Should SL Client be free software?

ok just a note just because something runs on Linux or debian-linux or anything like that does not automatically make it open source!!!!

False argument. If this is the case, then apache would be vulnerable to more hacks than IIS, Firefox would be easier to exploit than Internet Explorer, and Linux (and BSD!) would be easier to root than Windows. The factor you're leaving out is that for every dishonest coder, you have, on popular projects (which tend to be any that the dishonest coders would care about), at least 10 pairs of honest eyes to every 1 pair of dishonest eyes. The bugs are caught and fixed before the asshat ever finds it.

With closed source software, bugs tend to hang around undiscovered longer... and it's not *that* much more difficult to find the vulnerabilities with a debugger, I can say from experience. On a large piece of software, it can be easier to find buffer overflows with a debugger, if you know what to look for.

Your argument may have merit if you consider how many people rely on the program to move money around, but I'm torn on that issue... see my other posts in this thread for my thoughts on that.

The fact is, SL isnt as robust as you'd like to think.. SL is trying to move to fix that, but its not gonna be today, tomorrow or next week. So an open source client isnt coming anytime soon either.

Oh, my claim was never that SL was robust. My point was only that it's possible to have a client/server application be open and not insecure, as several people have either implied or said outright. The "OMG teh H4xx0rs will get us!" argument seems really naive, when talking about whether to open source something. So is the "it all needs to be open sourced NOW!" argument. Both are flawed models, failing to take the whole scenario into account. And both have appeared on these forums many times, in many forms.

My overall point was that LL needs to make their client/server API robust. As I've said several times, taking it slow is in LL's best interests.

Thank you, by the way. Most people seem to ignore my posts. I was beginning to wonder if everyone else could see them. O.o

It is possible to steal every kind of content, short of script source, given enough time and talent, even with the client closed. However, if the client was opened, it would make it several orders of magnitude easier to do this. I needn't point out how most content creators would feel about everything they made, absent scripts, suddenly being vulnerable to theft. All you'd have to do is be in the same area as something you wanted and you could use this technology to make a perfect copy of it (again, minus scripts) that you could then do whatever you wanted with, including giving it for free to a few hundred of your best friends.

Benefit: ***
Trouble: **************************************************

I don't see this as a good tradeoff. However, in the case of something that is only loosely coupled to the "core" and can be separated and packaged and run by itself (such as the browser thing), well, that's something that does make sense to open source, if some benefit will come of it.

Nice graph


If designed well, the SL client could be loosely coupled in exactly this way. (all of this is speculative, as an attempt to show that the openness of the client is irrelevant. I'm making no claim about SL's network protocol or client)

It depends greatly on whether the client sends "render this prim here" or whether it sends more abstract "draw this vector here, and it's part of object x." I don't know how it works, though. If the content is streamed to the client in such a way that theft is fairly easy with the client open, then with the client closed, it's still fairly easy, because all you have to do is reverse engineer the protocol and write a script to observe the bits that say "Object x is composed of prims with these values, at these coordinates, and is located here." and copy the information on that object into a file. The user can then recreate those values by going to a different sim, rezzing said objects, and manually setting all the prims to the given values.

Same goes for animations, and surely someone can hack together an LSL decompiler if the script bytecode, as opposed to actions the script takes, are streamed to the client.

If, however, only information absolutely necessary to the client is sent to it, I think it should be possible to avoid trivial methods of theft such as the one suggested above, whether the client is open OR closed. I still fail to see how the openness of the client matters in this case. Open or not, if the protocol is written poorly, it's suspect.

Of course, another possibility is that the stream is encrypted, and decrypted at the client. In that case, I suppose you could use a modified version of the client to wait until the sensitive data (all the exact prim metrics, for instance) are decrypted, then steal that information. This can still be done with the client closed, though, with the clever use of a debugger environment. An open source client would make it easier, but it would also add a swarm (and I feel *certain* SL would get a swarm) of developers eager to submit patches fixing the holes.

Open or closed, vulnerabilities are always a race... who can find them first? And when you have a race like that... 100 pairs of eyes will ALWAYS see more than 10.

as far as i know, it only sends the prim locations, and the client side works uot the shapes from its known prims. ITs like that because of the network load that trying to render all the vertexes on the fly would cause, hence only prims are used.

might be wrong ;p

I used the "other" option because my vote is..
"Free software is communism, it should be banned so that it kills capitalism. Banning it will only increase its support."

No, I know that... just want to mention...

My guess is the SL client will always be free. Just free as in beer, not as in speech. So, rather then trying to explore the vat, kick back and enjoy the brew.

Free beer? Where, where ?

I voted for the GPL option because that is what I would like to see.

With that said, I also am aware that it is completely up to Linden Labs as to what they are going to do. I am glad that they did release a linux client and have enjoyed my in world experience for the most part. I support them in their desire to open source the client, but that is up to them.

The way I see it is that if Second Life does not suit my needs, then I can move on to other applications and I will. I am here because I have heard and seen a lot about Second Life, and despite trying to get the windows version to work in wine, that never happened on my system. So curiosity and the availabilty of a working linux client has brought me to Second Life. But ultimately, there are other projects out there, other worlds, and if this one does not suit me, then I can freely decide to go elsewhere.

So, yes, I support Linden Labs in moving more towards open source, but if they don't it won't trouble me either. I tend to ultimately gravitate towards projects that promote freedom as in speech. There are movements within Second Life world to do that, and those give me hope, but hey, if it doesn't work out, no hard feelings either as it's a big internet and Second Life is just that - a second life, not life.

