The new team has the new Emerald web site, forum, and wiki up and running. Visit EmeraldViewer.net. Pay attention to which site you are on. Several knock-off sites use similar domain names.
Phillip Rosedale, Linden Lab CEO, has made a post on the SL Blogrum: Malicious Viewers and Our Third-Party Viewer Policy
I suppose it is about what one would expect. However, the last paragraph is harsh, as it probably should be.
If you have been using the Emerald viewer, for now we would encourage you to consider either one of the Linden Lab viewers, or an alternative third-party viewer.
The SL 2.1.1 Viewer is not a bad viewer, if you can deal with the new user interface. To see a better interpretation of what the SL 2 interface can be, check out KirstenLee’s S20 Viewer, it is the one with great dynamic shadows, a photographer’s dream. However, it is a bleeding edge technology viewer and some versions are unstable. A good work horse viewer with several improvements for builders is the Imprudence Viewer. It comes in a production version and the weekly beta’s.
Where Viewers Are Going…
Gwyneth Llewelyn just posted an article on what SnowStorm means. The highlights are that the end of SnowGlobe is imminent. Also, the main SL viewer and Snowstorm will become the same viewer and all viewer code will be based on SL 2 code. So, just as Imprudence has a main viewer and weekly viewers, so too will SL’s viewer.
In the new SL 2.1 code the user interface is separate from the viewer code, something that was apparently not true in the 2.0 code. (I’m confused about some of the versions and don’t really care as it is all changing anyway.) This means as soon as the TPV programmers figure it out, we will likely see some new interfaces coming out. May be think IceSphere…
Take away from this that rapid changes are coming to viewers. So, don’t get overly attached to a viewer. Once the 1.23 viewer can be moved off the grid, we should see a burst of changes coming to the grid. The viewer has been holding back the grid.
Check out the article and video in GL’s article: A storm in a glass of water
The video is well worth the time and the hassle of changing audio levels.
Alphaville Herold’s Emerald Events Time Line
Nelson Jenkins wrote a time line of the dirty deeds of the Emerald team. Several of the events are open to interpretation. Nelson’s is a more harsh interpretation. But, this whole Emeraldgate event has progressed so far down the rabbit hole it is hard to say his is wrong and prove it. See: Nelson Jenkins: Why Would Anyone Trust These Emerald Guys?
Another…
Another account and history of Emerald Viewer: The Client Is In The Compiler Of The Enemy – some of it is actually funny.