[Opensim-dev] Thoughts....

[Michael Wright]

Without getting myself involved in a DRM discussion, as each side have their views and neither are likely to change them. I do want to say that in general, any large implementation of drm/ IP protection is most likely outside the scope of the opensim project.

 We will support the means for the SL type permissions to be honored, but anyone running opensim could disable that. I don't think this project has any plans to get involved in a arms race and start implementing a full DRM system and again if we did then anyone could disable it. 

Everyone has to remember that opensim isn't meant to be a finished platform to meet everyones needs. Its meant to be a base platform, that other people extend so it meets their needs. Everyone has different requirements of a virtual worlds server. We aren't trying to make a clone of SL, we want to allow anyone who is interested in extending opensim so that it is a clone of SL, if that is what they want. But we aren't going to be doing all the work to make it a full clone. We are a application platform. So in regards to DRM, we should provide the means that if someone else wants to implement any DRM, they can do. But we shouldn't do the implementing of it. 

This isn't to say that protecting IP isn't important to us, its just saying that expecting opensim to include that is mis-understanding the project aims. We want opensim to be used for so many different things. A lot of them nothing like a SL social grid. But we can't implement everything that could be needed by all these different applications. So we take the view that we are a base platform, that other people should extend. If a grid wants to have a DRM system, so it can offer that to its content providers, then that grid should be implementing one. Or working together with other grids to implement one. 

Maybe in the future, opensim might include some DRM system as a option people can use, or extend. But that is a long way off, we need to get the base done first. 

I'm sure someone will mis-understand this and take it as me saying that opensim doesn't care about IP protection, but that is not what I'm saying. I'm saying its outside the scope of opensim. Opensim is not a grid, its not any single installed instance of opensim. Opensim is purely a software platform. That overs take and make it do what they want it to do.

The Burnman <theburnman at gmail.com> wrote: On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 11:37 PM, Sean Heavy <seanheavy at gmail.com> wrote:
  Ummm, wait.... what was the question again?... How do we take a 512x512
 tga shirt texture and protect it from being stolen? I guess I'm missing
 the point here.

Yup, I would say you are.  :)

Intellectual Property Rights for the content which the users of the metaverse cannot simply be disregarded because the platform may or may not be open-source.  I don't remember ever mentioning tga shirt textures, and I don't think there is really any effective way to protect textures anyway.  Scripts would be a much better example.
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