The Second Life Client is now open-source!

GPL-licensed. Enjoy!
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/01/08/embracing-the-inevitable/

Just saw it on the blog. Holy... : D

Can't wait to get home and try it!

I couldn't believe it, when I saw the blog post, but I see the jira login, the developer wiki and the source code download before my eyes ... This is a very important step in the history of Second Life!

Now, Linux geeks, tear it apart, send in bug reports and - more importantly - patches to fix issues

Thanks, Tofu! You have done a hell of a job on the client and I hope it will continue for a long time

*dives into code*

I think I just had a nerdgasm!

YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!
YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!
YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!


That is just cool as hell!!! Fanfreakingtastic!

Way to go! Lots of projects never make good on a similar promise or even create a GNU/Linux client in the first place. That is why after reading up and trying out SL for the last month, I became a subscriber this weekend and got a nice little patch of first land. Thanks! That and the SLLUG meeting was really fun.

So, although most Linux users inside SL now will hate Linden Labs I am very happy about this news. This is what I wanted for so long!

We have started to build a package for rPath and Foresight now. I think this means we should make a meeting of the Free Software group, soon to discuss this and that.

????

It's brilliant news, and I can't imagine any SL Linux users thinking otherwise. Not sure what you're smoking

Why would Linux users in SL now hate Linden Labs for making the client Open Source? o.O

This makes so little sense that I feel it MUST be one of those cases where dropped/transposed word reverses the meaning intended??? Can you clarrify/restate Vinci?

Now I can see how hard it would be to make a few alteratiosn that I think would make the client a bit more friendly. Such as.....

auto-relog when a sim drops you for sim shutdown, or a sim crash.

limbo-land where your client is in limbo, loged in, but not in a specific sim, usefull for chatting only.Also usefull for notices of when your friends are in land so you are't jumping in and out to "catch them online". This would also be usefull for a "dev mode" for content creators. Instead of a sandbox, we have our own little limbo to play in. Can also let us do things like sort our inventory, alter our avie, etc.

alsa dmix and other plugin support via open source libs so that SL doesn't permanently swipe your linux sound card. (compile time option dev people! please? oh and ESD just plain sucks as a multi-access tool for audio.)

Chose from a special login-lanmarks folder. So you can go straight to your favorite places at login!

Package SL client for Debian. (hampered by a few proprietary or "strange" license libs. but we'll see about substitutions! more compile time opts!)

Backup things that you CREATED (not bought, not owned, but CREATED BY). Also allow you to hand tweak a set of prims locally and convert from/to other 3d modeling apps for offline designing.

Camp Mode. one switch reduce your cpu time and texture downloads to bare minimums. Face it, we all camp at one point or another. So we may as well be able to reduce the load on the SIMs and ourselves as much as possible. It's good for us, it's good for the vendors, it's good for the SIMs. hey! it's also good for LL's "Residents Online" stats too!

Object Preview. eg it doens't rez in world, it only shows a twirlable model in your viewer when you click on an object in your folder and select "preview". I can't tell you HOW many times I wanted to see wtf "Object" was.

Landmark Flags in the map window. Any landmarks in a special "Landmarks->Flags" folder will show up as a red pin, flag, whatever in the map view.

Firneds pins in the map view. Want to see where your friends are? instead of selectin ghem, you SEE them realtime (10 sec updates? depending on map view scale?)

Cloak of changing clothing/avie. How many times have you changed clothes only to get snickered at as they take 30 seconds to rez, and during that time people see your privates (OH MY! NOOOOOOOO). Some people are VERY upset by this and will actually go home to change(yes, I do this as well unless it's an empty area). SL is just close enough to reality that our moral imhibitions will kick in from time to time.


And last but the MOST IMPORTANT...

ok, now, i must ask everyong DON'T PANIC.....


...... ready?




Bots. Oh my. yes, BOTS. I can think of 17 different bots that are 100% legit and needed in SL. (copybot paranoid types need not respond, you seriously bother me with your delusions of grandure and self inadequcies. Not to mention your WORTHLESS "ANTI_COPYBOT MESSAGERS"


Yes, my list of feature improvements goes ON and ON and ON! NO I won't detail the bots because I havea feeling that the bot clients are going ot be HOT sellers. So i"m reserving them (the obvious ones too) for my own experimentation until I have a product. *giggle*

Well this was the one reason why I left the SL LUG and formed the free software group. See also: /263/be/97205/1.html. For the most part Linux users inside have argument against opening the source. And in a poll only 1/4 of voters voted pro GPL : /263/be/97205/1.html. Hm, actually I think either people are opportunistic or have short memory. Well, in the end only the result counts and I think that Linden Labs did the right thing, despite all the negative feedback. Also I think we have to thank the guys of libsecondlife that have shown (also to LL) what can be done with FLOSS.

Vinci

Being a Linux user (by choice... not forced to by work or whatever) and not supporting open source is... a strange way to look at things, to say the least.

Myself, I started using free/open source software before I even started using linux for the fact that it actually works properlly more often than proprietary software (especially in the case of CD burning/media conversion/media veiwing), and if something *didn't* work, you could either look into the source to see why, or report the bug to the project and have it fixed very quickly... sometimes within hours. It just makes more sense to use it, to me. I'm not going to force anyone else into using it though... though I will probably think they're pretty idiotic... especially if they choose to use something like Linux as their OS.

