101–110 of 126 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you define what exactly open source means in that case?
source is open as "open to read, download, and run" (and even modify as soon as you're doing it privately)?
Maybe you're thinking of "looky loo" software or something? But if you can't change it and if you're not allowed to share your changes then it is NOT open.
It's been open source since 2007. Linden Lab recently moved the sources from Bitbucket to Github. The Firestorm viewer sources are at " https://vcs.firestormviewer.org/ ". It's a major fork. Technical documentation of the client-server protocol is at " https://wiki.secondlife.com/ " It's out of date, but it helps. The real progress is that the build procedure has been cleaned up. It used to require ancient versions o…
You might want to take a look at the Matrix.org approach to this: https://thirdroom.io/
Fun fact: Apparently Matrix (the protocol itself) was made after a brainstorm session on how to create an improved and decentralized / federated Second Life game :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is a "firestorm viewer"? Is a "viewer" a Second Life term for "game client"? And is Firestorm a particular FOSS client for the game? If so, that's really interesting... like you can access the same shared Second Life world but through a custom client? Does it reuse existing game assets or you free to reinterpret character models, textures, effects, etc.?
A viewer is like a web browser for a 3D world. It's like a game client, but it doesn't have any game logic or content. As with a web browser, all content is downloaded from the servers. Firestorm is a third-party viewer with a sizable development organization. See "firestormviewer.org". Quick overview: Second Life / Open Simulator worlds are divided into "regions". Each region is 256m on a side on Second Life, and ca…
It's been open source since 2007. Linden Lab recently moved the sources from Bitbucket to Github. The Firestorm viewer sources are at " https://vcs.firestormviewer.org/ ". It's a major fork. Technical documentation of the client-server protocol is at " https://wiki.secondlife.com/ " It's out of date, but it helps. The real progress is that the build procedure has been cleaned up. It used to require ancient versions o…
> That really is the metaverse - a federated system of 3D worlds. It's sluggish, because most of the people running regions don't have enough server power. Think Mastodon for 3D. You might want to take a look at the Matrix.org approach to this: https://thirdroom.io/ Fun fact: Apparently Matrix (the protocol itself) was made after a brainstorm session on how to create an improved and decentralized / federated Second L…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know about the clients, but I've worked with a few ex-LL people and heard nobody really likes what the protocol became, and also lots of core parts of the LSL execution model they regret. Presumably Cory thought he could do better the second time around. (And maybe he did! I'm not sure Facebook's metaverse problems are technical ones...)
One tiny design error had huge implications. The UDP messages are multiple messages per packet with the form [msg_type variable_length_message] There is no message length in the message. So, to parse the message stream, the receiver must know how to parse each message type in detail, and can't skip message types it doesn't understand. Thus, no new message types can be sent until everything that receives them has a pa…
Presumably they could have a negotiation process that newer clients invoke to upgrade the message stream to a new format, and support both in parallel on the backend until an insignificant number of sessions were using the old version.
It's been open source since 2007. Linden Lab recently moved the sources from Bitbucket to Github. The Firestorm viewer sources are at " https://vcs.firestormviewer.org/ ". It's a major fork. Technical documentation of the client-server protocol is at " https://wiki.secondlife.com/ " It's out of date, but it helps. The real progress is that the build procedure has been cleaned up. It used to require ancient versions o…
> OSGrid, which is a third party grid of simulators. That really is the metaverse - a federated system of 3D worlds. I had no idea this existed, and have been looking for it [conceptually] for years. Thanks!
At the time most people thought the open ecosystem of interconnected endpoints was destined to dominate the global information storage, because smtp had outcompeted proprietary messaging systems, and the url was looking to displace localized hypertext systems and the open web looked unstoppable.
That was before the reactionary trend where gmail overtook the smtp momentum and actors such as Facebook expanded their walled gardens by absorbing or straight up acquiring forums and smaller players. Facebook wasn't unique in their business model of locking up as much of the world's information as possible into their platform, but they were certainly the most successful.
That made it the more telling when Facebook made their pivot into assisted reality public, starting with naming their walled garden the metaverse, a term taken right out of the most visionary futurists of yesteryear! Let's see if the time has come for the pendulum to swing back. It'd certainly be most fitting if the term itself gave new life to the open interconnected ecosystems to show us again what's possible with permissionless innovation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And they can be -that's why we have dictionaries. Terms DO have meanings whether contrarians and the argumentative want to acknowledge those meanings or not.
Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. The meaning of terms outside of specific fields like law is based on consensus, not authority. Merriam-Webster doesn't own the English language, and neither does OSI.
> Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
Citations for this sentence (many more in the full article):
- https://books.google.com/books?id=04jG7TTLujoC&pg=PA4#v=onep...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, open source means a specific thing. You're perhaps thinking of "source available", which means "you can read the source but have to comply to a bunch of stuff"
No, open source is a vague term with many different definitions. The open source foundation does not control the english language.
The Open Source Initiative is one of many groups that define open source software as including the right to not only view the source code but also to modify and redistribute it. Others include
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
> of software : having the source code freely available for possible modification and redistribution
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source
New Oxford American Dictionary:
> denoting software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified
https://subscription.packtpub.com/book/web-development/97817...
And the authors of all of the academic literature cited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
> In 2022, the renewed general interest in the Metaverse translated into significant media opportunities for Second Life. Over 21,000 articles and other stories included Second Life in 2022 – nearly 5 times greater than the amount of media coverage we received in 2021. Out of all the metaverse projects being worked on, SL coming out on top would be an incredible development
While I love me some SL, it's a sad sad statement about the current state of tech world that SL is the best we can do...did we really peak in 2002?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well you can just redefine the meaning of arbitrary words, but the result is that nobody understands your attempts at communication. I personally prefer to be effective at communication, so I don't just use words to mean something different than what everyone else thinks.
> I personally prefer to be effective at communication, so I don't just use words to mean something different than what everyone else thinks. And “what everyone else thinks” is mostly different from the OSI definition.
Sorry, I meant: "everyone else except 3 or 4 people on ycombinator"