[Opensim-dev] OGPX and IETF-ing things

[Melanie]

I agree on  getting it working first. I also consider OGP and HG2 
mutually exclusive and don't foresee a region wanting to have both.

Melanie

Cristina Videira Lopes wrote:
> Inifinity sent me a very nice private message, which, because it was  
> private, I'm not going to forward here. But the bottom line of his  
> nice message could use some public discussion. Essentially Infinity  
> is suggesting that we move towards getting the Hypergrid work into  
> the IETF, through this newly created OGPX working group.
> 
> Personally, I think this is all premature. IETF-ing the Hypergrid is  
> premature for different reasons than IETF-ing OGP is premature. The  
> Hypergrid is not really ready for prime time until we have the  
> Hypergrid2 in place, with its security model to protect users from  
> malicious simulators. OGP is not ready for prime time because no one  
> has seen it yet, at least not any reasonably complete implementation  
> of it.
> 
> The right thing to do, I think, is to first have implementations of  
> both OGP and the Hypergrid2 in OpenSim. Once that is in place, we can  
> all see the similarities and differences, and try to standardize the  
> similar pieces. Alternatively, we can try to work together towards  
> one single interop protocol, but honestly I think that's not going to  
> happen, simply because there is space for many (not just 2, but 3 or 4)
> 
> What I suspect will happen is that OGP and the Hypergrid will have  
> several pieces that are very much in sync, with small details that  
> are different, and then they will have a few really important pieces  
> that are substantially different. Things like posting/retrieving  
> agents to/from regions, for example, we already converged to using  
> REST; inventory access, we already converged to using capability  
> URLs, etc. Small details such as the format of the data on the wire  
> are different, but that doesn't really matter as long as we agree  
> that the Content-type can be set to different things.
> 
> The thing that will be substantially different is the issue of  
> authority: what component has authority to do what. In OGP regions  
> are still the ones doing agent transfers, therefore implying a trust  
> relation between interacting grids that must be established in some  
> non-technical manner (i.e. the receiving region trusts that the  
> sending region is not stealing the user's identity). In the  
> Hypergrid, agent transfers between non-trusting regions are done on  
> the client side, so that the identity of the user can always be  
> verified, there is no region in the middle acting on behalf of anyone.
> 
> So, that's the main difference, as far as I understand OGP.
> 
> The Hypergrid2 is in place through a proof-of-concept prototype  
> client (Grider) and a couple of small but horrible hacks in OpenSim.  
> OGP implementations don't exist yet, or they are not available to us  
> which is the same. I think there's a lot of work to do before we go  
> and propose any of this as standards.
> 
> But I thought I'd bring this up for discussion. Maybe other people  
> aren't as strict on working implementations as I am.
> 
> Crista
> 
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