Now, if the choice is between something featureless or broken (like many drivers) but open, or working but proprietary, of course I'd chose proprietary.

But, let's face facts: the SL viewer - for all OS platforms - has always been pretty darn broken. This is our chance to make it right!

Now, here's is Software Freedom Dog to help celebrate this monumental occasion, linked instead of integrated into this post, as I forgot to reduce the size when still at home:

http://midgetbutton.com/~spoony/freedog.jpg

(yes, this is what happens when I ask my SO to do a chore. Note the pile of trash he put *on the couch* in order to shirt the dog...)

BTW. Somebody had looked in the code and was not too excited. This link is in german only:

http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=bb5cad1f

Translated via Google:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.fefe.de%2F%3Fts%3Dbb5cad1f&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools


Well I am not a programmer - just to share that with you.

Vinci

What Vinci fails to say, and creatively mis-pasted the poll URL, is that 32.81% (the majority) said, they would like an open source client, as soon Linden Labs thinks, it's ready for it.

Here is the correct poll URL for you: http://forums.secondlife.com:80/showthread.php?t=98267

And that is, what happened, and what we are excited about.

Well tank you for posting the corrected link. But yet again. "creatively mis-pasted" - no - that was not my intention. And the fact is that only 25% wanted the client GLP licensed 75% have voted differently - so you did not get what you wanted - you just got, what LL(Linden Labs) had decided and what a small number of Linux users (inside and outside SL) have fought and argumented for. And what Tofu and others have done in the interest of LL/SL and they also have listened to the arguments like these: http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000133

If you just say you are happy with whatever LL decides you sure can be happy that SL is now free software but you and others have done nothing for it to happen, just the opposit. And thats what I call opportunistic. It is not easy to have a point, argument for it and also take the consequences - and this is why I hate it when people afterwards come and say "thats what we all wanted" - if they really always argumented against it.

Think of it as human rights. In the past people could say. "yes, thank you" if they got more rights from the state - but others had done things to fight for these rights or still do to protect them. In libsecondlife Phoenix Linden said that the GPL "liberates the code". I think this is true. It also protects it and protects those who contribute. The thing that is interesting for LL is, that with GPL they can be sure that no other company can take the code and make it proprietary. It protects the rights of LL but also to all those who contributed and will contribute.

Vinci

No, 25% voted yes and 33% voted yes, when they're ready. They're obviously ready, so the two can be added. 58% is a majority of voters. If you have several "Yes" options, you can't go and count some of them as "no" when it suits you.

Well you can not just count things together. There was a clear choice who WANTS GPL. Those who could live without it have not voted yes for GPL.

personally I suspect that the release timing has more to do with LibSL than anything else. It would look really bad for LL to promise to open source things and be beaten to it by a wholely free/open source group like LibSL.

By getting theirs out first, they establish themselves as the first working client and have a better chance of retaining market share in the client arena. You have to remember that in the Open Source world, he who get's theirs out first, whose runs better, and whose is the most useable are the determining factors in both use and community improvements.

Wether it retains that share is a completely different matter. That depends on wether LibSL group continues at their breakneck speed or if they decide to merge with the "unofficial" client and improve it directly.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.....


It's phantom numbers people. Why argue over phantom numbers? The client IS open source now for the most part. SO what is the point in arguing wether people want it that way or not? Instead, argue over wether this is a good orbad move and why.

me, I think it's a good move. I'm getting started on a couple changes that I"ll release as patches to the code and as a binary. Mainly convenience and useability changes.

We haven't done a very good job of making this clarification, but there is almost no overlap between the open source Second Life client and libsecondlife. With libsecondlife you can build a bot that takes up about 1.6MB of hard drive space, uses a tiny fraction of the bandwidth the official client uses, and almost no CPU usage. To achieve similar results by retrofitting the official viewer would probably take longer than starting from scratch again. On the flipside, the official viewer is production code that has a fully functional 3D renderer built in and full support for everything the grid offers. Getting a libsecondlife project to that state would be a long long ways away, so there is sufficient distance between the two that they will have completely different use cases.

There is a big net win for libsecondlife here as now our wiki will fill up with knowledge that can be converted in to code. We'll finally have our open source LSO compiler, terrain awareness, etc etc. Fun times ahead.

EXCELENT. I have a commercial product in mind that needs a base to work from. There is only one problem with LibSL. It appears to be windows centric. No, I haven't looked all that closely yet so I may be TOTALLY boff base here.

I'll move to your forums with this to discuss it more. I'm hoping that ya'lls lib fits my bill far better.

So far as the reasons, as a business owner that handles produces software and other things for customers I'm fairly certain that the "first out" had a decent amount of weight in LL's decision to release. I'm just glad that you two won't be competing head to head, more pinkie to pinie from what you say about LibSL.

Will this release mean that the Linux client won't be released as it has been, relying on the user to compile his own?

The poll said that the majority wanted exactly this, so we got, wat we wanted, right? We wanted LL to release the source when they are ready. If this would be GPL or not didn't matter for the poll answer.


Excuse me? Where did we hinder the opening of the source code? Of course we did nothing to make it happen, because, there *was* nothing to do for us to make it happen! Lindens only had the power to decide if SL goes open source or not, and the same goes for deciding on the licence to use.


Again, where did we vote *against* opening the client?


There is no rights for open software whatsoever. If a company decides to open their source it's solely their own decision, not a fundamental right of the people who use it.

No!