[Opensim-dev] Thoughts....

[Terry Ford]

Hello all,
Please forgive me if this sounds a bit noobish.
I have recently become interested in the work here concerning the 
OpenSim Project and as a longtime SL user I am intrigued at the 
possibilities this project suggests.
With that said, I have a few questions to ask the group and would 
appreciate your thoughts on these issues.

How hard would it be to make the VoiceChat, TextChat, friends list, and 
inventory all be handled on the client's side?

If these tasks were handled on the client side then it would seem 
possible to:

1. Allow a user to carry inventory with them from world to world. 
Obviously some worlds may not be compatible with the user's specific 
inventory item, in this case the user would be unable to use the item in 
that particular world.

2. Allow users to monitor friends in other worlds via the friends list 
and chat to a friend via voice or text in one world while they(the user) 
is in yet another.

The "lack of currency" issue always pops up during chats about OpenSim 
and I can't think of an easy way to implement this without following 
some sort of standard such as PayPal, moneybookers, etc.  Many people 
don't like using those services while others don't mind at all.

My thoughts on this are that most users of the OpenSim based grids are 
already SL users, with this in mind.... wouldn't it be possible to use 
some sort of background process to monitor and use the user's Second 
Life money balance until another option is available? 
Meaning that the balance in the viewer would be retrieved from the 
user's Second Life account and whenever a user needs to pay another user 
then the actual transaction would be handled by a background process 
that communicates with SL.  Obviously this would cause problems if one 
of the users were not an SL user, hence maybe there could be a 
configuration utility in the client to allow the user to pay via SL, 
PayPal, Moneybookers, etc.
With PayPal's IPN notification it would seem possible to implement their 
service.

Maybe I'm out of place by trying to "SPARK" conversation on these 
issues, but it would seem that if a user could do these things it would 
make the option of using an OpenSim world or grid just as appealing as 
using the second life grid.

Please don't flame me, as I stated I am somewhat of an OpenSim noob and 
I just wanted to hear some thoughts on these issues.

Thanks,
-Terry