Do the Lindens Not Really Have an Open Source Viewer Any More?

Wow, the Lindens made the latest viewer no longer open source?! That's news!

At least, that's what it looks like. I'm sure the fanboyz or one of the Linden coders themselves will be along any minute to give us some tangled explanation about how this really isn't the case, but...listen to how it is the case.

On Sluniverse.com, there's a thread on the demise of Kirsten's viewer. Kirsten's viewer was one of the more popular third-party viewers if you didn't want to have to deal with son-of-Emerald, which was Phoenix/Firestorm, which still has problems (buggy software, arrogant coders, insecurities about privacy, etc.).

The thread is started by Lordfly, who has been pissing in the Lindens' wheaties since 2003. He was 10 times more obnoxious when he was...18 or 20 as a college boy. Now that he is 25 or 27 or whatever (or maybe he was even younger) and has mellowed somewhat and found other things to do beside obsess about SL and be nasty and snarky to other people in the forums, he isn't as annoying, but he still writes this kind of arrogant crap:

...and the official viewer runs like hot garbage (2 frames a second on a mid-range ATI card and a quad-core? Really, LL?)

I want a viewer that is shriekingly fast and lets me build occasionally. I'm not going to have crazy bondage sex, nor am I going to be doing really anything except exploring, taking pictures , and the occasional prim-smashing session. Shadows and mesh support are absolute musts; I'm not a luddite, I just am unhappy with the main SL client's performance.


I'd like to get back in SL on a more casual social thing, hanging out with creative types. I miss the creative shenanigans people did in Mdinight city, way back in the before time before anyone had heard of SL; I have fond memories of a half dozen or so people, idling/building/creating on a city rooftop without a care in the world.

Bring me back, kids. Bring me back.

Really, Lordfly? You really need to come back to Second Life and noodle around in Miramare? Pro-tip: try unchecking HTML on your advanced menu on the later viewers. That's the thing that really cuts performance -- and in fact is a deal-breaker -- for me, it cuts off my wireless connection. Since that's the thingie that delivers textures at a higher frame rate (I think...or something) it can kill performance.

If you have an Nvidia card, yes, it's got "issues" (as it has since time immemorial). There are various tips for that in the SLun thread -- but of course, one has to wonder how you expect even a sizeable niche adaptation of software if it requires sophisticated geeky tweaking for so many people.

But try being *different* than the million other geeks arrogantly deciding software problems are somebody else's problem and not your own -- or visa versa, deciding software problems in software they've coded is the user's problem, and become CURIOUS about what YOU might do to change things or what THEY might do to change things other than write flippant little bullshit "hot garbage" comments.

But to stay on topic here, in that thread, the noisome Joshua Nightshade lets this tidbit drop:

The Firestorm team said that mesh upload wouldn't be coming because there were licensing issues (LL wasn't giving them the code because it would infringe on their license with Havok) preventing its addition to third party viewers.

I guess they worked that out somehow.

But then Ebony Khan says:

They just got mesh upload on Monday. I still would only use the official viewer for mesh uploads since it can be so sensitive, but that is personal preference.

Kirsten has been able to upload mesh for months and months.

So that sounds as if there aren't licensing issues. Or that people circumvent them...or that they get their own licenses? How much do they cost?

Is this like emku? Remember all that? (The cause of Emerald's demise.)

Other people say they can't see mesh on Phoenix; others say they must not have the latest download. Etc. etc.

So maybe these problems were solved, but it's interesting that there is now an issue of a Havoc license for Mesh that could be some kind of obstacle for third-party viewers.

I vigorously opposed the open-sourcing of the viewer because I thought it would only bring more crime -- copyright theft and griefing and erosion of privacy -- and I was absolutely, thoroughly right about this. I took heaps of crap from people for opposing the viewer open-sourcing which I wrote about here and here among many other places even being banned for a time from the Linden blog and ejected from a town hall for my legitimate protest (the people hating on me for objecting to open source in grounds of the griefing record of libsl were worse in their behaviour and speech but nothing happened to them). At a town hall where everyone was cross-talking in world and in groups and saying various nasty things to me, *I* was the one ejected for merely one line of comment to something Cory Linden said about shortage of islands for first land (I pointed out that he had no shortage of servers to apply toward lucrative private islands -- they were the same damn servers.)

