Should Linden Lab Open Source Second Life?

Would they have to remove havok?

I hope something becomes open source. We have intelligent programmers among us who can repair the glitches. Only a matter of time before someone finds a way to emulate the sim software though. Study the client hard enough and you can suppliment a entire grid.

Don't belive that? Check out all the emulators of the most popular MMORPGs lime EQ, WOW, DAOC, RO, UO, exc. All done by programmers on the client side.

Hi Baba,

If scripts go client side they would probably need to introduce a peer to peer channel between all the sim's inhabitants, else that traffic would need to be piped up to the sim server and then back to the other sim inhabitants. P2P might also take care of a lot of lag or at least localize it where you control the lag with the speed of your pc.

Ed

Physics aren't processed by the client its done on the server. I'm pretty sure, though I could be wrong, but I believe the Havok engine isn't in the client code because all the processing is done server side.

Also I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't an emu in the works since we have the libsecondlife libraries so if anything I doubt making the client opensource would jumpstart anything like that. I mean, how do you think the God Mode hack works? It uses libsecondlife to tell the client you're a laison with falsified data packets.

<sarcasm>But, but...its OPEN SOURCE! It HAS to be better! Don't you understand that you closed-source heathen! </sarcasm>

Seriously, there are No real advantages and lots of downsides (Item security, transaction security, loss of income to LL if some parasitic OS group starts a server farm with an OS server version and competes with basically no software dev costs, chance of picking up viruses and trojans off 3'rd party clients, support costs devolving back to LL from 3rd party versions). You're dealing a mix of true-believers in one of two causes (SL as a future of the web platform believers and the Open Source believers) and to them this is the future of the web with no downsides allowed.

And folks keep quoting King Phil, snakeoil salesman. There are 11 Million (VC Capital) reason he talks platform over game...primarily, it sounds far more important to the investors ('We're creating the future of the web here, give us money!'...over 'we're putting out one hell of a fun game, give us money!').

Yes, I've thought of this possibility as well. Clientside P2P scripting for most scripts is the way to go I think. The Sim should only run perminant scripts set by the owner or others authorized to make changes to the sim. That way someone who owns a sim or land in a sim could run permenant scripts that run when they are online or not, on their own land.

Item security - Not secure now. Geometry and textures are sent to everyone who sees your items. Simple to copy really. Scripts are never sent to a client and never need to be. They never even need to be sent to the server unless you plan to have something running 24/7. If that's the case then you've probably signed an agreement with the hosting provider. If you don't trust the host, just don't use them ;0

transaction security - transactions would be handled by payment gateways. If you don't trust the gateway then don't use them. Most likely, if you expect to use L$ then linden lab will be that gateway. You will connect to them through HTTPS(secure HTTP) and make and receive payments that way. I prefer paypal honestly.

Your third point is possible I guess, but that's just capitalism. I think competition is usually considered a good thing for the consumer. That would be you... Unless you decide to stop using Second Life or it's competetors products.

Viruses and trojans -- Yes, because the kind of user who gets viruses or trojans on their computer don't already have them ;0 Sorry, if someone is using an open source client to give you viruses or trojans, you've got yourself to blame for it. I never got a trojan from the Mozilla Foundation.

As to support, yes it will happen.

Why should Lindens hand over what they built? I might be mistakin, but believe I read somewhere about Philipi discussing how SL was a dream of his. Why should he give up on his vision and let it go in a opposite direction. Wether you, me, or the man on the moon disagrees with his vison.. it is his; we got no say in it..... nor do we deserve to.

I dont buy the Lindens only a server provider either. Just because the business model they use recoups lost from profiting over renting us server space; in noway means thats all theyve done for SL. Guess they never gave us the tools to create the world we have. Guess SL was justa enity floating around out there waiting for Lindens to give a home on thier servers.

I really love post (im way too lazy go find it and quote) along lines of if a real programmer got his hands on it, then there wouldnt be blahblahblah problem. Then answer me why that real programmer hasnt made his own? Why does he need the SL base to build off of. Im not saying "OMG LLs only one ever smart enuff to code this," but why should they hand over thier work. Let the next guy build it from ground up aswell.

Call me a fangyrl all ya want. Ive learned long ago not to allow what some anon person says about me in a anon forum to hurt my feelings. Its my personal view that when people want something OSed its because they want something for free. While anyone has right to want something free doesnt mean they deserve it. Nor does it mean that someone should give up their revenue to give it for free. People can argue all they want over how profitable SL is, thats irrevelent... they have obviously spent a small fortune designing what we have in our hands now.

