[Opensim-dev] Micropayment

Wed Nov 14 16:59:05 UTC 2007

One of the main problems with money in opensim, is the whole thing of having the Region servers involved, in any way, in transactions. Which is how the current system is set up. 

That is okay, if you always know that you can trust a region server; ie you have a closed grid where every region server on that grid is trusted. This is how LL can use the current system. As they control the servers, they "know"  how each region server will behave. But with a open grid where other people can connect their region servers, then we can no longer trust a region, like the current system expects. Anyone, could have changed some code on their server to do fake transactions or various other things. 

So the general opinion is that money should be something like a direct client to transaction server approach, with messages saying the transaction has been completed sent to the region server if required. And that will need changes to the client.

So at least at this point, currency is not part of the opensim project. I generally, don't think it will ever really be part of the core, as different uses could have their own requirements. And some uses, just won't require any in-world currency. So its likely that such systems will be add-ons/modules. But even for those its really to early. 

Aldon Hynes <Aldon.Hynes at Orient-Lodge.com> wrote:       Ezekiel, Sean,

    I do hope I'm not being dismissed as a 'marketing  guy'.  I've been trying to keep the discussion of how finances are handled  in OpenSim on a technical level.  I initially brought it up in terms of how  we handle authentication as a response to a suggestion of dealing with anonymous  users.  As we looked more closely at it, I tried to focus particularly on  how money is handle in scripts since that seems to be the real key do commerce  in Second Life and hence is likely to be key in OpenSim as  well.

    When I connect to my OpenSim grid, I see that I have 1000  dollars.  I've looked at the database schema, and I don't see where that is  stored.  It would seem as if it ought to be in the users table.   However, I don't know enough about the entity relationships to know if it would  be better off in one of the other folders.  In addition, I'm not well  enough acquainted with the code, or the data abstraction layer at this point, to  have a good view of how to approach modifying the schema.

    I also scanned through the code, but I couldn't find the  section of code where the number of dollars that a user has is  communicated back and forth between the server to the  client.

    All of that said, I think Ezekiel is right.  I've  worked on too many projects in the past were an important part of functionality  is not considered early on and it becomes a mess trying to shoehorn that  functionality in later.  In my mind, the currency component is one of those  pieces of functionality I would hate to see shoehorned in at the last  minute.

    So, I do hope that we maintain a good threat about the  currency and not simply dismiss it because of potential non-technical  issues.  

 Aldon
    -----Original Message-----
From:    opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de    [mailto:opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de]On Behalf Of    ezekiel at daelindor.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 5:03    AM
To: opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
Subject: Re:    [Opensim-dev] Micropayment

   Sean,

   you are absolutely right. The technical    discussion should not be drowned by enhancement    requests from the 'marketing guys'.

   However, while you dev guys are working hard to    get the core up to speed, someone must plan    ahead to add the features that make this whole venture a    success. 

   If we discuss the money and usability stuff in a    separate thread, how do we make sure that we    get heard and you don't end up with an excellent implementation of an SL    clone - minus the hipe ?

   Ezekiel

   >I think that in world Money is one of those    places where the OpenSim
>grid runners are going to need to provide code    appropriate to their
>situation.  Running a sim with no money is    easy.  Money opens up all
>sorts of other non technical issues:    privacy laws, taxes, refunds, etc.

   >It would be nice to avoid drowning out the    technical conversation on
>list with lots of money    pontificating.

   >That being said, patches are always welcomed.    :)

   >Sean  Dague
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