Oz Linden Interview Summary

31:50 – Q: Does Linden Lab regret going open source?

Oz thinks a lot of people in the Lab do regret it. It may not have been the most clever move for retaining control of one’s business. That is spilt milk. The Lab is not going to change that.

If TPV’s were to be phased out, Oz would be out of job.

33:30 – Viewer popularity. Phoenix is the number one viewer. It has been losing market share to Firestorm, the second most popular viewer. The LL viewer is the third most popular. But, it is a minority viewer by a significant margin. There is a good sized gap and then Singularity comes in 4th and is gaining market share.

34:40 – Why is LL Viewer in 3rd place?

Oz thinks the period when the Lab stopped releasing viewers while they developed Viewer 2.0 gave TPV’s a chance to capture market share. A number of social factors has made that hard to reverse.

Oz without taking a position says it can be argued that Viewer 2 did not provide well for how people did things in SL. He quotes Q Linden as saying the best thing about V2 was it changed Viewer 1.23 from the worst viewer the Lab ever released to the best, over night. (35:30)

Plus there is a significant resistance to any change in Second Life. Jessica echoes that her experience in FS/PH is the same, resistance to change.

36:15 – Oz relates the Lab’s experience with removing the V2 side bar from V3.

37:30 – Simple Inventory was recently released to try a new way of dealing with inventory. Oz feels the Lab has learned a lot from those that tried it.

38:10 – 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.

Jessica talks about how the community and developers are seeing the policy. Many are concerned that it is very broad and allows the Lab to restrict anything they want. She also points out that being able to restrict anything has always been part if the policy. She feels and other do that this means anything other than an interface change must be agreed on with the Lab before attempting it. For some it feels very heavy handed.

So, since it was not necessary, why was this change written?

Oz agrees. The Lab has always had the ability to tell TPV Dev’s that something they are doing is not good for SL and please stop. If they don’t, the Lab has the ability to block the viewer. So, the rule is not actually new.

40:05 – What they were trying to do give additional guidance. It’s a hard rule to write and it went though many iterations.

40:49 – This rule is meant to be less than most of the speculation has taken it to be. The idea is control the world not the viewer. If a viewer decided to render cubes as pyramids then one set of people would see pyramids and another group will see cubes. I think this is a horrible example that will be more confusing then helpful. But, it is setting edge cases.

Oz says there are very few things a TPV has ever done that would fall in this category. So, Niran and Kirstenlee’s viewers with enhanced render are not issues.

42:15 – Oz reiterates the Emerald Viewer’s additional attachment points.

42:45 – Jessica points out that while Emerald did break the Shared Experience it did serve as a test and show there was a desire in the community for the feature.

43:20 – Oz says with in broad limits the Lab does not mind people doing test of new features. Building prototype viewers to test new features is something the lab will work on with developers. It just cannot break parts of SL. However, releasing them to a mass audience is not the same thing.

44:00 – Jessica brings up the stifling innovation concern. Because the Dev’s can’t be sure the Lab will accept a feature they will be hesitant to try new features. That the Lab might not accept a feature is a concern, if the feature cannot then be used in the TPV. What guideline is there for how things will be classed as a shared experience feature?

45:00 – Oz’s simple rule is: If the viewer has to store information in the Lab’s asset server or other server, then it is changing the shared experience. Such features are going to require collaboration between the TPV Dev and Linden Lba. Oz says the Lab is willing to work with TPV Dev’s.

The changes made on the asset servers are way more complex than the average (what’s average in SL?) user is going to expect. The Lab is willing to work with dev’s to find the best way to implement a new shared feature.  I suspect several TPV Dev’s are going to have a hard time buying into the idea the Lab will be more accepting. The Lab has a PR problem in this regard.

Oz points out that the multi-attach feature required that how the avatar’s attachments in the SL servers was stored had to change for it to work correctly. This is an example of a shred experience feature that needed collaboration.

6 thoughts on “Oz Linden Interview Summary

  1. Pingback: New TPV policy changes - Page 100 - SLUniverse Forums

  2. Pingback: WHAT IS THIS CRAP? » And imagine how far we could fall

  3. Excellent Nalate’s, thanks for posting this “reader’s digest edition” it’s nice to finally read the end result of this review.

    One point which kind of stuck out though, Parcel WindLight… Seriously ? google “LightShare OpenSim” then google “LightShare Aurora-Sim” and you’ll make some interesting discoveries which have nothing to do with PH/FS or LL but rather Parcel/Region LightShare has been in OpenSim / Aurora-Sim for almost 3 years, supported by Imprudence Astra, Singularity and a couple of others…. by the way, it works wonderfully. Why not be up front about it and take from what is already designed, tested, implemented, debugged & known good ??? OpenSim being the best free idea sandbox & test resource that LL has. (oh I forgot, all the folks that were there @ LL when IBM argued that point are all laid off, so the corporate memory is NULL_SPACE.)

    I guess the next new innovation that LL & PH/FS dream up will be “Flexi-Regions” or “Flexi-Sims” which will look just like Mega-Regions or Variable Regions (as used in Aurora-Sim)…

    Sorry but it does leave a bit of an unpleasant after taste .

    • I’ve met you in OSGrid and appreciate the help you gave me. Thanks for being in both places and helping others.

      OpenSim does have a nicer version of WindLight in their Lightshare. I suppose while the OpenSim people could give the viewer side of Lightshare to LL and the Lab could use it, the Lab’s server is not open source. For the Lab to take the OpenSim Lightshare they would have to comply with the open source license. I seriously doubt that will happen.

      If you listen to Oz at 31:50, he is talking about how there is a mixed opinion about open source within the Lab. I find that completely understandable considering how some open source people have abused the Lab in the past.

      Flexi or Mega regions in SL seem unlikely to me. One of the Lab’s goals is to increase the population a region can carry. I suspect that is going to require some significant change and I believe those changes would have a major impact on how Mega regions would work. While I may be wrong, I see Mega regions being way down the road, if ever.

      I’m not sure which ‘it’ leaves the bad taste. For me, I see our biggest problem being how poorly a vocal part of the community is handling the changes at the Lab.

      • “it” = LightShare / WindLight is opensource as is OpenSim and yes while the platforms differ they are not that different. The viewer patches exist and are out there and also not a massive nasty. Parcel WindLight is something we all started asking for & discussing as soon as WindLight became available, LL did not bother to consider a full environment solution until well after OpenSim went ahead and implemented it because it not only made sense, it is used extensively.

        Re mega regions…. refer to https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-7583

        Completely agree that the culture that has evolved @ LL in regards to the open source community and that benefits no one which is a genuine shame that so many lose out as a result. Unfortunately that also has a direct impact on the overall community by effectively removing unity from community. Henri Beauchamps of CV had an excellent & clear look at the impact of TPV, very rational & sane without all the “sky is falling” chicken little routine.

        /me admits his guilt in helping people on various platforms and trying to get discussion going in ways to be of benefit to all.

        • Thanks for JIRA ID. I don’t understand the high JIRA number and the 2009 creation date…

          For a 2009 dated item to not yet be touched in some way by a Linden suggests there is some internal decision process at work.

          I think the change will be complex and lots of work. That usually mean it goes to the bottom of the priority list.

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