Cafe Bucky

I have been observing Second Life and Linden Lab every day for the last 4 1/2 years (yep, I am Bucky Barkley there).  Around January 2009, I started wondering what event would trigger a migration to OpenSim.   Gwyneth had written a great post back then, which has helped shaped my thinking.

When I saw the announcement this past Monday that Linden Lab would discontinue the 50% discount for educators and non-profits, with less than 3 months notice, I thought “aha! this is the trigger event!”.   There has been much consternation in the SL community lately, but now it has reached the point where a sizable group will take action.  For Linden Lab to have done this to a group of people who have been some of their strongest supporters, is nothing less than a Public Relations disaster.

A migration is in the offing.  Many will be leaving Second Life, and will be heading to OpenSim-based grids.  It creates Opportunity.

You may say “Daniel!  You are overreacting!  Let those educators and non-profits go!  Who needs them!?”…

…And you are entitled to say that :-)

But I say this is something that triggers a whole series of events.  I think that Linden Lab is going to run into some unintended consequences.  They may think that a certain percentage of their user base will migrate, and that it will be an isolated event.

But that is not all that will happen…

When the non-profits and educators go to OpenSim-based grids, they will bring with them a bit of money, expectations, and a lot of drive.  I will quote John Lester (Pathfinder).  He is a former Linden, and in his post “With every Exodus comes Expansion: Educators and Non-profits in Second Life“, he wrote:

nothing drives rapid platform development like a big influx of eager users

Therein Lies Opportunity.  The needs, funds, and energy of the non-profits and educators will speed up the development progress of OpenSim and OpenSim-based grids.  This progress, in turn, will make migrating that much more attractive to other groups that are not directly affected by the pricing increase.  Educators and Non-Profits dont exist in a bubble; they have friends in other communities, and they shop a bit as well.  Their needs, influence, and experiences ripple far beyond their sphere.

I have spent 4 years working on projects in the Info Island Archipelago, and I can say firsthand that there is no clear boundary between the folks there and all of the other communities in SL.  It would appear that LL is taking a gamble that there will be a limited, community specific migration.  They have poked at an anthill, and have not figured just how fast all the sleepy ants within will awake, spring into action, and migrate.

The trick for everyone involved is to get past being upset with Linden Lab, and to work together to get things going in brave new OpenSim worlds.  There is a need for content creators, tool providers, builders, event coordinators, and for many other talents to come along for the ride.  It is a time for all manner of specialists to help each other bootstrap into the post-Second Life era.

So, like I said, Therein Lies Opportunity.   Along with this, those who will need help should be aware of the following:

Not every “solution provider” will be competent.  Not every grid host will be on the level.  Not every Virtual Worlds Consultant will know what they are doing.   Look for proven experience, real names, and always have a Plan B.

As with everything else, do your research before committing time and money.  There are many people right now who are very happy with their projects in OpenSim.  There are failures as well…

…It’s just like the web.  Moving away from the walled garden of SL means that more things need to be considered (who is my host?  am I on the HyperGrid?  How do I find people, places, and things that are scattered across grids?)  But, along with that, there is much more control and reward.  As one example, you can backup your own work, move to another provider, and restore it.

These are pioneering days.  Second Life has served its purpose as an excellent introduction to Virtual Worlds.  They are one chapter in our books.

It’s time to start writing the next chapter, and Therein Lies Opportunity.

I’m in a bit of a Quandry.

I’m in all out job search mode, and I get a fair number of inquiries from recruiters each day.  They seem to like my resume.

So far, so good.

The thing is, I do know a wide range of tech, and much of what I see fits me well, but there is often some skill that I dont have, such as some language or some bit of technology.   Either I dont know RoR well, or .Net, or am rusty on Java, etc.

There is so much that I could learn, but there is only so much time.

So that is the fun part.. I am a great generalist, and am interested in a lot of facets of Tech.  So what to focus on?  It’s no good changing gears every day.

My idea at the moment is:  I’ll jot down the things I am very interested in learning. and hopefully a couple of folks will write me and say “well hell, Daniel, just dont sleep — you mean to say you dont know all of this already!?”

