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Second Life on GitHub

community.secondlife.com

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Re: Second Life on GitHub

#51

Post by Animats »

morelisp wrote: post #49
jaChEWAg wrote: post #46

I wonder why Meta didn't fork Second Life to use for their 3D world rather than re-invent the wheel and in the end build a bad product.

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 parser for the new type. And, so, there have been no new message types since about 2016.

Most game systems use

    [msg_type msg_length variable_length_message]
so you can introduce new messages and not break old receivers.

Re: Second Life on GitHub

#52

Post by _Algernon_ »

solardev wrote: post #23
_Algernon_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some good old Torvalds roasting going on in that thread.

Yikes. I didn't know the dude was so prickly. Glad I'm not a contributor.

I do find them fun to read, but yeah being the target of one must be rough. Though it probably contributes to the quality of the Linux kernel.

Re: Second Life on GitHub

#53

Post by kmeisthax »

seydor wrote: post #29
Animats wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are terms which apply when connecting to Second Life servers. Those terms don't apply if you use the viewer to connect to non Second Life servers, such as Open Simulator. For Open Simulator, you have to deal with a somewhat grouchy lead developer who does not suffer fools gladly. (He's helpful if you don't waste his time. He ran a test region server for me and looked at what I was sending to get something to in…

AFAIK the lack of viewer developers is the main reason why opensimulator has stalled. Even the server is supported by very few developers who still contribute, incuding Ubit. The project seems to suffer from high drama for decades.

Last I remember, they didn't want people working on both viewer and OpenSim to avoid accusations of copying from a GPL viewer into the permissively licensed OpenSim. This, obviously, makes implementing new non-Linden features nigh impossible.

Of course, this policy changed a few months after I stopped playing with OpenSim. I think RealExtend had something to do with it. I remember playing around with their viewer and being impressed, but never doing much else with it.

Re: Second Life on GitHub

#54

Post by Turing_Machine »

Animats wrote: post #18
seydor wrote: post #5

But afaik the second life viewer is not exactly open source, but instead only selected teams can participate. EDIT: the viewer code is LGPL , but forked Third party viewers are subject to particular terms https://secondlife.com/corporate/third-party-viewers

There are terms which apply when connecting to Second Life servers. Those terms don't apply if you use the viewer to connect to non Second Life servers, such as Open Simulator. For Open Simulator, you have to deal with a somewhat grouchy lead developer who does not suffer fools gladly. (He's helpful if you don't waste his time. He ran a test region server for me and looked at what I was sending to get something to in…

Is Open Simulator back in active development? The last time I looked at it there hadn't been a release for some years, if I'm remembering right.

Re: Second Life on GitHub

#55

Post by Turing_Machine »

morelisp wrote: post #49
jaChEWAg wrote: post #46

I wonder why Meta didn't fork Second Life to use for their 3D world rather than re-invent the wheel and in the end build a bad product.

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...)

> Presumably Cory thought he could do better the second time around.

I remember a post from him where he said something like "Note to self: next time spend more than a week(end) on the scripting language". :-)

Re: Second Life on GitHub

#57

Post by Turing_Machine »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #54
Animats wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are terms which apply when connecting to Second Life servers. Those terms don't apply if you use the viewer to connect to non Second Life servers, such as Open Simulator. For Open Simulator, you have to deal with a somewhat grouchy lead developer who does not suffer fools gladly. (He's helpful if you don't waste his time. He ran a test region server for me and looked at what I was sending to get something to in…

Is Open Simulator back in active development? The last time I looked at it there hadn't been a release for some years, if I'm remembering right.

To answer my own question, yes it does appear to be in semi-active development. At least there's a release from this year.

Re: Second Life on GitHub

#58

Post by SquareWheel »

chungy wrote: post #45
SquareWheel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. A lot of folks, including myself, don't subscribe to the OSI's definition of open-source because it just doesn't match the common usage. Open-source takes many forms, and source available is just one example.

Considering the term originated with them, it's fair to say they get to dictate what it means.

Ah, things would be simpler indeed if words could be dictated.
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