For some time I have said that the series 1 viewers are doomed and will eventually stop working. That day is drawing nearer. Several blogs have covered the demise of Linden Lab’s Viewer 1.23.5. Word is that OZ says it will soon lose the ability to deal with some inventory handling aspects. I’ll try to put that in factual perspective.

So far few have found where he said that. Oz doesn’t post meeting transcripts, so one has a hard time knowing whats going on there without attending. However, Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:15:58, Oz Linden sent an email to the Open Source List saying:

We’re going to deploying changes to the inventory backend soon that improve robustness and performance, but in testing those changes we found that existing viewers relied on certain things being strictly ordered.  With the new backend, that assumption does not always hold true.

Changeset d327dcc8ae51

<https://bitbucket.org/lindenlab/viewer-development/changeset/d327dcc8ae51>

from viewer-development implements the viewer change needed to avoid race conditions.  It should be straightforward to apply to any viewer, and is safe to release before the changes are deployed (it is compatible with the services as they are now).

You are strongly urged to port this patch and get it deployed.

It seems the ability to open a package and chose to Copy and Wear the contents is going to begin failing. This is true for ALL viewers. However, in all the viewers except LL’s 1.23 the viewers will be updated to handle the change and retain the ability to Copy/Wear.

Whether this Copy/Wear is the only feature of the viewers that will be affected is unclear. It sounds like more than just the one feature will be affected, but I don’t know.

Linden Lab will NOT update their 1.23 viewer. They made the decision to stop support well over a year ago. They have chosen to spend their time on the new viewer.

There are no pure series 1 viewers other than the Lab’s 1.23 left. And now it is gone.

There are other viewers that use the series 1 interface, which is all most users are concerned with. Cool VL is a hybrid viewer using SnowGlobe code and lots of viewer 3 code adapted to the old style user interface.

Useable?

The Lab’s 1.23 viewer and other series 1 viewers are NOT going to stop working. People can still use them. The users of those viewers that do not upgrade will still be able to login. But, soon they will have inventory issues.

The Lab has said they will not block series 1 viewers. They seem to be sticking to that promise.

The fix seems easy enough to apply. So, Phoenix will likely be updated. There are enough issues with Phoenix that a new release is likely. I am surprised they added mesh render ability. I would not be surprised if the Development Team regrets that choice. But, I do expect the viewer to get more updates.

I suspect most other TPV’s will get the inventory update too.