Languages and Frameworks

• PHP – I know 5.x, and a bit of CakePHP.  So, Zend Framework?  Symfony?  CodeIgniter? Others?
• Python / Django? – I’ve gone into python and have made minor changes.  I like Python from what I know of it.
• Ruby / RoR – I’ve done some Ruby on Rails tutorials, and dug it.  I have not had a project to really get my feet wet with it.
• Perl – actually, I am pretty good wth Perl.  I  just have not touched it much since 2006 at Friendster.  I actually wrote a perl shell back in 1992.  Catalyst Framework?  Mason?
• C# / .Net / Mono – this may come as a surprise to anyone who knows my leanings to all things Mac and Linux.  My interest comes from wanting to do more with two key projects:
  • OpenSim – yep, OpenSim is written in C#, and runs on .Net or Mono
  • Unity – the scripting languages for Unity (JavaScript, C#, and Boo) run on top of Mono, and access underlying .Net libraries.  I also love the idea of Embedding Mono for other projects.

In the category of “well, if I need to go back to…”:

• Java -  I have not done new java code since 1996!  I would not want to work on client side java at this point (who is doing applets at this point?)  — I would be into the whole Eclipse + server side angle (I’ve worked a bit with Weblogic and Presto)   Java has so many technologies associated with it at this point, that it is hard to know where to jump in.
• Flash / AS3 -  I have not touched flash much since 2005.  I think HTML5 + JS + CS3 is the way forward.  I do like ActionScript, which is a close cousin of JavaScript.  When I dealt with AS2, I had one entry point on the first frame and used a lot of classes.  I didnt do the snippets attached to the timeline deal.  My leaning is that I could back into flash again for a specific project, but there are many other things I’d like to learn first
• C / C++ – It’s been forever ;)

Content Management Systems

Ok, which to learn?  Drupal?  Joomla?  Wordpress?

NoSQL / SMAQ

I’ve been reading a lot about NoSQL, and just came across this article about SMAQ (Storage, MapReduce and Query)

What to learn?  Hadoop?  CouchDB?  Cassandra?  Voldemort?   etc…

Besides Programming

It’s obvious I am interested in a wide swath of the programming side.

Now, if someone were to ask me what I would do besides programming, I would say photography, writing, or possibly speaking / demoing.

The other big interest of mine is multimedia.  I know a bit, but wish I could just dive into
it for a year and learn a lot more.  Some apps I would like to know would be:

Logic Studio
Final Cut Studio
PhotoShop CS5
Maya / 3DS Max /  Blender

A lot of the output of this would be directed towards work in Virtual Worlds (assets in
a Unity project, as one example)

(in other words, I know a bit of the creative side, and wish I had the time/money/chance to
really learn a lot more of it)

Anyways, to sum up, I’m interested in a lot, but every situation wants different skill sets.  Hard to know where to focus!

Overview

I’m a longtime SL user (March 2006), and I think the 1.x and 2.x codebases are becoming an evolutionary dead-end.  I think the community will face a day of reckoning, and developers will show a way forward.  In some ways, this mirrors the situation of the LL server versus OpenSim.  The Unity development tool would seem to be a very attractive avenue forward.

The server side has been reinvented by OpenSim.  The client side needs a huge reset.

1.x and 2.x Codebases

The current situation with SecondLife / OpenSim viewers is that we have two codebases: 1.x and 2.x. The overwhelming majority of users are on some variant of the 1.x codebase (SL Viewer,
Imprudence, Phoenix).  The 2.x users are, for the most part, on the SL Viewer 2, or on Kirstens Viewer.

Another factor in the current situation is that Linden Lab has put all development effort into 2.x.  They know that the UI issues for the 1.x users are pretty significant.   Since most of the community doesn’t want anything to do with the 2.x interface, Linden Lab will have a hard time attracting much unpaid developer effort to their side.

The other trend affecting LL is that they have some features coming up that will require the 2.x viewer (meshes come to mind).   It’s an unfortunate mix of variables.

For some time to come, the 1.x viewer community will thrive.  They have made significant progress in giving the community what it wants (double click teleports, area search, inventory mirroring, better LSL editing options, more convenient Windlight UI access, just to name a few).  If LL were to pull support for 1.x viewer access [1], it would backfire in a big way — it would be an event that would lead to mass migration.  Whether they like it or not, they are somewhat forced to keep the 1.x viewer community connected.  They have clearly painted themselves into a corner.