I can't think of anything we've gotten from the third-party viewers that have been really worth all the drama and trouble from them. Jiggling boobs? Well, now we have that in the regular viewer. Um, did I miss anything else?

Of course, it's long been said that as the Lindens forked of 1.23 and went to mesh that all the third-party viewers would be made obsolete eventually. Gradually, things would be taken out (like search organized by traffic) or things put in that you didn't have in 1.23 would harm you (the ability to put your land in "rent") and they would force the changeover. I've never really heard the full back story about how you can have a key feature of mesh licensed, i.e. as in "pay money", and yet still say your have a free open source viewer. I guess you can say you have a free open-source viewer except if you want to also see mesh LOL.

I'm sure there's some sort of withering tekkie explanation for all this that I'll be hearing in a minute, but I do wonder.

I personally can live without mesh. Since it came out, I just haven't gone to the new viewers to see it more than once or twice -- I just don't need it. If I see the occasional girl wearing a barrel, well, I used to see the occasional girl wearing a barrel anyway because some girls wear barrels I guess.

I could live my live in peace without only prims and be happy but of course I have customers. But I only see a handful of them using mesh stuff, most are still in the prim and sculpty stage.

 

 

Comments

[cube inada]

burning man at both sides of the candle.

nothign left but a lump of melted waxy residue.

shadows were eventually nice.. but all the rest around it was just too late.

btw- i entered theblu last night.... like shooting fish in a barrel.... mesh. yes. money. no
not as is.

[Siana Gearz]

There's a tiny closed source component (part of Havok) responsible for collision mesh upload in current Linden viewer. The glue code has been published by Linden Lab, so a third party could license Havok and proceed releasing a functionally equivalent viewer, however cost was prohibitive for TPVs and licensing restrictions could have caused further problems.

A developer of Firestorm viewer has replaced this component by a combination of newly-written glue code and third-party open source code, making upload possible.

Mesh display does not require any closed-source components. Without such component, a open-source viewer built straight from Linden source would still be able to not only view and manipulate Mesh objects, but upload too. However, automatic collision shape for Mesh object upload would not be generated, making the content creator either upload phantom meshes, or need to spend extra effort creating a suitable collision shape manually.

The whole situation isn't new and nothing special to complain about. Although Linden releases are built from same source that they publish openly, they have already used a commercially licensed image decoder which is only available to TPVs upon purchase of the license, or could be replaced with an (inferior) free alternative. Same thing with mesh upload.

As you'll see, Linden viewer has never been advertised as open-source. Rather, Linden Lab has an extensive open-source programme which parallels the official viewer, provides up-to-date and in-development sources, to the extent permissible, to third party developers, assists those developers and integrates contributions made by third-party developers under a copyright-assignment agreement back into the official client.

[Siana Gearz]

I must make myself more precise, code contributed by Firestorm developer Nicky Dasmijn adds possibility to automatically generate collision shape, in a similar manner like Linden viewer does.

Lindens, when asked about why they didn't use the same open-source component as picked by Nicky to generate collision shapes, said the commercial alternative performed better and they already had a license for it.

The issues that Lordfly cites are real and are rooted in a horrible quality assurance mishap which is rooted in Lindens' haphazard development process management, release pressure and... simply lack of sufficient quality assurance. I can see them working on these issues and i'm confident this particular set of issues will be fixed soon, and the viewer will be faster than ever before. But unfortunately, the process is pretty bad so i'm afraid it's a symptom of what has been and what will be. I think one of the main goals of the open source programme is to offload the QA onto the community to cut costs, but there's only so much - or so little - that the tiny bunch of us can handle.

As to when i try to figure out what a user can do to fix a problem on their end - the goal of this is not to find that particular solution and call it a day, but to figure out how to fix things on our end eventually. Unfortunately, with so many problems our resources are unsufficient and our hands are tied, and i feel strongly Lindens should be handling more of this.

[Prokofy Neva]

Well, Siana, you sound informed, but also a total koolaid drinker and you sound rather pompous, I might add -- open source is soooooo insufferable and knowier-than-thou, yanno?

"Linden viewer has never been advertised as open-source."

Simply not true. Take the transcripts of townhall meetings, etc. etc. (of course some of these are probably hidden from the official website now but still can be found elsewhere) and they constantly bragged about this. Read old issues from 2007 of the open source digest which I've been doing. Simply. Not. True.