If there needs to be a OPed metaverse out there.. let someone else design it. If its really so much better, then SL will go way of the dodo bird. If not......

I think the only people that disagree with Phlip's vision are those who call Second Life a game and say open source is dumb.

Philip has always stated that he wants to see Second Life become open source and reach the whole world through millions of servers.

Linden Lab is of course the creator of Second Life and they deserve credit for it, but they are not big enough to run a close souce project on the scale of millions and millions of servers. Second Life is not mature enough to support that kind of community either.

I've never said Linden Lab is not good at what they do. They have some top notch people working on it. There are some other top notch people who already have jobs, who would like to contribute to the kind of project when they have the time.

There have been open source attempts at doing the same thing SL has done. They got pretty far along, but of course without a world like Second Life with several thousand servers already online and an actual userbase, interest wanes. Along with libsecondlife there has been a resurgence among the OSMP developers to get an open source client running on Second Life.. This is already happening now.

I can't say for others who call for open source, but from what I've seen, the ones who want open source are the ones who share Philip's vision. I don't know if it would shock you to learn that Linden Lab is supporting the reverse engineering project.

Linden Lab doesn't make money from clients. They make money from renting tier. They're the biggest player in the business. They are the only top tier provider at the moment. Linden Lab is not looking to host 5,000 server though. They are looking to expand Second Life to millions. That's more servers than they could ever manage themselves.

Why should we work to put Linden Lab out of business when our goal is the same as Philip's?

Damn ya Baba... how dare ya shatter my lil delusions with valid arguements How dare ya correct my memories about Philips visions. I trully didnt remember that part and will now go research it

Im not too big a person to admit Ive been put into my place. Just next time could ya please do it in a less mature style with plenty flames and nonsense insults so I can keep my nose held high?

I will admit I did jump like a fangyrl cause Im lil over-protected of something I love (well did, cause honestly the current SL community is not the one I fell inlove with 2 years ago.)Thanks for pointing out some views I havent taken into consideration. Though just cause Im thankful.. dont think Im happy about it. Ill still have to hire couple newbies to stalk ya around SL with the scripted nuke and supperdupper push guns I supply.

PS "I've never said Linden Lab is not good at what they do. They have some top notch people working on it." That one was not directed at ya hon. Its a comment people love to throw around every time a bug or issue slips in. In no way ment for ya take it I was insinuating that came from ya.

STFU nUb


;0 They don't usually come in here ;0 They're afraid

Baba, your comments and discussion of the reasoning behind open sourcing SL (or at least bits of it) are quite correct. Actually, I wouldn't expect less from you, seeing your activism on the libsecondlife front :) One of the best arguments so far is that the open sourcing of both the communications API and the client is not even being pushed by LL, but by people reverse-engineering the protocol — with a little hand here and there from some LL developers. All "low profile", but yes, it's happening — not unlike what happened with Doom and id Software's developers, a decade ago :)

(History is so good at repeating itself)

At this point, naturally, the questions that need to be answered are rather not many. There is one possible answer for all of them. There are also alternatives. What LL will ultimately pick will decide its future...

First, what is LL's real purpose? I'd say, it's not the one posted on Philip's own blog:
Now we all know that Linden Lab went through the following phases:

1. A hardware developer of virtual reality devices (gloves, goggles). Second Life was supposed to be a demo of a possible virtual reality to use the Linden hardware.
   
2. A developer of a platform to allow shoot-'em-up MMORPGs, not unlike Multiverse is trying to do now (look up their documentation Wiki, it's interesting to follow — and you'll also see very quickly why anything based on Multiverse will never become a dynamically-created virtual world, although it might have much better graphics compared to SL, like most modern MMORPGs anyway — you can't beat loading textures from your hard disk instead of getting them streamed over the net)
   
3. A creator of a full platform allowing socio-economical development of a community of online users, where everything is controlled and mantained by LL, although users are welcome to participate in the content creation. Linden ideology was widespread across all residents; if you don't like it, go away (ie. the phase until late 2004 or so; "no RL advertising in SL", for instance, was a generic rule until that time).
   
4. Moving towards a technology enabler and a 3D content hosting provider (2005-the present). Their interference is less; their ideology fades in the background; like Robin uses to say, we've moved from anarcho-syndicalism towards liberal capitalism (and what cdomes next?) — a move urged by the users. Linden Lab becomes the "technology provider" and not the "ruler of the world".
   
