No more Nicholaz updates

I'm not surprised by the news that there won't be more updates to the Nicholaz viewer. The latest one still works, but at some point, those of us who have relied on it will be without. If you read the following post, you'll see that the news is accompanied by some rather negative comments aimed at the Lindens.
http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.com/2008/04/moment-of-truth.html

I've heard of other alternate viewers, but I've never paid attention because the Nicholaz viewer worked so well for me. Do you use an alternate viewer, is it available for both Windows and Mac, and do you know if there are plans for it to be updated?

I was afraid that would happen. I LOVE the Nicholaz viewers and is what I run on whatever latest version of the SL viewer it would work on. (I've lost track of all the numbers, versions, names.)

I downloaded Windlight to take a look at it and am running it under this viewer:

http://my.opera.com/boylane/blog/

It makes Windlight a tad more palatable. But still run my Nicholaz at present.

we`re now officially ScrewLed™

that was an interesting post. thanks. it was worth the copy-paste

Bummer! One of the best known alternative viewers is no more.

I wonder how many programmers that took on the open source challenge will follow suit over time? Open sourcing the viewer was supposed to be such a milestone for Linden Lab. If they are not supporting it as Nick says then that could go south fast.

Thanks for the post.

I could not get that Boy Lane viewer to run at all. It kept quiting at every mouse movement it seemed.

Thankfully the new viewer is great. A lot better than i expected.

But there is still a memory hole that causes massive memory drop in the application. But i can live with that for now.

Nicholaz was my hero for so long, and still is because I still enjoy his fixes through Boy Lane's version of the Cool viewer, but it was apparent Nick wasn't enjoying battling the frustrations as much anymore...

He was probably the largest contributor to enhancing the SL experience for so many of us. For that, for providing viewers with nearly no crashes, for providing enhanced functions and usability, for providing particles that actually showed, for providing better texture use on lower end systems, for fixing their absurd IM window blocking half the screen, for so many things the list seems endless, I sincerely thank Nicholaz for SO contributing to my quality of Second Life over his time.

/me hugs with tears in her eyes and is glad Nick is pursuing things that bring him happiness, because it is well earned!

Some of his posts on the open source list have been more than a little negative towards LL. Sad to see him hang this one up but could kinda see this coming.

Read through the comments on the boylane blog post, some people are saying that you need to get some newer library files from the latest client, and then it'll run properly.

Oh, and TECHNICALLY it's Boy Lane's windows compile of Henri Beauchamp's "Cool SL Viewer"

Another resident learns the hard way that "helping" LL is a one way ticket to frustration.

Damn

That's a damn shame. Not that Nicholaz doesn't have the time, I can't begrudge him that at all, but that the current state of affairs sucks any gratification out of continuing on with the fine work he's been doing.

"no longer willing to put up with Bullshit™" sums it up pretty well I think. It never feel good working for free for someone who's unappreciative, and especially after getting the open source rug pulled out from under you. I don't blame him one bit. The sad part, aside from not having new updates to his work, is that its LL's own internal "plod forward blindly and cross your fingers" approach that had lots to do with this. They shot themselves in the foot on this one IMO.

From reading the Jira it seems that even LL's own coders are struggling to get their fixes added to the main client.

Every talented contributor to our SL experience seems to end up frustrated and exiting. Starax and Siggy are two that come to mind.

Too Bad. The Nicholaz viewer is what kept me in SL for as long as I have.

I thought it was the shoe stores...

It doesn't have a Quit button?.

Hey, this thread aint big enough for the both of us!

Get out!

Why was it that he could fix things, make what didn't work work - and yet LL couldn't be bothered to incorporate those fixes into client upgrades?

Why is it that he had to start over with chaos, when he had already fixed that mess to begin with?

There is something very very wrong here.

There is something very wrong here. They made the thing open source but didn't have the decency to make use of it. Now they squandered a very valuable resource. I am so sad that we will be losing Nicholaz... how much longer before we lose the other valuable contributors?

Squandered is a nice word to use. There might be something I'm missing here, like maybe they can't use what he did due to licensing or something?

If that's not the case, they really really screwed up.

Wahhh! Sigh. Disgust. Anger. I've been using the Nicholaz viewer for 6 months and it has always been easier to use and generally far more stable than whatever flavor of junk LL is offering at the time. This sux.

Now the SL-sky really is falling.

Double waaah! and a Darth Vader "Nooooooooooo!"

I guess we'll have to start complaining, maybe file some bug reports ........................................*eyeroll*