don't forget the MOOs

don't forget the MOOs

Posted Feb 16, 2006 6:18 UTC (Thu) by rknop (guest, #66)
In reply to: don't forget the MOOs by joey
Parent article: Toward a free metaverse

Sure, you can build free on top of non-free, but the freer the better.

A free Second Life client that ran on Linux without having to resort to recent enough video cards that binary kernel modules are necessary would be nice.

Much nicer would be the "metaverse" described in the article, though-- where you can move between servers, where you can be part of the same "world" as other people without having to build all of your creations on some officially blessed server, but can choose your server, or run your own server hooked into the metaverse.

I don't think we even have that kind of "cyberspace alternate world" even in text, never mind with 3d virtual graphics. Yeah, there are probably lots of free M** type thingies, which you can download and set up servers for, but each one set up is a self-contained world. Ideally, when you leave one "room" or "continent" or whatever and go to the next, you move to the next server... and you can hook new servers into the "world" much as you hook any old Internet server into the internet, and have people be able to come into and interact in the new server space you've built.

The client and servers that did this would need to be free, and would need to come with a well-defined protocol... so that other clients and servers, in the future, could be written that interacted with the first.

Some year this will probably happen. Unless the telephone companies with their highly controlled internet, or the tech and media companies with their intellectual property fears, all manage to lock down the Internet into something where they can deliver "content" to "consumers", rather than something where people are individuals and can creatively be sources as well as purveyors of information.

-Rob

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