5. The client, LL's most visible achievement, starts to get replicated by open source efforts (by the end of 2006 we'll have options). LL does still control the protocol, the server, and the 3D content hosting, although on the hosting side, things are at least planned to allow "multiple grids" to interconnect, most probably under a "federation" model (not unlike Jabber, or the Internet email system tied into DNS).
   
6. The future? Very likely, the LL communications protocol will become something akin to a "Metaverse Transport Protocol". It'll become released into the public domain, and get standardised by the IEEE, the ISO, or simply by the Internet RFCs. The product called "Second Life" will be the reference model for the Metaverse Transport Protocol, and Linden Lab a major player in defining most of its features. This is not unlike what happened with, say, Java, Jabber, and naturally, HTML/HTTP/XML/XHTML as "defined" by the W3C consortium...

Will this ultimately become the future? It depends on a lot of things. Ideally, this will be like that if Second Life "expands" to, say, 100 million users and several thousands of interconnected grids in the same "federation", using the same protocol, but wildly different technologies.

The second question will be placed on where the burden of new developments will be placed. Linden Lab already demonstrated that you can grow to 357,000 users by having the users create their own content. This is a major landmark; I'm not sure if there has been anything so big in "collaborative 3D content". Wikipedia has far more readers, but just an estimated 150,000-200,000 content producers. Things like Flickr, YourTube, or all the Google equivalents are far larger "communities" with user-prodced content; things like Friendster or Orkut; or, naturally, the whole world-wide blogosphere and web forums; but they're all 2D. Hardly any can claim to have a real "community" in the sense of what we expect in SL — a dynamic socio-economical landscape that involves all the participants, and where there is no real limitations in what you can do, except the ones that you set up as your own. The closest thing to Second Life, actually, is the World-Wide Web itself: one communication protocol, one page description language, and the rest is for the one billion of users to create, and on the Web we truly have no limits and the same level of creative content as we have in SL... only in 2D.

I would say that "content by the users, for the users" was the first step. The next logical step is withdrawing from the "monopoly" on the implementation of the Second Life Communication Protocol (or whatever it is internally called), and freely releasing it into the public domain. Far more important (IMO) than having the server and client code open source, is having the communications protocol open and free. A good example on the importance of the "protocol" vs. "implementation" is, again, the World-Wide Web. Things like Microsoft's or Apple's web servers and browsers are "closed", but they can talk to each other, because the communication protocol is open and public. But the applications that implement that protocol can be as "closed" as the companies creating them wish; and, naturally, you have the Mozilla/Apache alternative to "closed" applications. What this means is that the application is unimportant — just the protocol (free, open, fully documented, extendable, etc) is free and allows all to talk to all.

Second Life can be that way. Or should we say, the Metaverse Transport Protocol could be that way. "Second Life" would become the "closed" client/server application pair for an "open" protocol; and others could "talk" the same protocol and be "metaverse-compatible". There is no need for LL to release anything of their precious code :)

So, in this case, the "burden" of developing the application could slowly pass from the core developers towards the (estimated) 50,000 or so professional programmers and software development engineers and managers who are users of SL. It wouldn't mean that LL would need to "abandon" their own technology, rather the contrary; it would mean that they would finally get some very desired "competition" (ie. non-SL client apps competing with LL's own in terms of ease of use, speed, rendering detail, etc.) and be able to absorb all this technology at will.

Just to give you an example. Mozilla/Opera/Safari/Konqueror fans (quite a large crowd these days!) have had things like built-in window tabbing and RSS feeds for ages. Even Microsoft had to give up being the only company with a browser that didn't support either — it took them 6 years or so, but they've learned. If all the competition is using tabs, they certainly will need to have them as well. Were Microsoft the only company with a closed, proprietary protocol for the Web, they wouldn't feel the pressure to improve their browser with features. Who remembers the 1995 flop, when Microsoft launched Windows 95 without Internet support, and after six months, did a 180º turn to fully embrace the "open" protocols of the WWW? Microsoft learned their lesson: people and the protocol they use for communication is more important than keeping the lid down on the internal technology (yes, naturally enough, IE is not "open", although I always find it ironic that both major HTML renderers have exactly the same base, just sub-licensed at two different times and places from two people who used to work together... but, alas, that's another story).

