[Opensim-dev] Global identifiers

[Justin Clark-Casey]

On 01/09/10 14:56, Mike Dickson wrote:
>
> 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.

I certainly agree that standards are hard work, which is why creating them without reference to any working examples 
seems an almost impossible task to me.  But that's just my own opinion which is not burdened by decades of experience :)

I also have to echo what Dahlia said earlier.  OGP was extremely limited, afaik being nothing beyond transporting an 
avatar name to a 'default' avatar on another grid.  There was no other identity or appearance preservation, let alone 
access to inventory - all extremely tough problems to address in any scalable or secure manner.

Dahlia's phrase "OpenSim community" rather than "OpenSim team" illuminates very well the structures in play here.  In 
terms of the core group, I wouldn't say that we were a team as such but more a community of people with a reasonably 
common set of interests who agree to abide by certain norms and a few rules.  There was never really an "OpenSim team" 
to respond to OGP proposals.  Rather, some people were interested in it and implemented the required bits and pieces and 
other people were ambivalent or more interested in alternative architectures.

-- 
Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
http://justincc.org
http://twitter.com/justincc