[1] nah, they wont — I have a backchannel on this, as well as what was stated on The Developers List and also this one

In short, the 1.x UI is clearly the winner, but on the server side, the way forward will require 2.x.  The LL server / client situation is messy.

… And… neither viewer stream could hope to compete with an AAA level game engine within, say, the next year or two.  My concrete example is that the Unity engine is far ahead in many areas.

Enter the Unity Game Engine

What of true advancements?  What would have to happen to the viewer to bring it up to the standard of a AAA game title?

Looming on the horizon, there are significant walls for the 1.x and 2.x codebase.  To explore but a few areas, what can be done about Graphics, Animation, Sound, and Terrain?

Let’s focus on the positive for a bit :)

Graphics – A quick look at Unity demos (for instance, Tropical Paradise,  Shadows, and Butterfly) gives a strong hint as to its power.  Observe more lights in one scene, dynamic shadows on older hardware.  Custom shaders that can be written by 3rd parties.   Unity 3.0 will be released soon, and goes even further:

• Deferred Rendering — Dark Unity
• Beast Lightmapping — Lightmapping in Unity 3
• Image Effects

Physics – Physics in Unity are very advanced:

• http://unity3d.com/unity/features/physics
• cloth physics in 3.0

Animation – Unity has advanced object and character animation:

• game objects
• locomotion extension
• animation blending GUI

Sound – so much control as to mixing and where the Audio Listener is positioned

Terrain – very powerful from the built in editor, as well as from scripting, and a very well done extension (Terrain Toolkit)

Editing (3.0) – Snapping & Marquee Selection — also note that there is a lot of scripting support (in JavaScript, C#, and Boo) which could be used to develop in-world editing.

Deployment – Here is the Overview for 2.6.  Unity is very well suited for Windows (Direct3D 9), Mac (OpenGL), the Web, Nintendo Wii, and the iPhone.  They are working on deployment for the Android, Xbox 360 and the PS3.

Where To Go From Here

It should be pretty clear that the 1.x and 2.x have little hope of catching up to something like Unity 2.6.  In the year or two it would take to get close, Unity and other game development engines will be that much farther along.  To me, it seems clear that there is a choice:

1. Keep advancing the 1.x and 2.x codebases, picking up some of the features of Unity, but still being limited to Mac, Windows, and Linux
2. Freeze current codebase (Linux will have to stay where it is…), and take the things about SecondLife and add them to an app built with Unity.  This will pick up additional platforms, and will tap into a much larger development community.

I note that there are at least two OpenSim + Unity projects underway:

• Resonance Live
• Heritage Key, by Rezzable

Enjoy the links, ponder it, and think about where you want to put your development efforts for the next 2 years ;)

It is the community that will win the Metaverse…

Overview

I see an inevitable migration on the horizon of residents from SecondLife to Opensim
based grids. There are two main forces at work:  the decline of Linden Labs, and the
ascendency of the OpenSim.

• Linden Labs has been making a series of moves that are alienating the users.  They are neither leaders in policy, nor technology.  Not even meshes will save them.
• OpenSim is the clear technical leader, is rapidly making strides to stability, and the variety of grids springing up will assure that every community will have a strong home.  OpenSim is much like X11 in the sense that it provides “mechanism, not policy”.   Grid Operators take on the role of policy.

The Decline Of Linden Labs

Just since the time of SLCC (August 13-15, 2010), I can point to no less than four Linden Lab missteps which have upset various parts of the community:

1) Display Names – with over 1000 comments on blog, the Lindens appear to be intent on going live with a very ill-conceived plan to allow anyone to choose almost anything as a display name. What’s the problem with that?  They are not providing a means for users to protect their names from abuse.   While it may be true that a click or two will always reveal a true user name, it is still not clear what (Display Name?  User Name? Both?) will be written to chat and IM logs.  It is also not clear what the IM logfile names will be.  This is a huge worry for anyone who is concerned about identity and reputation.

The Lindens take the view that people can file Abuse Reports.  I note that this approach
attempts to address a symptom, but is no cure.  With all the layoffs that the Lindens have been through, and the recent reduction in support hours, do they have the staff to handle the increase in ARs that will be generated by Display Name abuse?  It would cost them less
to provide a control to prevent others from using your name as their display name.  It would also go over with the community a lot better.

