What Exactly IS OpenLife?

"Chip Midnight ...I still can't quite wrap my brain around portable avatars. I can understand why it might be desirable to users, but if avatars have to be standards-based across many worlds, won't that mean that any progress, innovation, or upgrades to avatar design and technology will be glacial?"


Think of it as just the opposite, when avatar creation is a portable creation the innovation becomes exponential, not the purview of one team.

How can it when it's locked to standards that must remain static to allow portability in the first place? I wish the people at LL, IBM and elsewhere who are working on this would expound on exactly what they envision and how they expect it to impact content creation, IP rights, and other relevant topics. It's all very nebulous at the moment.

I could envision SL becoming the main marketplace for content, buy stuff in SL, port it to your worlds. This would be very good news for SL's current content creators me thinks.

I would like to draw a comparison to other content for 'games' MMO's etc.. the textures and models are often fully open and could be ripped of by anyone really, but traditional video game publishers rely on existing copyright law rather than a quirky permissions enforcement system.

-whyroc

(Quote removed to protect the guilty... j/k )

I'm objecting for an entirely different reason than Chip is though.

I see absolutely no value in "interconnected virtual worlds blah blah blah". SL is simply entertainment for me as well as a glorified chat room and an immersive enviornment. Any attempt to make it any more than it is currently is will end up destroying SL as a community and form of entertainment.

Other than on a strictly social level (voice, sharing RL information with friends, etc) I see absolutely no value in morphing SL from a virtual "fantasy" world into one where my avie would just nothing more than a virtual representation of a real life person.

I can see some of the merit in that, but from an entertainment point of view it would be quite dull and boring and have no appeal whatsoever. It would be nothing more than a tool to accomplish RL things. I doubt I would even really still care how my avie looks, it certainly wouldn't be an entity in itself, it would simply serve the same purpose as my mouse pointer does now, nothing more.

You can improve a feature and yet still remain backward compatible.

Shhh! I don't think those thoughts are allowed around here.

Except most people wouldn't buy the content, they'd simply aim their copybot at it and upload it to a separate grid where people aren't bothered with little things like copyright infringement.

Would you allow your creation to be used on a grid where the permissions on it aren't enforced and everything acts like it's full-permission? Would you allow content that is likely a copy of someone else's content to enter the "offical" grid? And if you can't access all or even any of your "posessions" from one grid to the other, what's the point of having them interconnected in the first place?

If assets aren't completely open then you'll just have seggregated grids where people remain within one grid because that's where all their inventory is. They might cross over once in a while, but without any of their "stuff" the experience on another grid isn't going to be worthwhile to make them want to do it as easily as we tp from sim to sim now.

Content protection's days are numbered sadly.

Look at the music industry ..

Kitty,

Why would other grids be less worried about copyright infringement and permissions than SL?

If the SL client remains open source then people are always gonna have the ability to take content to other grids.

What's likely to happen is that all the grids will use their own specialized clients/viewers in order to protect the content on their grids.

I personally want to see an end to all this grid nonsense. I want to see everybody hosting their own sims.

Some grids may allow anybody to connect their own sim. They'll be the Pirate Bay of grid worlds and they'lll be untouchable because they wont be trying to run a business or earn a reputation.

I'm sorry, Kitty, but it's going to happen now, and we can't stop it. It's the result of human nature combined with a competitive market that's tied to RL, and an unwillingness (or inability) for the Lindens to perform stronger social manipulation.

And some may not...

If they're run by companies then they will care, if only to try and protect their "common carrier" status.

Companies could negotiate a contract with a central authority (for simplicity's sake assume that's LL) to get connected to the "world wide grid" which is essentially what IBM has done now.

In that case you do have an interconnected world that's relatively safe (no better or worse than now) from widespread piracy, but I don't think that's what people expect from an "open grid" since there would have to be some very strict restrictions on who's allowed to join in and who's not and would probably be quite cost-prohibitive.

If that's the plan then I don't see much of a problem since things would stay the same as they are now with no more than estate level access to the sim, we'd just have different companies to get land from besides LL.

It would be nice for LL to clarify how they see the future (restrictive and regulated vs open and lawless) although I don't think I'd trust that what they promise is what they'll actually do.

Doesn't mean I have to like it . I'll loose out on entertainment .

If LL wanted to, they could keep SL the fantasy immersive world it is and simply start a new "Real Life"TM) grid. At least when it fails (or succeeds for that matter), SL would be intact and there would be a choice, or even the choice of both.

The OpenLife server software isn't a hacked or pirated version of the Linden server software -- it was developed from scratch to be compatible with the protocols that SL uses, which have been made public by LL.

There's a lot of good information in a series of stories I've done for the Metaverse Messenger on what I am referring to as "alternagrids." Those are available in our back issues archive at:

http://www.metaversemessenger.com/pdf/2008/03/MM20080304.pdf
http://www.metaversemessenger.com/pdf/2008/03/MM20080318.pdf

and a third story should be appearing in the April 15 issue which will give some information on IBM's increasing involvement.

P2

You miss my point, as did some others.

The point was this thread is a open speculation about emerging direct competitors of Second Life, who are using some of SL's own "technology".

Whether anything was "officially stolen" or not, its a big stretch to assume LL needs to be generous enough to host a discussion on this.

I'm not against Open Sim or any of that stuff, I'm just surprised this thread hasn't been locked.

There's no reason to lock it. LL would like OpenLife to develope an inteface to SL. Zero suggested it to them some time ago.

Well, it's certainly true that the Linden forums haven't exactly been a bastion of free speech of late. I see your point.

On the other hand, Philip Rosedale himself stated a couple of years ago that Linden Lab's eventual goal was essentially to make itself irrelevant by helping to create a universal Metaverse. With some of the actions thay've taken in the last couple of weeks, however, it makes me wonder if that has changed.

P2

Yeah I don't know if we can hold King Philip to what he said way back a few years ago when Second Life was an unheard of little virtual world.

There would be a lot of inconsistencies with how things are now.

Kitty- oops ... looks like you got to my comment(s) before I trashed it ...

Anyway, the provisions I've seen for the portable content also include a wide array of permissions so content creators can vastly set how their creations are used from full perms to tailored to a purpose. Also things like copybot will always exist as does shoplifting but it's not an argument to throw ones hands up and declare surrender- it is an argument that with creation comes the obligation to fight theft.

Standardization isn't the cage you feel it is- it is exactly the opposite, one might say the PC suffers from erratic standards that Vista is trying to address, and that the Mac platform has a better grip on it's standards and therefore is a more stable platform- take that one step further and see the internet itself as a platform that has a specific set of standards that allow productivity between Mac users and PC users. Before there was a standard for email it was the domain of "providers" a good deal of them who no longer are around- not only was it their domain but providers like Prodigy filtered and censored the email ... then in a final blow to their dominance at the time- charged for it. (btw IBM was involved in that)

I can edit your quoted bit out if you like?

Would be much obliged, there was no reason for me to have tossed in a snide remark

SL is only a fantasy immersive world for a minority of people right now. The only way to keep real life out of it would be to somehow ban RL from ever having a social effect on the world, and that can't be done.

Some folks say OpenLife is a game.

Others say it's a platform.