LWN: Comments on "Interview with Second Life's Cory Ondrejka"

Interview with Second Life's Cory Ondrejka

bronson — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 21:19:21 +0000

It's a meaningless question. Most popular open source projects have been open source right from the start, immediately disqualifying them. That leaves VERY few contenders to choose from, probably numbered somewhere in the tens. I think that's what nix meant when he said "razor thin".

It's like saying, "how many all-star quarterbacks went to Notre Dame and drove a LeSabre while there?" The question eradicates most of its candidates so it's futile to try to draw a meaningful general conclusion from its results. (my apologies to Joe Montana if he drove a crappy Buick...)

That said, there's one very obvious example that's been all over the news lately. It's easily the most popular language for business and it has a small triangle named Duke as its mascot. I have a few others in mind but it would take some work for me to make sure. And, since the question is meaningless, I shan't take the time.

Does that make sense?

Is a GPL client relevant

alext — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:28:08 +0000

I haven't looked into it but the question in my mind is do you have to sign up to a particular terms of use when you go on to use Second Life. If so do those t&cs mean they can change things later to lock out any client software that they don't agree with or want. Hence the total and ultimate control and resides there and having a GPL'ed tool to use it with could become meaningless once they have had enough input from that group of volunteers to keep them ahead of any emerging opposition.

The perfect option for the competition comes then from paying for volunteer work with a credit in the company so if it ever amounts to anything of value you are obliged to pay them back. I've seen too many past vague offers quietly forgotten when the owner gets married and a quiet voice in their ear tells them to keep it all for themselves (that's just an example of one such risk).

Interview with Second Life's Cory Ondrejka

renox — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 09:17:43 +0000

>>there's never been a product that was in the dominant position that then
>>open sourced. Open source is usually used by folk who are either trying to
>>gain market share, or projects that are very early stage
>is rubbish unless interpreted very narrowly, and is decidedly questionable even then.

Uh? Could you give examples?
I certainly don't remember any other product which was open sourced when it was in a dominant position.

Interview with Second Life's Cory Ondrejka

nix — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 10:22:14 +0000

I agere with most of what's being said here, but ye gods there's some hyperbole.

there's never been a product that was in the dominant position that then open sourced. Open source is usually used by folk who are either trying to gain market share, or projects that are very early stage

is rubbish unless interpreted very narrowly, and is decidedly questionable even then.

There's no question that the Second Life community is the most creative, capable, intelligent, community ever targeted on one project in history.

is frankly laughable. People spent centuries on e.g. European cathedrals, and you certainly can't describe them as not creative works, or their builders as stupid. It's got a big userbase for a software product, sure, but `in history' is larger than that.

And as for Subversion: isn't something that will end up with this many developers a perfect match for a wide-scale distributed version control system, more gittish than subversiony?