While I totally understand the reluctance of "giving away" all the code, at least I welcome the effort to fully document the Second Life Protocol, which has some helpful hands from some of the LL developers. This is, I think, a step in the right direction. At this point we'll only see the LL devs and the clever programmers who are right now using this protocol to talk to LL's servers exchange some ideas; soon we'll see a few cool apps being developed that will fully integrate with LL's grid: ie. a client application to do off-world IM'ing; an off-world IDE that compiles to the "LSL bytecode" without being, by itself, a LSL programming environment; some sort of off-world inventory browser. Soon we'll have the Open Source Metaverse Project client being able to talk to the LL grid; you might have noticed that both the OSMP and libsecondlife have been ported to C# recently; and we all know the wonderful work that Babbage Linden as been doing with supporting Mono inside SL.

So, yes, I'm feeling encouraged about the direction things have been taking :) So far, the biggest hurdle to overcome is "critical mass". Where are the 50,000 programmers of SL that have claimed the desire and need for open sourcing SL? libsecondlife has around 9 people; the SL Protocol Wiki is mostly one person; OSMP is a dozen or so people. So is that mystic number too far off the scale? But we know they exist; they do develop LSL scripts every day and deliver them!

I'd say it's time for the open source crowd to finally wake up, see that they're missing all the fun and the opportunity to participate in this next stage of the Metaverse Construction, and start doing what they always wished to do — tinkering with the protocol and developing new features and gadgets and widgets that enhance SL's experience, or even rewrite a completely new SL client from scratch, based (or not) on their favourite technology :) The doors for all that are finally open — so why is nobody flooding the gates? :)

What I think it is, and correct me if I'm wrong, is two reasons. First, the TOS still states up front that residents should not "reverse-engineer the platform [at threat of being banned or persecuted]." This may not scare people that know how the enforcement actually works, but to casual developers and interested external parties, that's a big turn-off.

Second, many people find design flaws so fundamental to SL's core that they believe it warrants an entirely new platform. This can be as simple as prims versus meshes to complexities in the asset server. These are so hardcoded into SL's (non-modular) nature that one might as well start again from scratch.

In either event, it's certainly not a bad idea to try. But with the looming legal threat and fundamental issues, many direct their efforts elsewhere.

Hah thanks Gwyn ;0 I am just the guy that runs around screaming "HEY LOOK! WOW THAT IS SO COOL! YOU SHOULD CHECK THIS OUT! HEY HEY! HEY ! HEY !"

I bump the hell out of these threads and reply to everyone just to keep the visability of these kinds of topics as high as possible.

I leave the in depth analasys to people like you who have been thrugh this process before ;0

I think you're right about the the protocol though ;0 Standards are the driving force of development of things like the web and second life. Rather than having 200 different treams implementing a different protocol to achieve the same ends, it allows them to focus on just one thing. Making their product better. No need to worry about if it will work. It will work! It's standard! ;0

YAY for standards!

It wouldn't be hard for linden lab to just go on and ban everyone on the libSL project. There are at least 5 lindens on the libsecondlife development mailing list. Several regulars in the #libsl irc channel.

Linden Lab suggests we report any exploits rather than creating tools to break the grid though.. ;0 That would just be mean!

Jeffrey, you are legally right. Linden Lab could stop this whole process at any time. Although forbidden reverse-engineering is actually illegal, the issue would be of who has the better lawyer — Linden Lab or the residents — to decide what would prevail: the legal impossibility of denying the right to reverse-engineer, or ToS. In either case, Linden Lab could, in theory, simply ban everyone while the legal issues were being discussed.

That argument, however, not only hasn't been raised, but rather the contrary. In practice, the statement in ToS is Linden Lab's protection in case someone breaks the grid and the residents sue LL for loss of business — the ToS would exempt LL from all responsability. That's why the statement on ToS is important! Linden Lab's developers not only "lurk" on the mailing lists for libsecondlife, but sometimes they actively post on it. It's not a secret; it's not "done behind closed doors"; they're watching; and sometimes it seems they drop a hint here or there. Their developers, in their blogs, even give veiled hints on the direction they're taking with their protocol — clear and open for all to read who care :)

It would be much worse if all these projects would have been behind closed doors and totally secret, with unknown purposes. So, actually, Linden Lab has been drawn into the loop. They cannot make many (official) comments at this moment, but I expect they will. Soon. And I would bet on something to the sort to be announced at the SLCC. It would be the best possible PR venue for that.