I guess I'm on the fence a little between that it should be released "soon" and "if and whenever LL decides is right". Basically, SL only exists as an idle amusement for me at present, but I believe in giving anybody that writes proprietary software a kick in the pants to GPL their code sooner rather than later as it could possibly mean vast improvements in the quality of the software. That said, it seems they're keeping it closed at the moment because they aren't done fully designing the thing yet, and I get the impression that they want to get it to a certain level of design, functionality, and possibly security, before they let everybody and their grandmother start forking the code. Maybe they want a larger user base first so that they can basically persuade would-be forkers *not* to go out and make their own incompatible versions because then they wouldn't be able to connect to the massive number of people on their own servers who are too lazy to try a different version...

just my $0.02

I cant really tell what this poll tells us. You could think that there seem to be three groups of Linux users:

1/3 is very much pro free software
1/3 is pro open source if Linden Labs agrees
1/3 is against open source.

So definetly our community is very split. i don't think that the numbers are somewhat representative but i think you can think that in RL you also have all these groups. Generally i think the free software geeks are less active in SL, they rather are conservative using and use IRC instead for communication. And no real hard core free software advocate will ever use an unfree Linux client. I mean ppl like Richard Stallman will not do so.

In general i think that Linux users in SL are more power users that like 3D aplications and use it - most of them will also use WINE and I think most come from the Windows world ( I come from Amiga/Mac). but thats just a guess.

Vinci

Okay, this is a LOT of assumptions. We have not seen the source. We, supposedly, have not reverse engeneered the client server protocal. On what basis do we all assume that opening the client would create gaping holes in content management? Do we have compelling evidence that my client runs lsl ( i think the answer is that the sims clearly do). My client likely does not have, and can not access content for which i do not have rights grated by the sim. If you are arguing that opening the client jepordises the sim, then by extention allowing people to download the client, and run it does the same by allowing reverse enegneering.

The Right(as in legal) of LL not open sourceing client/server is clear. The Right(as in good) of doing so is I think the issue at hand. LL claimed intent to open source on its own, Linux Alpha Client users did not pull this out of their ass. When people say " i want to see it GPL" they mean " Since you clearly stated intent to open source, I suggest GPL".

I like SL, I like that i can run it on linux (well, since the server always has, specifically the client). I would probably have come to check it out with nothing but a linux client with no intent to open. The social aspect of both this discussion, and the society at large, which seems in some matter built on the right to share (either commercially or socially) both creation and interaction, would be lacking if the same philosophy were not part of the RL of the lindens.

At some point the philospohy of LL, which to a large extent shapes SL comes into play. I see it, I think the fact that we can create and retain rights (including GPLing) content we create in world makes SL worth participating in.

Open sourcing is a shared goal! Why do i keep hearing "you can't make them", LL set this up themselves. I think the "drop the whole thing in public CVS" position is, frankly silly. The client should go open first, and as I have suggested elsewhere, probably be making the closed source client accept third party (perhaps GPL) plugins, and then allowing plugins, that work well, and self maintain(via open devel), to take over larger and larger portions of the client. When LL feels that the core client code is no longer hair trigger sprung, and they have experiance working with a group of client coders, or even groups of them they can drop what reamins in public CVS and allow submissions.

LL stands to benifit from this kind of model, they may choose to take this track sooner or later, or not at all. BUT they, not we, through this out, LL could have stated a " proprietary forever" position, they have not. Their position has attracted some, that may or maynot be benificial to LL on its own. If LL outsources most client development to the community it will have served them,and us, very well, that is why I support it.

I'm not sure what you mean by "coming from". If I get you correctly, I come from ZX81/ Spectrum/ C64/ Windows3.1/ Windows95/ Windows98/ Redhat5.1/ Mandrake/ Debian

Plus (I'm sorry to say) Mac OSX.

I think the point is that the client will receive info on prim parameters and textures and it would be a simple matter to download this info to a file for later use.

Although possible with reverse engineering, it is 100 times easier with an open client.

I think a position LL takes that is independent from open source is that they want and must concentrate onb some things. I think in the end they do not want to do any software development at all ideally. There business is building the world. Well, they could secify this more but it is clear that they have to do many, many things now on their own. If they do that in the future their business modell will be be dependent of many things. I think if they could open source verything today, they would do that because they than could simply use the software and build uppon it and only pay people to create more revenue isntead of having to do the software development and many other things.

Big companies like Microsoft have the problem that they are now just too big to get their things organized - they are depending so much on every part that they cant let go now.I think comapnies like Salesforce.com also try to seperate things to keep control at least of some parts and doing that GOOD.

Hi all. Quick question now, SL Client software? right. Is this software use for editing stuff?
I'm new to SL so I'm still learning here.


Tom99

I'm not certain what you're asking, but here's some info. Hopefully it's useful.

The Second Life Client software (or "Second Life Viewer" is the program you use to connect to the game world. In Linux, this is ./secondlife in your SecondLife directory. In windows, it's SecondLife.exe. That's all we mean when we say "SL Client". If you are playing Second Life, you are using the SL Client software.

The client is used for editing in-game objects, and you can write scripts and notecards from inside it. However, some things must be made with other tools and uploaded into the game. The only things that come to mind are textures, sounds, and animations. The Linux client cannot currently upload files, though, so you'd need the windows client for that.

Did I answer your question, or am I off in left field? I tried to be as thorough as possible

In future, please start a new thread - you have a better chance of people with an answer seeing your question