Make SL Open Source!

I think Second Life becoming Open Source(meaning that anyone would be able to connect there servers to the main grid and run Second Life on their own servers) will be good for Second Life because:

1. It would reduce the load that the current servers are having to take.
2. You will actually 100% own your land, without having to pay tier fees.
3. Make Second Life increasingly bigger, better and more popular!
4. Attract more businesses to Second Life.
5. NO MORE LAG!!!!!
6. It will become what Second Life have said it was all the time "a 3D online digital world imagined, created, & owned by its Residents".
7.SL could become the thing that replaces the internet.

The only flaw in Second Life becoming Open Source is that Linden Labs will loose out on income which they make from land sale and will have ALOT of competition.

If you agree with this please vote YES and join my group 'Make SL Open Source!' to show your support.

Its a good idea and it could work, it has done for other games in the past and second life is just begging for a system of this kind.
Thing is like all buisness Liden Labs has the almighty dollar to think about, hopefully they will at least consider the idea or perhaps they allready are.

This sounds GREAT!!! I'm not to keen on the idea of having to pay more to upload.... but i agree if it will make sl a bigger, better and faster than the current slow motion sl i have to sometimes force myself through and wait ages just to rezz a single prim!

Do you think a server that's on your sleeping room on a slow ADSL line will run fast with 80 avatars on it ? Not even with 3 avatars.

That's why they put servers in datacenters with a fiber optic internet connection.
Those lines, the datacenters and the staff to manage them do cost money; a lot of money.

I do like the idea of running my own server. It wouldn't even have to be connected to the rest of Second Life, just one that myself and friends of mine could get on and do whatever we wanted.

Would be cool, but I don't think I have the resources, let alone know anyone else who does, to do that.

Not true. Not if you want to retain the economy we have now. The asset server would still have to be located at, and maintained by, Linden Lab. When your clothes don't rez, your prim attachments don't appear, your balance is zero and the urban landscape you're supposedly sitting in has more in common with a sandbox, etc., it's often because 50,000+ people are logged in simultaneously and the asset server can't cope with their demands.

With hardware so cheap, and ADSL2+ making its way into more homes, it's certainly feasible.

The OP may want to poke around with OpenSim.

http://openmv.org/wiki/OpenSim

It's in its early stages right now, but you can get the server running...and login to it. Fun to play around with.

As far as I know, the sim currently serves as a go-between for any asset operation. A rogue sim where you tp to and which clears out your L$ and inventory isn't going to be terribly pleasant besides the fact that a sim can arbitarily copy content as well.

LL will open source the sim side, but I doubt they'll ever allow just anyone to hook up sims to the grid at will. SL isn't anything like the web where everything is largely independent from the rest.

Considering that the vast majority of home computers have neither the bandwidth nor the hardware to run a semi-crowded sim server efficiently, you'll still be paying "tier" to a server hosting company somewhere. And given that they charge extra by the amount of data traffic generated, you probably won't be saving much compared to paying tier to LL directly.

Of course, if you want a local sandbox app to let you build then later import your designs to SL proper, I think that is badly needed too.

The subject of this topic is a little misleading. For a moment there i thought a really old topic necromanced lol. We all know that SL (client) is open source and has been for some time now.

However, since i read everything, We could make a lot of use of the server software. I highly doubt we will get it unless they only give us the parts needed to run the sim, but only to plug into the main grid and use their asset servers. To me that kinda defeats the purpose. I would much rather run the entire bundle on a meanly build rig of my own and have no connection to LL's servers at all.

July 24, 2007, 2:58 pm Due to a power outage out one of our data centers, the grid is heavily impaired at this time.

Once again the main grid is down, just think about if we could run it on our own servers, we wouldn't care if the main grid was down, we would go off to other sims run and owned by its residents as secondlife is supposed to be!

lol so true, or we could just go home.