They could call it the reverse engineering program? Inferior imitation program? They don't. They call it "open source" most definitely.

And let me document this for you thoroughly.

On Oz Linden's profile, here's what it says under PICKS:

"Linden Open Source Project HQ"

That's his parcel, and that's where he holds meetings on OPEN SOURCE.

Further, he writes on his profile:

"I'm responsible for Linden Lab open source programs..."

So, please, let's not be children here and pretend that it isn't advertised as such, and that there aren't some serious, er, Marxist internal contradictions in open source in general and in LL's version of it in particular.

I just *knew* that someone would be instantly along to defend the honour of uniform on the open source front and claim that anything besmirchment of the opensource claim would be eminently explainable as a...thingie...that really had a solution in the form of another thingie...and that....there is an inferior thingie but that works good enough...etc. etc.

It's all EXACTLY as I expected. Thanks for performing on cue!

[Prokofy Neva]

I imaging that "generating collision shape" might be something rather desirable. Like the ability to make a mesh dress swish so that it doesn't have a leg going through it oddly like prim dresses do.

I've dealt with Lordfly for years. The problem with Lordfly is Lordfly, not the viewers. He's also a pompous ass. Young men in our time often never have to suffer and learn humility. They never have to go to war, except voluntarily, they never have to farm during a drought, they never have to work a factory shift, they never have to do anything but surf the net. So they get that way.

I can't fault the Lindens for picking the collisision thinger that they feel looks better and makes them look good. They're hippies and nerds and opensourceniks, except at the end of the day, they're hippies and nerds and opensourceniks THAT NEED TO GET PAID. That makes them different than you.

And it was gives me a glimmer of hope regarding them, as distinct from you, because it means that someday, CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS might become rather more urgent for them than it is now. So it's all good. They are moving in the right direction.

[Siana Gearz]

That there's an open source programme accompanying the viewer has not evaded me, finally i produce currently one of the most popular TPVs on the grid.

Yet this hasn't always been the case - for the first three or four months i didn't know there was viewer source! And that in spite me being a programmer and thus curious about such things by nature. Exactly because - yes open source - i know it now, you know it, a few thousand people more know it - but it's not advertised - who knows Oz Linden, reads SL wiki or looks into his groups. It's not the first thing you see when you download the viewer - as opposed to pretty much any piece of community driven open-source software out there. Perhaps it shouldn't be advertised because open source is a means and not an end, to me, but even more so to Linden Lab. From the point of the view of a Linden Lab customer, he couldn't care less about whether it's open-source or not, and due to copyright assignment, Linden Lab has no obligations in that regard. Or rather, he wouldn't care if Linden Lab was doing a satisfactory job with their software. Do i have to mention how horrible Viewer 2.0 was - the first release that i got shoved in when i signed up - essentially broken.

And don't you think you found yourself a Marxist you can have a nice war against. Will not happen.

I merely wanted to say that Lindens didn't really remove anything super vital from the viewer sources, so situation is the exact same as it has been all along, for good or bad. And see what you made out of it. It's your expectation more than what i said. Apologies if my tone didn't come out quite right.

[Siana Gearz]

(my previously typed message got swallowed i think)

How many people go to any kind of Linden meetings? How many people read the wiki? How many people know who Oz Linden is? You, me, a few thousand others, that's all. Basically, noone.

I didn't know it for the first 4 months, in spite of me being a programmer and naturally curious to see the source if it was available. It doesn't say it right on the download page - and i'm not saying it should.

And noone would care if everyone was happy with Linden client. Do i have to tell you how horrible SL Viewer 2.0, the very first release was? That's what i was shoved in when i signed up in winter/spring one and a half years ago.

You read into my post what you want to read. I merely stated that the situation hasn't changed a bit, without giving it a judgement. It's how it's been all along. And look what you made out of it. Sorry if my choice of words wasn't perfect.

[Han Held]

Newsflash, when you make yourself a no-nothing, everyone becomes "knowier than thou". Also, to share my amusement with your audience: http://www.google.com/search?q=knowier
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/knowier

Also, are you waffling on about edmku? In 2011? Really?

That's just too damned funny!

[Prokofy Neva]

Han Held -- some nasty person from the past who respawned as Han Held to be anonymous. Han Held is one of the nasties on the forums, by the way.