2) Teen Grid Closing - I can understand the economics of closing the Teen Grid.  It costs a lot to run, and has a mere sliver of the main grid population.  What has a lot of people up in arms is the misguided idea of migrating 16 and 17 year olds to the main grid.  They would be better served by migrating to a grid that has been proven to be more focused on education (Reaction Grid comes to mind).

3) Customer Service Cutback – The short of it: same tiers, less service. Combine this with a slew of new problems (numerous ARs occuring from Display Name abuse, and legal/customer service issues arising from the presence of teens on what used to be a strictly adult grid).  The hours are also incredibly USA centric.  This will be one more factor that drives European and Asian users towards grids based in their regions.

4) Snowstorm, Do We Care?

Wizard of Oz: [in a booming voice] Step forward, Tin Man!
Tin Woodsman: [terrified, steps forward] Ohhhh!
Wizard of Oz: [still in a booming voice] You DARE to come to me for a heart, do you? You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of kaligenous junk!

Although SnowStorm is a great concept, in that there will be one viewer source code stream internally and externally, I sense that much of the developer community will focus their efforts elsewhere.  The Wizard of Oz Linden (who, as far as I can tell [1], has only
been in SL for 4 months) has declared:

“Don’t waste everyones time suggesting that we throw away Viewer 2, or that we revert the UI to Viewer 1. It is absolutely not going to happen, and any suggestion to that effect will be ignored.”

Yes, Scott really said that: http://www.mail-archive.com/opensource-dev@lists.secondlife.com/msg02459.html

Since the overwhelming majority of the community uses third party viewers, and does not like the 2.x UI, sensible developers are going to focus their efforts on giving the community what it wants.  The Linden Lab attempt at outsourcing some of their viewer development for free, while at the same time insisting on the 2.x UI, will not get much traction.  There is some limited cachet in being able to say that you contributed to the mainstream SL viewer, but if its usage is eclipsed by the offerings of several third parties, is it the best use of your valuable developer time?

The Ascendency Of OpenSim

I’ve touched on just some of the factors that are upsetting the SL community.  It’s time to shift to the positive.  We should be very glad that we are seeing the rise of a viable alternative!

As I have written before, and as others (such as Gwyn and Maria) have noted, OpenSim is showing itself to be a serious metaverse platform:

Technical – HyperGrid, MegaRegions, choice of voice (Whisper, FreeSwitch), more flexibility, compatible with existing SL viewers, archiving of regions and inventories.  Willingness to evolve past LSL.  Region scripting as well.

Policy – widespread, dependent on Grid Operators, if you dont like it, run your own grid!  Opensim grids win because none of them has to address the issue of trying to come up with policies that would satisfy everyone in a large walled garden.  We can easily move between web sites with varying policies and narrow niches.  The same thing will be true in the Metaverse.

Cost – a fraction of what LL charges –  Is there a market for high end grids with hand holding support, as well as a slew of specialty bargain basement offerings?  Yes!

Currency – yes!  OMC and Cyber Coin Bank These work across grids.   Maria writes in depth about this.

Scaling – with one fell swoop, HyperGrid does much to address the issue of scaling.  How?  If people can easily get from one grid to another, then there is little reason to try to shoehorn them all into one place.  As we see with some web sites, there will be some huge grids, possibly with millions of users.  But balanced with that, there will a large number of grids that address niche communities, with 10’s of thousands of users.  If they choose to be isolated, they can turn off hypergrid access.   Within 5 years, the combined scale of OpenSim based grids will dwarf the walled garden of SecondLife.  It is like the old AOL service trying to compete with the entire web.

Third Party Viewer Community -  Not only will the viewers based on 1.x and 2.x source streams become the preferred entrance to OpenSim based grids (easy grid management in them), there will be a movement towards more types of front ends.  HTML5 is one possibility (resurrect AjaxLife?).  Unity3D holds a lot of promise.

What Could LL Do To Stave Off The Inevitable?

At this point in time, the biggest technical innovation LL has on their agenda would be meshes.

On the development side, they would have to show that they are open to some emulation of the 1.x interface, in order to gain traction.  They are competing for something valuable, developer attention, and are making a lot of wrong moves.

On the policy side, they need to show that they will provide adequate controls for display names, so that people can be proactive about protecting their identity.

