1:13:40 – Local textures is in progress for the SL Viewer. Most TPV’s have the ability to temporarily upload a texture for free so you can see how well it works in SL. It seems this feature is in progress for the main viewer. However, the 3^rd party developer working on it seems to have gotten lost.

1:16:00 – Avatar baking to be made robust. People are working on it or at least toward it now.

Chat system changes are in progress.

1:20:00 – Do unique selection stream appearances violate policy? No, because anyone can add it to their TPV it is not considered an identifiable give away for which viewer one uses. And this also gives a clue to what is meant by changes to the shared experience. Everyone sees the same novel particle stream. So, it is not a violation of policy.

1:23:00 – Cross hair look-at information came up. It is considered an interface change not a world change. Displaying additional information is not necessarily a violation of policy.

1:26:30 – Jessica questions; grace period, time until audio up, time until post up, ….

1:35:30 – Exodus feature to request a teleport. (? Linden) points out this is just an interface change. It does not change the world. A button that sends a request to send a TP Invite does not change the shared experience. One could send an IM to ask for one. So, it is seen as an interface change not a world change.

Punk Buster feature in Exodus. (? Linden) doesn’t know how it works and doesn’t have knowledge of it. So, no comment. It has to do with the viewer being able to detect viewer version information. Without knowing what it is using or how it is using it, there is no way to know if it is acceptable or not.

1:39:00 – Exodus is proposing a shared experience change to add a materials system.

1:41:00 – Some things will be done in private and some in public. The reason for choosing one or the other is about how well the Lab can control the conversation. Things will evolve to eventually be public.

The Lab has had problems with people misrepresenting the Lab’s position and motivations. So, in areas where they feel there is a PR problem they will make decisions that protect the Lab.

1:46:00 – Information about the Profile date as used in the viewer panel. There is Lots of geeky info for techie types.

Summary

My take is a great deal of the motivation for these changes is as Oz (I think) said, to clarify things more. I suspect it also gives them a point by which to mark a change in how they enforce policy. As Oz pointed out, it really does not change policy.

Another aspect of life with the Lab that comes out is how the behavior of users has brought about the pressure to remove viewer tags. Additionally user behavior shapes how the Lindens handle PR on certain issues. From TPV Dev’s I hear they have known the tags change was coming for some time. I’m not clear on whether they new why.

But for much of what happens and how the Lab behaves, we can look to ourselves and consider how we would behave in a Linden’s shoes when faced with our collective behavior.