Macphisto Angelus

Though I don't go to OLG I still keep tabs on it. Sakai mentioned awhile back that he may possibly close off access to all viewers (SI included as a tool) except for the latest of the OpenLife viewers.

Looks like that may have finally happened.

Openlife: Simplifying Location to the Open Life Grid: No More Second Inventory in OL

Help needed, second inventory now not working - Openlife Grid - Openlife Forums - Discussions - General Chat

Second Inventory Forum • View topic - Help needed, keep getting error logging into openlifegrid

Quote from Vespona (Second Inventory admin) from the last link:
The closest to an official response by Sakai at this time is in this post:
0.6.9.1 Rolling Update Jan 20 - Openlife Grid - Openlife Forums - Openlife Official - Maintenance/Updates

Where he said the latest update to OLG:

So, permanent or temporary is anyone's guess. It has been warned for a time though so it is not new news to anyone that paid attention at meetings.

Just thought I would post it here for any OLGers who may be wondering why SI or even the LL or Hippo viewer is not connecting.


UPDATE: Response on the forums there from Sakai:

http://openlifegrid.com/Forums/tabid...2/Default.aspx

Now the question is if the OLGers will take this as "communication" since it was after the fact. Also he seems to kick the ball at Second Inventory to tell OLG how their product works. Maybe SI will be able to fix this?

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Lecktor Hannibal

No I do not take this as communication at all.
Dictation does come to mind however.

Macphisto Angelus

I was a little more open about my personal feelings on my blog, Leck.

Not being there anymore I held back a ton even there.

EDIT: Shit.. nvm. You already were there. I just saw it. lol

Eata

Well I can understand their explanation but if clients are destabilising your servers then you need to tighten up how your servers tolerate clients. Even if the other open source ones become perfect what happens when someone appears with a custom one, or worse a malicious one that spoofs being official?

Macphisto Angelus

Exactly. And if the license has to be followed that any viewer made from the LL code must be open source (or the code offered) how will they hold the grid to just one viewer?

Does the license allow some parts to be closed source (like little additions made)? If not then it should be no time at all before someone can spoof and make a work around.

If I am off here, someone tell me. I am not up on the licenses surrounding the viewer code.

Dancien Graves

*looks around*
*uninstalls his OL client*

Macphisto Angelus

Angelo with SI has evidently supplied OLG with what they needed to make SI work.

Angelo expects it to work within 24 hours. Sakai has put no time frame I have found but said:

So reading his comments does not make me think it is going to be a fast fix, despite Angelo (SI owner) fixing what he saw as a bug in SI that affected all of OpenSim.

To be honest the whole thing is confusing as hell. Lack of communication is the main reason as OpenLife is horrible at details and great at supplying comments after the fact.

Sakai was quick to send the angry mob with pitch forks over to SI saying it was SI's fault. There was also an implication that SI never contacted OpenLife about this... Angelo said up until yesterday nobody contacted him from OLG. Angelo actually took the iniative to contact Sakai (who was unavailable) and finally KLee got ahold of Angelo or Angelo, KLee and OLG got what they "needed".

And another point, they are trying hard to down play the Second Inventory block angle, but I say of course SI is going to be the center of attention. You can log in with another viewer to get in world (the official OpenLife one) but you can't import your creations from your standalone or SL so naturally that is going to be the focus.. DUH.

Joshua Nightshade

This is absolute crock of shit. The viewers have little to no bearing on the stability of the sims whatsoever. That is total, unadulterated bullshit.

You also don't suddenly decide to cut off access to a tool that people are actively utilizing and then nebulously dictate that the onus is on the the creator of that tool to justify why it should get access afterward. And put this out well after people started going wtf.

It would be a paltry thing, incidentally, for SI to get around whatever "blocks" Sakai put in on it. You can't block viewer types at all if someone wants to get theirs in, look at how the PN's client can still get access to SL even though it's banned.

But needing to "ban" viewers because of stability is an absolute lie. Older viewers will only cause the destabilization of one thing-- the person using them on their end.

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Khamon

It's his land and he can do whatever the hell he want to with it damn it!

Isn't that how it works? If it's good for parcel and estate owners, it extrapolates to grid owners, including FULL, as well.

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Boy Lane

Overall a pretty bad move. Kirstenlee did something similar with her OL viewer to make them exclusive for OLG, partly for reasons I can understand like removal of hardware tracking. The current S16 for SL now is a kind of by-product only. I can also partly understand Sakai's reasons to temporarily close out "other" viewers to stabilize their grid. I hope this is indeed only a temporary blockage and help to solve server side problems and open up OLG again soon. However it leaves a bitter taste and shows similarities to LL's behaviour. It certainly will do damage.