On the support side, they would need to make a case as to why people should pay the same amount of tier, but accept a reduced level of service.

On the interopability side, LL finds itself in the position of being a large walled garden, a la the AOL service of the 90’s and 00’s.  LL should ask itself it wants to follow the examples of AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy.

The Tipping Point

Having said all this, it is quite clear that the majority of Metaverse usage hours are still being spent in SecondLife.  I dont see any single event from the sides of OpenSim, or SecondLife, that will radically tip the scales.  I see something more organic going on: friends will drag friends to OpenSim grids.  Any one of several LL policy decisions will be a straw that breaks a residents back.  OpenSim will make some technical advance, etc.  There will be as many reasons to switch as there are metaverse residents.  The Tipping Point occurs when a sizeable number of people realize that their personal puzzle pieces have fallen into place for them to make the switch.

Let’s Take It From Here
Time for the OpenSim / Viewer Community To Assume Leadership

My premise

We can no longer assume that Linden Labs will provide leadership.  We know what needs to be done, and with some Cooperation, we can take it from here.

• There are many separate pieces to the open metaverse.
• There are many competent folks involved with them.
• It is time for them to band together and chart a course forward.

It is time to go forward, and no longer worry about compatibility with the SL Viewer and server.  That being said, the key to success is to not go forward in 20 different ways.  Cooperation will be the key.

The Linux and Apache Communities are a success.  Their example can be followed in the Metaverse.

What do I mean by pieces?

Grids – Inworldz.com, Reaction Grid, and others are OpenSim based grids that are easy to get started with.  Think of them as Metaverse ISPs.

Server – OpenSim 0.7 shows promise and technical leadership (HyperGrid, MegaRegions, flexible architecture, archival capabability)  Think of OpenSim as the Apache of the Metaverse

Viewers – Emerald, Imprudence, Hippo, and others.  Think of viewers as you would think of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.  How does the SL Viewer 2 fit in?  Think of it as Internet Explorer.

Why do we need cooperation between OpenSim and the Viewer Folks?

There are certain technologies that would be of great benefit to the Metaverse as a whole.  The shining example would be Importing 3D Meshes.  The community cant sit around and wait for an implementation to come from Linden Labs.  However, it is a major feature that requires a protocol between server (OpenSim) and Client (Emerald, et al).  The community needs to agree on protocols, so that multiple clients can take advantage of new features added to the server side.

What role should Grid Operators Play?

They need to make it easy for users to get to compatible viewers.  If the community sees great benefit in certain features (such as meshes), and the SL Viewer lags behind, then it will behoove the grid operators to a) educate and b) point users to the resources they need.  We need to get out of the mindset of having to maintain compatibility with the SL Viewer.

Does this mean that the SL Viewer may fall by the wayside if it doesnt keep up?  Yes.  So be it.

Is that pretty much it?

Yes.  Stakeholders in their respective domains need to bear one thing in mind:

Dont wait up for Linden Labs to implement what you want.  Cooperate amongst yourselves, make it happen, and try to follow the great examples of the Linux and Apache Communities.

To the Viewer and OpenSim contributors, and to the Grid Operators, I would say
this:  band together, assume technical and policy leadership, and forge a course together.  In unity, you shall thrive.

When I was starting to learn PHP and MySQL in 2001, I wanted to tackle a project that meant something to me; a non-trivial web application…

So, being a photographer and programmer with some time on my hands, I decided to write a photo database.

The first iteration of FlexiPhoto had a hard-wired interface.  I rewrote it to support multiple UIs and languages.  Sometime in 2004-2005, I rewrote it again as a PHP5 app.

In 2006, I got distracted by Second Life :)  It was like going down a rabbit hole.  I got good at scripting in LSL [1].  I shelved my web projects.  What a mistake!  Although I have learned a lot of web tech in the last 5 years, I had my attention split by learning a lot about Second Life.  It’s nice to be good at it, but it doesn’t pay!  And, damn, I could use some money about now …

So I am back on the case with FlexiPhoto.  I have a virtual Ubuntu machine running at Slicehost, which I’ll use for the public-facing Demo, Wiki, and Download site.  I’m in the midst of dusting off FP (switching database layer from DB to MDB2, for one thing), and expect to have it available within a week.  It’s going to look clunky and very pre-AJAX, but then, I am a big fan of iteration.

