#SL Viewer Policy Change Meeting

38:45 – 2.k : You must not provide any feature that alters the shared experience of the virtual world in any way not provided by or accessible to users of the latest released Linden Lab viewer.

When I first read this one I had the same reaction I heard from some in the TPV Dev Meeting. I took this as being WAY more restrictive than it is intended to be.

(? Linden) points out in talking about this new policy that the Lab feels existing policy provides everything that is in the new policy changes. This is an attempt by the Lab to be clearer. They might not have done the best possible wording, but they do believe it is an improvement. No matter how they word it someone will hear it the wrong way. I did.

To explain this item (? Linden) gives this example. The example chosen is the old style Emerald Viewer attachment points. Viewers that used the Emerald attachment points displayed attachments using those points one way. Viewers that did not use the attachment points displayed attachments based on the new points as a mess. That changed the shared experience.

40:00 – Someone tries to make the point that if the Emerald Team has not made the attachments points we would still not have additional attachments points.  (? Linden) points out that making the case either way is impossible and stops discussion on that path. I’ll point out, no one can prove their ‘if only.’ I also will point out the Lab released two more attachments points recently.

41:30 – Metrics – To get a measure of what would be acceptable and not acceptable oon needs a measure to work with. Changing the shared experience is not about changes to rendering, movement paradigms, or user interfaces. It is about making sure whatever your viewer is doing does not change what other viewers are seeing. So, no matter how you get a prim from A to B all other users still need to see the prim move from A to B. It just does not matter if a viewer has the user moving the prim via keystrokes, mouse drag, touch screen, magic spells, or telekinesis. All that matters is if the prim is moved, everyone can see the prim move.

A TPV Dev cannot change the world without the Lab’s cooperation and consent. An example is the Firestorm/Phoenix use of Pacel Windlight. It would violate the policy.

If you are not using Firestorm or Phoenix you may be unaware of how it works and what the user can do with Windlight in those viewers. It gets long winded and this will already be a long post, so I’ll skip going into it. However, it is pretty nifty.

44:15 – To recognize that the policy is being violated is obvious in the parcel Windlight case because the feature highjack’s the parcel description. That changes the shared experience of Parcel Descriptions.

46:30 – The Lab likes Parcel Windlight and they have no problem with it as it is so everyone gets a free pass on Parcel Windlight for TPV’s. That is the Plan of record as discussed within the Lab. But, when the Lab gets Parcel Windlight working TPV’s will have to change to the Lab’s implementation.

4 thoughts on “#SL Viewer Policy Change Meeting

  1. Pingback: New TPV policy changes - Page 19 - SLUniverse Forums

  2. Hmmmmmm… “trust us we are the new and resident responsive LL”. I’ll believe it when I see it, they have to overcome a lot of negative inertia.
    I did a tally of the New Feature catagory at the jira, OVER HALF are labeled Awaiting Review — (~4000). If LL really intends to be more responsive to feature requests they need to have a better system than the jira. Right now the best avenue we have is to tell the TPV teams, they listen; oh, or we can hire Qarl (if he will ever do it again with all the attitude he has gotten).

    • I understand the negative inertia. Once burned and all… The Lindens are aware of the problem.

      The JIRA is integrated into the work flow of LL. It is also the primary bug reporting and feature requests processes for numberless software projects both commercial and open source. It is pretty high end software for this type of work. It has developed over years. So, what would suggest?

      I know many think the JIRA does not work and the Lindens ignore it. But that is not the case. Go to the JIRA and select any of the Projects from the top menu and check the summary. It gives you items reported and items fixed within the project. As of today there are 67 new issue reports and 42 resolved in the last 30 days.

      That brings us to the ongoing problem of whether to add new features or fix problems with existing features and services. The Lab’s resources are limited. I doubt we will every be happy with adoption rate of requested features.

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