I've commented on Kirstenlee's blog before:

"After LL's latest business decisions I'm more than ever supporting anything "opensim". However I don't think it is a good move to close out grids, for whatever reason. That's against a unified approach of inter-connectability of virtual worlds. SL will not disappear and we should allow SL netizens to seamlessly tp between worlds, if they discover them."

and

"I wrote it here earlier that I don't think it is a good step to make exclusive grid viewers. That's against a vision of an open virtual world, regardless of what LL is doing. I fully support openlife/opensim, but I also strongly believe in interoperability between grids. Doesn't mean one has to follow LL's path, but we should not throw away what we have now, a common client for many virtual worlds."

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Macphisto Angelus

Sakai posted stats that he explains shows a large increase in stability since this decision (Bottom of the OP).

*quick addendum* I am not validating nor supporting those stats because I frankly have no clue since I am no longer in OpenLife or able to see the stats on his computer.

But, as far as opensim grids.. OpenSim decided around November that OLG had "forked" from the open source side of the project and no longer recognize it as an opensim grid.

Therefore, a closed environment with a proprietary viewer is not really a departure from opensim grids as far as the official opensim grid list goes. It also opens Second Inventory who says they support "opensim" grids to say OLG is not really something they have to support if they want to get technical.

Now, that is ALLLLL speculation and things I have just been hearing around so it can be disputed or supported by those who know way more then me if they come forward.

I do agree with you, Boy. I think by closing off people's choice in viewer and the ability to connect to OLG may bite them in the long run.

As to Second Inventory.. Angelo supplied whatever OLG needed a day or so back but Sakai had made a post that sounded like it may be more then that and more time then Angelo predicted (24 hours which has lapsed) before it is accessible on OLG again.

This was the last word from Sakai I have found (barring any chat room announcements he may have made since this):

*bolded is mine to show OLGs side as of the day before yesterday.

I am watching for updates for my own blog so I can announce the all clear.

Macphisto Angelus

Bah.. sorry. I see the last half of my post just repeated another I left yesterday.

That tells me it is bedtime.

Sweet dreams to this side of the world... good day to the other.

Boy Lane

Nini Mac

Regarding SL/Openlife/Opensim. It does not really matter. All of them are basically application servers running a different software. You could compare this with webservers, on runs apache, one IIS, another one Lighttpd.

And then you have your clients or viewers, IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, you name them. All of them are compatibe based on the HTTP protocol. All have one or another problem, but they work together with each other. I strongly believe the user should have the choice of which client to use in this web 2.0 environment we have here with virtual worlds. SL started to opensource their viewer and laid the foundation to all that happens now with all the grids.

There is really a chance to make them interoperable, that one day one could perhaps TP from one world into another. So far we have to choose where we want to logon with the grid selection on the start screen. But we can do this all with one and the same viewer. Making grids or viewers exclusive is a step into the wrong direction and counterproductive. Hopefully it is only temporary to fix issues, but Sakai's comment sounds different:
I myself will not install another viewer just to connect to OLG. I will simply stay away and many others I assume too. And thats sad given the potential OLG has.

Darien Caldwell

So the ppl who said the evil walled garden of SL needed to end, are now walling themselves off? Great move! (not)

Lecktor Hannibal

Seriously folks, there is more to this than pissed off viewer devs throwing a hissy fit.
More to come.

Captain Howdy

It is to protect the children and fight terrorism!

Boy Lane

There are actually I couple of things I would still post in the OLG forum, but people react simply aggressive without even reading or thinking. So I save my time there.

(http://openlifegrid.com/Forums/tabid...c/Default.aspx)

It's a development that goes on for some time, there was supposedly an internal plan from Sakai to block everything not OL-viewer in November, there were KLee's viewers that suddenly were unable to connect to anything else but OL simulators (her current S16 is just a by-product she made later as people kept asking) and now, what surprise, people are locked out in pretty much LL style. Confronted with facts that were only known and communicated behind the back of most. This comes in combination with unmature products on both, server and viewer side. Such as the inventory issue which 3rd party viewers like the often used Hippo viewer doesn't have. Or the from Sam reported loss of objects on server side.

But what bothers me most is the argument how to justify that, by saying all non-OL viewers are horribly buggy and crash the servers. Firstly this is not true, secondly it's entirely a server side issue, and thirdly, how come a software like SI that is confirmed to crash sims is allowed back within a couple of days if not hours. I could understand an explanation that OLG sims are not ready for prime time and therefore only a certain viewer/sim combination is currently allowed. For a certain timeframe in which issues are analysed and fixed. What happend with SI now however shows that this was never the plan.

