Second Life software to be released

[Posted January 8, 2007 by corbet]

Linden Labs has announced that it has released the code for its "viewer" application as open source. "The Second Life Viewer is used by subscribers or 'Residents' to access the virtual world's Grid. Freely-downloadable from the Second Life website, the Viewer software enables Residents to control their in-world avatars, interact with each other via Instant Message, create content, buy and sell objects, access multimedia content and to navigate around the virtual environment." One has to dig a bit, but the associated FAQ states that the GPL is being used, "as well as a separate license for entities that wish to reserve the ability to create proprietary extensions for the viewer." (Thanks to Francesco Lovergine).

Second Life software to be released

Posted Jan 8, 2007 16:54 UTC (Mon) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] (8 responses)

This is one of the awesomeest things ever.

(Hyperbole is allowed on internet postings, really.)

I feel better now, because just the other day I was ranting on the SL forums about how I use open source, not proprietary, 3d drivers because it's taking the long view. However, at the back of my mind was, "Rob, this SL client you're using the drivers with is closed source."

It's nice when the world, instead of me, resolves my cognitive dissonance.

(But it's still true that the vast majority of SL Linux users are using proprietary, usually NVidia, 3d drivers, and that's not a good thing long term. Also, in my admittedly anecdotal experience, many of them don't seem to share my attitude that open source drivers would be philosophically preferable, even if the proprietary drivers are faster at the moment. I can see making a tradeoff and using proprietary drivers because you have to, but it's alarming to me when too many Linux users think that the proprietary 3d drivers are a full solution to the problem of having 3d support in Linux.

All that begin said, I get pretty good (definitely acceptable) performance on a 3.2GHz PIV with a Radeon 9200 Pro using the open source drivers that come by default with Debian Testing and the Debian package of the 2.6.18 kernel. Try it!)

-Rob

Second Life software to be released

Posted Jan 8, 2007 19:05 UTC (Mon) by beoba (guest, #16942) [Link]

How is nouveau doing nowadays?

Second Life software to be released

Posted Jan 8, 2007 20:00 UTC (Mon) by svena (guest, #20177) [Link]

Interesting, what kind of performance do you get?

I have a Radeon 9100 and with the DRI drivers I only get around 10-12 fps in Second Life.

Second Life software to be released

Posted Jan 8, 2007 23:26 UTC (Mon) by louie (guest, #3285) [Link] (5 responses)

You're still putting your data (and presumably lots of time) into a very proprietary server over a proprietary, undocumented protocol. But yeah, I understand. No easy answer to the problem (keeping yourself in the late 90s not really being an option.)

Second Life software to be released

Posted Jan 9, 2007 1:04 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] (4 responses)

Oh, I know.

On the other hand --- I'm less concerned about proprietary servers than I am about proprietary clients. (Notice that I didn't say that I'm *not* concerned about proprietary servers....) At least this way, everything I'm running on *my* Linux box can be open source.

And, to be honest, it's not yet really practical to use a fully open-source client, as some of the libraries it needs are proprietary (unless you're willing to live without sound), and also because the performance of some Open source libraries (e.g. OpenJPEG) isn't yet up to snuff. But, there is now hope...! (Remember when OpenOffice or Mozilla were first free? Not really usable. Blender was missing a few things when first free. Etc.)

The proprietary undocumented protocol is scary, of course. But I think it's LL's intention eventually to make that protocol documented and open.

-Rob

Second Life software to be released

Posted Jan 9, 2007 1:44 UTC (Tue) by robla (guest, #424) [Link] (1 responses)

Hi Rob, I'm a Linden Lab employee (this one) and I can speak to this issue.

The protocol is non-standard, but as of today, not really "proprietary". We've even got a running start on the documentation. We're in the process of cleaning up the protocol, making it more sensible. As far as standardization goes, as someone who has some experience at this sort of thing, I can tell you they aren't all what they're cracked up to be, but to the extent that it makes sense to standardize, we will.

I'm a pretty hardcore free software/open source advocate; anybody who has worked with me knows I'm willing to swim upstream of the corporate culture to push free software issues. Not that swimming upstream has been an issue so far at Linden Lab. I'm really happy to be working at here, this is quite a different culture than the normal company, with an abundance of clue-enabled people, and it's still small enough that personal influence matters a lot. So, I'm hoping you all give us a chance. Oh, and if you know your stuff, give us a resume.

Second Life software to be released

Posted Jan 9, 2007 6:50 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

Heh -- I'm still hoping I get tenure, but if that doesn't happen, well, maybe in a year I send a resume. :)

In any event, my take on Linden matches what you say-- I like the Philosophy, I like SL, and I like the way it seems to be going.

-Rob

Second Life software to be released

Posted Jan 9, 2007 1:54 UTC (Tue) by icculus (guest, #4942) [Link] (1 responses)

Every time the client required you to download an update to connect to the grid, it was because the protocol (aka "the template") had changed. I don't imagine they'll stop changing the protocol as necessary, since both the existing clients and servers expect this to change frequently, and document it in an external data file. Presuming they keep publishing source updates, you can't ever really be locked out by a protocol change...but it's not intended to be like, say, HTTP, which is a tightly documented standard.

I suspect there will be a lot of comments like: "hey, I built this client yesterday and it's already incompatible!" at least for a few weeks, as initial open sourcing issues and exploits get shaken out.

--ryan.

Protocol changes

Posted Jan 10, 2007 9:50 UTC (Wed) by robla (guest, #424) [Link]

Yes, protocol changes are going to continue to be a pain in the butt for a while, but once the changes documented at this blog post settle in, it'll be better: http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/21/a-big-change-youll-...

We also want to get everything documented, and stabilize the pieces it makes sense to stabilize:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Protocol