Emerald Viewer Interview – Arabella & Jessica

Paisley Beebe did an interview on Treet.TV (I can’t find a video link – Audio Link page down to the Update! Audio Recording of tonights Paisely Beebe show) with Jessica Lyon and Arabella Steadham, members of the Emerald Dev Team, Sunday night 2010-08-22 about 7:30 PM SLT.

Prior to the Emerald interview Keiko Takamura was interviewed and A couple of comments were made about Emerald-Gate. Apparently things got complicated in SL and Paisley had to move the interviews to a secret location. Keiko was surprised at the passion of people in regard to Emerald, sort of an, OMG, they have pitchforks! — If you have not heard Keiko’s music, check it out.

Emerald Viewer

Treet.tv Emerald Interview

Starting out we learn Arabella Steadham, the communication manager for Emerald, resigned Saturday (Friday?) Night… It seems she resigned because she was asked to lie. She could no longer work in the environment. (It is hard to say exact times things happened because of Arabella being on the other side of the Date Line from Linden Lab). After resigning and during an emotional period she met with Fractured and others of the Emerald team. They decided they could save Emerald. But, Fractured would have to give up control. They asked him to resign and turn over control. It took Fractured a bit of time but he agreed and the servers were turned over to Arabella and Fractured posted his resignation.

Arabella and Jessica state that Fractured will no longer be associated with Emerald, no alt’s, no work-arounds… it’s a clean break. Also, not all the team is being asked to join the new Emerald team. Also, Modeular Systems and Emerald are splitting, Modular is Fractured’s so that only makes sense. A new web site will be up as soon as possible, EmeraldViewer.net.

According to Arabella, Linden Lab has removed Emerald from the TPV List. This does not mean one has to stop using the Emerald viewer. Linden Lab is not going to ban people for using the viewer. You are likely to hear all sorts of wild claims about whether or not one can use the viewer and whether not they will be banned. One must remember, LL holds people accountable for what they do on the grid, not the viewer they use. This seems to be too fine a point for many to understand. Whatever, use the viewer or not but unless you understand the ToS and TPV requirements and the finer points avoid going Troll on others.

I think it is Jessica that is in the process of getting Emerald back on the TPV list.

Paisley asked Jessica to explain what actually happened with the ‘Secret Code’ and the DDoS attack. This part of the interview was, in my mind, the weakest part of the interview. They tried. But, if you really want to understand read my other articles and follow the links in them. See Emerald Viewer Scandal – Recovery? and Emerald Viewer Scandal Erupts… Again

Arabella is a communications manager and she did some serious dancing to avoid making some direct comments and avoiding the use of words like, ‘lied to…’ I guess put a duck in the water and it will paddle. While I would have been ripping on people she maintained her class and passed up shots. Commendable.

The post on the DDoS attack and the post stating it was an attempt at bragging never made it with anyone that could read the HTML of the Emerald login page. It was a deliberate attempt to abuse the target site not what one would do to brag. The most Arabella would say in that regard is that she was mislead. She decided the mislead was deliberate as those answering her questions new she was not an ubergeek and would believe them. So, the post made no sense to many of us but got past her. I suspect that contributed to her resignation.

So, how do they plan to restore trust in the Emerald viewer? Throughout the course of the interview this came up a couple of times. Basically, the new team has had to figure out to keep something like this from happening again. One move is to remove some people from the development team. Not everyone is being asked to join the new team. They plan to get a new list of developers published as soon as possible. Also, they plan to have one person directly accountable to LL but no one person shall run the team. All developers will have an equal say, making it more democratic. Also, they plan to make things fully transparent. All developers will have access to all code. In general, everyone will have access to the code.

Beyond those steps all they can do is be as open as possible and ask users to trust them. That may be hard for many. Time will tell.

Remember. They also have to rebuild trust with Linden Lab.

Paisley asked about Data and Qarl staying with the Emerald team. Arabella says things have been so hectic she does not know. She plans to talk to them as soon as possible and find out. For now all she can do is hope they will stick with Emerald. With a new team forming I hope they stay with Emerald too.

The interview was over by 7:53 PM SLT…

Summary

One of the items brought out is that Fractured Crystal is young and often acts like an irresponsible child. When one considers that aspect of his personality a lot can be explained. Many consider him a brilliant coder… I don’t know. Arabella assured Emerald users the team has several excellent coders and expects Emerald to remain a popular, useful, and innovative viewer without Fractured.

Many of the things I needed to hear to trust those building Emerald and return to using it, I heard. I am currently much more comfortable with the new Emerald team. I listened to the stream from Treet.TV and while it is not the best audio I believe I heard several points where Jessica and Arabella were going emotional. I give their statements quite a bit of credence.

On Twitter look for #emeraldgate

2 thoughts on “Emerald Viewer Interview – Arabella & Jessica

  1. Pingback: Emerald Viewer Scandal – Recovery? « Nalates' Things & Stuff Blog

  2. Pingback: Emerald Viewer Scandal Continues – Part 1 « Nalates' Things & Stuff Blog

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