been educational on this topic. I can see where some will want this. It will give them more control over their part of the world, and can even be of benefit to those who may visit. But I can also see this being a nightmare, securitywise, stabiltywise, and just plain old business wise. I'm not a technophobe, nor do I embrace technology for technology's sake. Any technology can be horribly misused. Also, LL had control over the servers now, and look how we lambast them over quality. I do know people who run their own servers for various things, and frankly I wouldn't want them involved in something I am investing money to. I'm a wait and see person on this one. SL may row in to something great(possible), become another Pedestrian Corporate Wasteland(quite possible), become an Wild Free for all , or just implode. We'll have to see which. I'm glad I pay my Premiums monthly, just in cas it is time to head for the hills.

From the third party point of view, there is a security boon to be had here.

If running a stand-alone server for your own purposes (perhaps marketing or corporate training), you could possibly place extreme restrictions such as disallowing any users to run scripts etc.

And of course, you could have your own access control policies (perhaps even an intermediary gatekeeper) so if 'undisirables' arrive in your own bit of the metaverse, he could ban them to hell and back

The sky will not fall. It will look different.


From the user's perspective, moving between 3rd party servers would be like visiting websites. Quite simply, you'd avoid the bad apples in the same way you avoid malicious websites. Nobody should be leaving their common sense and wits at the door and expecting the metaverse to be pink and fluffy.

If LL are open sourcing the server, that's kind of different from making a special version for everyone else to run.

There is no way they will allow access to the SL asset server. That would effectively enable a hyper-super-copybot - who needs to copy items in the world when it can pretend to be a sim and request the asset data directly? It can even get the compiled scripts in that case.

My guess is that this is also LL's business model - they'll license or even give away the code, and make money by charging for access to their master grid which has the benefit of having been developed for all this time. They'll count on the difficulty of coming from behind, plus the social network effect, to keep direct competitors out. Meanwhile, they'll also get to benefit from open source development to the software.

Probably the most common users of the open-source server will be companies wanting to run sub-worlds for users who don't care about avatars. If you want to have an online business meeting, you don't want to make all of your staff have to register their credits cards just to pay US$2 for their suits, and it's a huge advantage if you can just put the server up when the meeting time comes instead of having to pay US$295 a month even if it is not used in that month.

Of course, it could also be a huge boon for content creators, who can start charging off-grid license fees to allow others to use their content on their local grids.

Brenda: I know people who run their own servers, I even run 2 of my own plus 3 for other people, I've never seen anyone with worse stability than LLs servers.

My latest server has been up and running with no downtime for the past 3 months (90 days) since I got it. My other one has been up 85 days since the last datacenter issue. Previously, I've managed uptime of 9 months. I don't think open sourcing will cause any stability problems.
It might even improve stability, if LL gets out of the business of sim rental and get their techs to focus on the asset servers and updates that work.

I do see your point, even with my limited insight on the subject. I just hope this does work to our benefit. I just have a bad feeling sometimes........In any venture there is always a percentage of unethical opportunists. With all the publicity SL is getting, especially on the (In my opinion) over hyped possibilties of the AVERAGE user making big bucks, I'm concerned that the percentage will grow with this.

I wonder how splitting corporate servers off of the grid - say IBM running a mini-grid of a few dozen sims on their intranet - will impact sim performance. Will they be able to stuff 100 avatars onto a sim without it crawling to a halt?

If they can import needed LL assets then cache them locally, they could run in a more-or-less totally secure SL. Voice chat is almost here and if we finally got html-on-a-prim or, better, PPT on a prim, it could mean a serious change in the way global companies do meetings. Big money in that market.. Hm...

edit: /me wonders what content designers think about all this.. Would you freak out if you found that somebody had legally bought your products then were using them on a private grid? Would you want to charge more for exportable stuff?

We have Stratus boxes that have been up for years. It's very possible to do serious high availability - it's just a bit expensive.

I certainly would. If you are running your own grid, you can make yourself a Super Duper Ultimate Linden on it and ignore object permissions. Then you can read the scripts and cut-and-paste them back onto the Linden grid for resale. So I would charge as much as I would for full perms versions of my items, which would be a lot.

I guess I wasn't clear. I wasn't asking about what you'd charge to somebody you thought would rip you off. I was asking about what designers thought about their products going off-grid, assuming that their IP rights were maintained.

Well yeah, uptime of years would be a bit pricey, but uptime of a few months is pretty easy to achieve. I setup a linux box for a friend, they went off and did their thing with uptime in the months range despite them having zero linux knowledge. Cheaper setups may not stand up to massive DDOS attacks etc (although they can have a good go) but it's still better than the 1 day out of 7 downtime

For groups of <40-50 people who want their own sim for an event or simply having chat on channel 0 that is actually private, a cheapo server should do well enough. Even a sim size sandbox would be good value at $60-$100/month instead of the regular $295.
If you're not doing stuff to attract the attention of griefers, you even stand a good chance of never seeing a DDOS

The open source subject bring back a lot of discussions from before LL's muffled half of the forums, and there were a lot more contributors.

Basically Open Source Servers will eventually lead to a couple of things - (most likely)

- The elimination of the Linden Dollar.
- Moving your inventory onto your hard drive.

How do you come to these conclusions?

I highly doubt either as either scenario will basically bring SL to an end as we know it, which I'm pretty sure LL does not have in mind (in it's best interest).

No L$ means the end of the SL economy, the driving force behind its success

Local inventories mean that they are unsecure and are prone to theft, duplication, reverse enginerring, permission changing, etc.

Notice I said eventually.

There were several threads where the elimination of the Linden Dollar was discussed. Linden Labs didnt always run the LindenX - they took the Idea from GOM (and ran GOM out of business). Without their take out of LindenX the Linden Dollar doesnt really benefit them.

Yes, the Inventory part is troublesome since it will detroy permissions. Kind of like the normal Web.

Kind of depends - if Open Sourcing is part of the whole "3D internet" idea. Then eventually even your account might disappear.

I would like to see some sorts of provissions to protect Second Life as an entity throughout Open Sourcing.

Im interested in knowing what will stop someone from opening up their own seperate grid where its not even necessary to log into LL at all.

Well, um, my IP rights can't be maintained if my content has been transferred to an open-source server. The server code can't protect them, and even if it did, since it is open source the user could just modify it to remove that bit. As I said above, if you have your own grid it's easy to make yourself a Maintenance-Level Linden, click on my script, Force Permissive, and read all you like. Of course, this will go in the god powers usage log, for review by your manager... you!