Here comes the major point, it was never intended to be a lock out for stability issues, it was from the very beginning intended to make OLG exclusive to their own products. I would possibly also have accepted that arguments of providing new features and a better experience. But that was never communicated, people were just presented with the fact of closed doors. The news that yesterday came through the backdoor finally confirmed this. Ambitious plans to rewrite the viewer and eventually the server code. Not that it would be impossible, but it is an enormous project certainly Kirstenlee is unable to do on her own. Which now also clearly shows that Sakai has purely interests in his own closed world with own proprietary systems. Just like almost every other online game out there. Given the small user base and the fact that the majority of potential new residents that flocked in from SL are blocked now not a very promising outlook given powerful competition like SL, WOW and the like. Not to forget other grids that can interoperate in certain ways and be it only a simplified login into many from the same viewer in the moment.

In addition OLG has here currently a major weakness. KLee's viewer is GPLed and she is required to provide the exact same source code she uses to build the binaries. This means everybody can change, add, or take out code and use it in own projects. In fact it can be used to make 3rd party viewers connecting to OLG again. But more importantly right now this is a legal issue of violating the licensing as OLG does not comply to this, no viewer source is made available nor ever was. This licensing goes back to LL which effectively could take legal action against OLG now. I'm not riding on this as I respect KLee and the great work she does. But OLG should certainly close such loopholes.

To finish this off, long posting . I assume a majority of users in fact was using either the SL or another 3rd party viewer to connect to OLG. All of them were locked out suddenly, meaning the amount of users connecting to the grid perhaps shrunk by 50%. Sakai states stability increased tremendously, but he failed to provide actual numbers of users on the grid. It may simply be the much lower overall usage that put lesser load on the grid and made it appearing more stable. In addition to what Sam wrote, that likely support tickets may have been ignored to make the numbers shine. We don't know.

I stay put for now but I will remove OLG support from the next viewer builds. Henri will likely do the same. No point in having an unfunctional OLG still listed. Sad again as CV was the first 3rd party viewer that natively supported OLG logins. So let's see what will be the next...

(x-post from Mac travels the metaverse: OpenLife not open for Second Inventory and alternate viewers!)

Joshua Nightshade

I can understand why Sakai would want to use his own viewer. There's nothing wrong with that.

But it's shady as hell to go about that decision with false issues of stability being the key reason why it's getting locked down. He should have just said from the get-go "We only want to support the one viewer we're paying for, you can use others, but we're not responsible for supporting them."

Not to mention, again, it's all but impossible for the code to ban viewers, and viewers to ban grids. When the code is open all over for everything, you just can't block people that way.

Sakai is making shit up, this is a complete fabrication. Why he would choose to enact this policy, thus depriving his users a necessary and legitimate tool, I have no idea. Why he would choose to make a bizarre story about it as a justification is further weird.

But if you ever wanted more evidence that he's not trustworthy, here you go.

I suspect that failure to reinstitute SI will impact his grid negatively. The users still involved ought to pressure him on telling the truth about this pronouncement, instead of making up excuses, or using the nebulous "There's more to this story!"

Dancien Graves

The OLG Forums are starting to read like Free Republic.

Joshua Nightshade

They usually do. I've never seen such cult-esque indoctrination before, but I suppose when you advertise yourself as the Messiah to the Linden's abuse, that's the clientele you're going to get.

Most people seem to be waking up on the pathological bullshit, but there's still a core contingency where Sakai can do no wrong.

I'm not interested in those people having something they love destroyed, but Sakai is bogus, and he's adversely affecting Opensim because of his stories.

Joshua Nightshade

I've also never heard of SI crashing sims before. It doesn't even crash them on SL, where I've used it extensively across homesteads and void sims.

Boy Lane

It was a statement from Sankai that Second Inventory was crashing sims, supposedly by uploading too much / too fast.

Even if this is true it is still purely a server side issue. Such behaviour of SI could be compared to a DoS situation by overloading the server. And such problem can only be fixed on serverside.

It's pointless to continue to dicuss in this direction as this was just an pathetic attempt for an excuse. OLG has a different agenda to become the super high tech uber world and gives a s**t on it's users. That was confirmed in their forum.

Joshua Nightshade

SI already throttles uploads for SL's sake. I've never had issues with it crashing sims.

Maybe OLG is running SQLite?

Lecktor Hannibal

SI is already in communication with Kirstenlee and will be re-enabled for use in OLG very soon.

Joshua Nightshade

There was absolutely no justifiable reason for it to be disabled to begin with.