Er, I'm not a "no-nothing". Do you mean "know nothings"? Just because I'm not a coder or tekkie type doesn't mean I can't pronounce on these issues -- anyone can become adequately informed about them like any other topic. It would be ridiculous to say that educated people and the general public can never pronounce on medical issues or economic or climate issues and only experts can. Oh, that's exactly what the left does much of the time, with their fake belief in "science" by which they mean their own skewed analysis.

Yes I'm "waffling on" about edmku in 2011 because it's a good analogy. I reason by analogy. Perhaps that's a higher function you're not capable of. It happens with binary-thinking geeks.

Er, what's that Miriam Webster all about? A lack of awareness that "knowier than thou" isn't a phrase? Of course it is. Here's none other than the New York Time's Pogue using it:

http://www.celebritytweet.com/wilw/link/1126851052/

Of course, it's interesting to see in Google searches in general for the phrase "knowier than tho" that many come from my blog : )

It's a PERFECT description for the types in Second Life like Siana Gearz and Han Held!

PERFECT!

[Prokofy Neva]

Siana,

Re: "Exactly because - yes open source - i know it now, you know it, a few thousand people more know it - but it's not advertised - who knows Oz Linden, reads SL wiki or looks into his groups. It's not the first thing you see when you download the viewer - as opposed to pretty much any piece of community driven open-source software out there. Perhaps it shouldn't be advertised because open source is a means and not an end, to me, but even more so to Linden Lab."

Well, duh! this is why I have said for years that "Open Source=Closed Society of Coders". A company with proprietary code that is "closed" will be more open because it is motivated to sell its product and therefore advertise it and do customer service than the insular fetishists in the "open source" circles who hold their invention close so no one else will see it.

They're far worse than any "evil company". If you think that there's a utopian norm in the "open source community" to always publish "community initiatives" think again. Go and look up "Open ID" and try to criticize anything about it on their forums and you will yet another closed society. And on and on and on through any project, anywhere. Same closed, insular totalitarian culture.

Of which you yourself are a part, and happily a part.

Viewer 2 was not really "open source". It was a SECRET project. Basically, it was a fork! It was the Lindens' own fork away from their own original open-source project. While the geeks were kept busy with Philip Linden's Snowglobe, the real Lindens secretly went off, with the help of a PR firm and a few FIC, i.e. privileged resident beta-testers, and made viewer 2.0 in total secret.

They later alleged to be sorry about that secrecy, but it was induced both by fear of the core user base's inevitable hatred of anything new, or so they thought, and fear of competition from other platforms especially virtual worlds.

It's not about word choice. It's about getting you to see that open source is never, never what it claims to be AND THIS IS WHY IT HAPPENED THE WAY IT DID AT LINDEN LAB. That you think that somewhere *else* it's different is maybe merely an artifact of you never taking a critical view of the software culture and looking at other places and teams. Drupal is no different. Etc.

I'm happy with 1.23. I have no complaint about 1.23. Give me 1.23 forever.

[cube3]

"Oh, that's exactly what the left does much of the time, with their fake belief in "science" by which they mean their own skewed analysis."

or the right with their fake belief in "gods word" etc.?

seems so then.

[Siana Gearz]

Prok, collision shape is only there for rigid in-world objects. Attachments and wearables are always phantom, and will stay that way presumably for pretty much ever. The way mesh clothes behave is similar to how system skirt works, but more refined, this is how they can avoid going through the avatar like prim skirts do. Collision detection for clothes currently appears to be an unworkable approach at the scale of Second Life.

It is certainly useful, else you'd be falling through the floor of a mesh house or walking through a vehicle - unless of course you linked it with fully transparent prims to serve as physics shape, like has been done for sculpts all along. Also any automatic collision shape generation will tend to fail where you need cavities - such as a house you'd like to actually walk inside.

Han's objection is irrelevant. Technically there's not a whole lot preventing emkdu issue from popping up ever again, some third party viewers (Firestorm, Exodus) use self-built closed source code which is way harder to verify than emkdu was. One thing that prevents it is that LL have secured themselves with an ability to sue should any abuse become known, that there has been a precedent of people being punished with long lasting consequences, and hopefully that more mature and responsible people are in charge of these TPVs these days.