I might make a group for this when SL goes back online, just IM me if you wish to join to show your support.

granted a home based server on a 384k connection will be dam slow, but still i would like to see sl go full opensource. oh check out http://www.deepgrid.com based on sl

How would that work?

If the main services (login, presence, asset, etc) are impaired it wouldn't matter since you still couldn't log on to go to your own sim, you wouldn't know if your friends are online or nothing would rez.

If your sim were to exist separate to the main grid you'd be able to log on, but you'd have no friends, no inventory, no nothing.

Hasn't LL already said the server would be open sourced too eventually?

And in the meantime there's always OpenSim/OpenGrid: http://opensecondlife.org/wiki/OpenSim

It could be possble if one was forced to synchronise all data with the server they log onto before they can enter the world. Meaning the server wouldnt have to stream huge amounts of info all the time. So then movements, and chat, would be all that had to transferred.
Like downloading a CS map lol.

The world would have to remain mostly static. Yes this is putting some limitation on creativity but realistically it is not possible otherwise.

Alot of people have uber fast connections but still use ADSL. (The 'Big Down, Little Up' Connection)

Zoha Boa is pretty much spot on. I have a 4Mbps download, which makes playing SL pretty sweet, but if I started a server and you all logged onto it, you'd have to share my 128kbps upload between the lot not cool.

I'm not saying everyones connection is as bad as mine, I'm merely stating that while the concept is great, finding a suitable cadidate for a server would be rather difficult.

im not just talking about people setting it up with there servers at home, think about the major companies with there huge server farms.

there are rumours that IBM wants this to happen!

many tier1 colos offer a 1u for little as 60 a month
and some offer a 4u for 100 a month with around 50Gb of transfer.

make it open source and open the door for all unskilled hacker. think about b4 you invite ppl to steal your money

This is true. One of my main thoughts about it.

Others are:
1. Feel like keeping your PC/Mac running 24/7 without shutting it off?

2. Can YOU guarantee to keep it running all that time without Lightning strikes, power outages shutting things down?

3. Feel like keeping your PC on during a thunderstorm? Server quality stuff like SCSI drives arent cheap. Nothing says fun like a fried computer!

4. Servers are made for Redundancy. Home PC's usually arent.

5. Servers are also made to handle LARGE amounts of information. According to an article I read, SL is full of several Petabytes of information. Can your connection handle that?

6. Servers get higher than household use bandwidth.

7. What OS you using? Windows Server? Linux? Mac Server?

8. What will happen when you need to use the computer for something else, such as surfing the internet, emailing Mom, etc?

Many people think it'd be great to run their own server. Yet these same people dont realize the work behind keeping a server up & running 24/7 with backups. It's the small details that will trip someone up. ANyone feel like setting their own DNS or IP Settings? Or know how? There's a crapload of work that goes into setting up an Internet accessible server.

While I can see a few people being capable of such things, the majority of SL Users/Merchants/Sim Owners probably arent able to do so.

all you would have to do is firewall the server, also the main grid could recognise any changes in the source code on your server and ban it from connecting to the grid in future, and any transactions made on these servers could be verified once you return onto the main grid if that would make it more secure?

If big businesses invest into sl as a way of promotion, think of how big and popular sl will be!

Anyway hopefully it does happen... i'm promising to give out free land on my server in celebration(if it does happen!)

Thanks for everyones support so far, get everyone to vote so we can come to a decision if this is good or bad for sl.

I don't think point of being able to run your own server for most people would be to try to create an alternate main grid, with hundreds of people accessing it at once and tons of data flying around. For me, it'd be useful to be able to start up my own server to do testing, play around in, or maybe invite a few friends in. Certainly nothing that would require the 24/7 upkeep of an actual server.

LOL, where do u live. cmon there are really protectet games like AAO, WOW all with PB security etc.. they dont get it to protect the game

Yes! That is the one benefit I've also thought about.

Or something that would let you do all the testing without being online.

There's times I'd want to try something out, have to go online & get hit with a bunch of IMs and other distractions.