[Opensim-dev] Global identifiers

Wed Sep 1 18:11:09 UTC 2010

I see several converging efforts here. The original OGP work by IBM and
Linden Lab only allowed a "teleport" to occur, however it was not the same
as a teleport which may occur on either normal SL or normal OpenSim. This
"teleport", was overseen by a central authority which was a closed source
"Administrative Domain" implementation on one of the LL test grids which
essentially created a guest presence bearing the same avatar name on a
OpenSim region located outside of LL, while terminating the equivalent
presence on the LL test grid. Since the presence created on OpenSim shared
little in common with the presence on the LL region other than avatar name,
the user avatar on OpenSim looked like a default avatar and had a default
inventory containing only guest items. It's unclear to me if this was
intentional by design or simply a yet-to-be-designed feature that may have
been marketed by LL with implications of content security for existing
Second Life content.

I remember many people at the time expressed concern about LL's closed
source Administrative Domain implementation and related OGP discussions
about open implementations being a necessary prerequisite for a standard.
There were a few attempts at open implementations outside of LL but I'm not
aware of any of them being complete and in use by the time the OGP efforts
were rebranded as VWRAP and the charter for the standardization efforts
changed significantly. In the meantime LL's demonstration implementation
appeared to no longer be developed and stopped working a few months after
being opened for beta participation. Later OGP and VWRAP discussions
included the possibility of shared inventory and appearance but I've not
seen any implementation work which may support it other than SimianGrid
which has been developed outside of LL and only loosely coupled with the
VWRAP efforts, and was started long after LL work on OGP waned.

Hypergrid took another approach. There was no overseeing authority or "agent
domain" other than a OpenSim region operator enabling the service, and the
presence shared between hypergrid regions was much more like a traditional
presence and allowed avatar appearance and user inventory to accompany the
avatar when visiting foreign regions. My impression was that the users
involved found hypergrid to be a much more user-friendly experience,
possibly because of the shared appearance and inventory.

My personal impression was that LL had little business incentive at the to
bring OGP or VWRAP to fruition but I continued to participate and follow
because I was seeing an effort towards publishing open protocols and I felt
these would be of value to the OpenSim community. On the other hand the
OpenSim community did have an incentive to implement Hypergrid and have a
means of inter-operating independent of regards to LL business interests. I
suspect part of the aversion towards participation in OGP or VWRAP by many
OpenSim community members may have been due to the controlling influence LL
had assumed in these groups. Given the unfortunate circumstance of the LL
layoffs, and with the willingness demonstrated by a few ex-LL employees
towards continuing work on these standards, perhaps now bygones can be
bygones and the VWRAP and Hypergrid efforts can better benefit from each
other.

just my $0.02
-dahlia

On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 6:56 AM, Mike Dickson <mike.dickson at hp.com> wrote:

>  On 08/31/2010 10:14 PM, Justin Clark-Casey wrote:
>
>> On 31/08/10 18:56, diva at metaverseink.com wrote:
>>
>>>  plugin. If you run into a missing hook, just let me know.
>>>
>>> Bottom line wrt interop, two major things happened: 1) the hypergrid
>>> 1.5, a system-to-system (S2S) architecture with the trust/security model
>>> explained below; and 2) the clean up of the framework, allowing anyone
>>> to experiment with interop.
>>>
>> Yeah, I'd really like to +1 this.  If people want to experiment with
>> alternative solutions to Hypergrid on top of
>> OpenSim we're very happy to make or accept patches for the required
>> modularity.  And if a core OpenSim developer
>> supports and maintains an alternative solution then there's no reason that
>> it couldn't be part of the OpenSim itself,
>> provided that it's sufficiently general.  OGP code for instance, is still
>> present in OpenSim.
>>
> I think that would be a great step forward for OpenSim.  Ideally you could
> segment HyperGrid to the side and implement any cross grid stuff externally.
>  IMO distributed grids will largely decompose to a set of distributed
> services and a web of trust across them that defines the model (completely
> open to walled garden).
>
> More on OGP below.
>
>  Like Diva, I also think that good standards very often only come out of
>> working implementations.  Hence, though I've
>> been following the VWRAP lists (and OGP before that) I haven't been
>> participating since there's been a lot of
>> hard-to-follow discussion without much real-world consequence.  And as a
>> working developer I don't have the luxury of
>> sitting on my tush and contemplating the Platonic world of future
>> standards all day ;) (joking).
>>
> This is really the issue that has always bothered me.  There's been an
> assertion that working code was more important than "standards".  Truth is,
> standards are hard work, its more fun to hack code.  And there *was* an
> existing implementation. LL and IBM demonstrated some limited cross grid
> functionality (hence the OGP work).  And asserting politics was an issue is
> just lame.  Linden Labs put forward a *working* system as a starting point
> along with some jointly developed code demonstrating limited
> interoperability. The code was even available to the OpenSim team.  So if
> there was a "political agenda" it was on both sides.  LL wanting to preserve
> some compatibility with their existing system (but willing to consider
> changes) and on the HyperGrid side a desire to explore and research ideas.
>
> What still remains is the hard work of creating a standard that defines
> interoperability.  It would be great to see that progress, along with the
> code.
>
> Mike
>
>
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