Imagine Philip Linden at his coolest, sitting on top of the speaker's table, and saying:

Guys, we have something cool to share with you. Since the Group Tools were launched, we have delayed SL 1.13 for a good reason.

Some of you are probably aware of a few projects to reverse-engineer the SL protocol. You might also known that we at Linden Lab were always excited about that project since last May. We didn't encourage it; we needed to understand why, only now, after three years, our users started actively to participate in the co-development of Second Life. We watched, observed, and sometimes gave them an invisible hand here and there.

As you all know, we've moved from "providing content" to "hosting services". Linden Lab does not create content on the grid for years. Now the next step is finally finished, and will be released at SL 1.13: the move from a proprietary, UDP-based communications protocol to an open, REST-based, HTTP-based implementation. It gives us all great pleasure to announce this here for the first time.

Many in the past have compared Second Life to what the Web was in its earlier days. One of the strengths of the Web was exactly the open communications protocol — published openly, released in the public domain, and allowing everyone to see how it works. This allowed some companies like Microsoft to build their own, proprietary solutions (client and browser) to work on the Web; but it also allowed the emergence of things like the regulating body W3C, or foundations like Apache and Mozilla who have released open source products to work with the Web. We expect the same to happen with the newly released Metaverse Transport Protocol.

(huge applause)

Of course, it might be too soon for that, but it still sounds great, doesn't it?

One comment from Phoenix Linden on this can be read here:


LL's newest developer, Donovan, even adds:



And finally, CTO Cory Linden himself:

I guess that shows a lot about the attitude of Linden Lab regarding libsecondlife :)

Anyway, Baba, you're right on the REST vs. XML-RPC approach. I stand corrected. I must admit that I've never been a fan of XML-RPC, although, being used to the older concepts of data-independent RPC calling from my ye olde college days, I assumed (wrongly) that this would be the way for LL to go. I'm actually relieved. Yesterday evening I was trying to deal with the dilemma of encapsulating a XML-RPC request into a llHTTPRequest, hitting the usual limitations (ie. memory, size of messages allowed, etc.) and sighing loudly about "why is this so difficult? Why can't we have a llXMLRPCRequest?". Well, wrong approach, really :) A RESTful approach might look "dirtier" but at least it's easier to implement :)

I eagerly await this new model to be deployed. Well, seriously, I don't believe it'll be for SL 1.13 during the SLCC, of course, but more likely for the end of 2007, looking at the development time these things take at LL. libsecondlife will be used by the community until then.

... or won't it? Although I can believe that the mailing list has many lurkers (like LL's employees, and I'm certainly one of them, since low-level UDP protocol tweaking is certainly not what I like to do ;) ), there are just a handful of people there, and just a handful of first-generation applications being developed. At this point, I would expect the whole open source development community to have jumped in eagerly at full speed :) So, where are they? :) Definitely not on these forums, where you can see the number of "No" votes on this poll. Hmm. It makes one wonder :)

Alas, I wish I had the necessary technical abilities to help — and an unlimited supply of time! So far, I have only restated some obvious things and added them to the Wiki... getting a web-based form to authenticate on LL's servers is way cool (all I've done so far!), so that you can have people registering on a SL-related website without any need of going in-world, but who would trust such a system that asks for your real password? :-D Still, I will nevertheless watch the evolution of libsecondlife and the Second Life Protocol wiki with a lot of interest in the enxt few months :)

BTW, libsecondlife has a new home: http://www.libsecondlife.org/

That's all well and good, but in some ways you're preaching to the choire on it.

And, while I agree the ToS clause is very much in there to cover LL's asse[t]s, it should be made more clear to open devs that LL will not step in and sue the parties involved in development, nor claim de facto rights to the product, should it succeed or fail.

I've been writing code for Second Life for two plus years now, and even I step lightly around this stuff. A more clearly worded, public effort on the Lindens' parts would be necessary to "open the floodgates" as you've put it. Additionally, revising the ToS to be more legally specific would be in their best interests.

The most important thing is talking about it as much as possible.. Development is moving on and I hardly know what Is going on. I started learning C# when I got involved with libsecondlife. We could surly use some good people who are willing to work on the project, but first they have to learn of the project!

As to the website, I spent most of the day working on it, so please plug it often The protocol wiki has moved too, and aquired a new name. It's the libsecondlife wiki for documenting libsecondlife and the Second Life protocol, or some thing like that. libSL Wiki for short.

We'll probably have something set up for this soon, but in the meantime email me at [email]baba@slinked.net[/email] if there are any problems with the website.