A fun side note about Linux and running virtual machines at home: I still have my old 1U rack server, which hosted FlexiPhoto and other sites back in the day.  The damn thing is loud! It’s running an old version of Debian.  My task today is to mirror my Slicehost OS at home.  I’ve installed Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10) on my iMac, hosted via VirtualBox. That will give me synced development & public environments.  I also am able to dual boot my Samsung NC10 Netbook to Windows XP and Ubuntu.  I’ve got it covered, baby!

Geez, geeking out here big time.

Anyways, FlexiPhoto is a good portfolio piece of mine, and I am stoked to be working on it again.  It’s like an old friend :)

[1] …although, to this day, I really think Cory O should have finished LSL.  It even makes Tcl look good, and that’s saying a lot…

For many years, I didn’t believe in doing New Years Resolutions. I figured that it was a good idea to just resolve to change things as one went along. That’s still a good idea, but I do see the symbolism of the clean slate of a New Year.  Doubly so for a new decade.

And I also say Good Riddance to the decade of 2000-2009. There were lots of ups to it (I love you Kimmy, and you have filled our time together with so much love, energy, and grace — I want you in all of our decades to come :). There have also been way too many downs, and I’ve learned and just want to move on.

I’m blogging some of my resolutions, so that I put a little pressure on myself to get them done … I’m only listing things that I think I can really control. Stuff that involves other people or that gets a bit personal doesn’t get penned here.

Ze Resolutions

• Wake Up when the alarm goes off
  (hitting the snooze button on my iPod is way too convenient — I’m going to move it so that I have to get out of bed)
• Lose 20 pounds by June 1st
  (I refuse to go any bigger than 34×30 Levis 550’s — I am drawing my line in the sand!  task #1: buy a scale)
• Throw stuff out so that I dont need a storage area any longer

Tech & Creative Stuff

• Average one creative output per day (such as a picture, video, blog post, tweet)
• Make a list of all of the web sites I am registered with
  (and get rid of ones I am not likely to ever use again)
• Get daniel.org redone as a proper personal domain by February 1st (themed, pages for software and writings)
• actively use my lynda.com and safarionline.com accounts to keep learning (complete at least one video course per month, and read at least one tech book per month)
• Get slide scanner working and scan at least 50 slides per month
• learn final cut express and photoshop
• learn Ruby on Rails
• resurrect FlexiPhoto and implement ThereThen addresses so that photos can be aliased by time and location  — do this by March 1st.
• No more SL scripting unless there is a financial reason to do so
  (I feel like SL has been a huge detour — I am glad that I am very good LSL scripter and have done some innovative work, but I could have been using that time to do things that would have done more to pay the bills)

There are a ton of other things I could write as Resolutions, such as Get A Job or Travel To Europe, but anything that involves other people isn’t something I can completely control.   (I do think I will be working and traveling, but it’s not like 2000, where I had the resources to just grab tickets and friends and take off)

[update -- January 14, 2010]

So far, I am paying attention to some resolutions pretty well …

Kimmy – We’re not together any more.  I do wish her the best.

Waking up – Am doing much better at this!

Weight – have ordered a scale so that I know where I am at.  Lots of little tweaks, such as making 2 scrambled eggs instead of 3.

Creative output – yep!  Doing it.

Lynda.com and Safarionline – yep! Doing it.

Second Life – yep!  I have really pulled back and I dont script there any more.

The thought that sums up my mood lately is:

“I cant get the last few years back, but I can sure make the next few count.”

[update -- January 29, 2010]

Got a scale – doing daily weigh-ins, not gaining :)

Got a VPS (Virtual Private Server) via Slicehost.com and am configuring it

[update - June 1, 2010]

Averaging a creative output a day?  Close to it, if I count mix sessions I put up on Dropbox.

Slicehost working out well.  It hosts javajoint.com and my therethen* domains.

TravelTime is a Prim Animation Tool I have been writing in Second Life.  The gist of it is to be able to send a prim along a path, and have a lot of control over what happens at each point.  You can make a traveling slide show, or particle emitter, or even rez objects.  It’s pretty flexible.  See the video (I recommend full screen)   I’ll have more to say about TravelTime soon.