[Opensim-dev] OpenSim's direction after Linden cutting support, and the possibility of an official OpenSim viewer

[R.Gunther]

Not sure, but maby good to have this topic on osgrid forum to ?
The biggest problem with makeing own viewer. There are not enough devs 
with the right skills.
Thats the biggest problem. the amount of people that want and can spend 
time for a special opensim viewer.

On 2012-12-11 00:08, Mircea Kitsune wrote:
> Hey everyone. I've been away from OpenSim for a while but got back. 
> Since last time I've been around, I read about Linden's decision to 
> cut OpenSim support from their viewer due to some crazy licenses with 
> their physics engine. The rights and wrongs have been discussed and 
> are not the point of this email. But this decision means that in some 
> senses, OpenSim will become completely separate from Linden's SL, and 
> some fundamental things might change. I wanted both to ask what 
> exactly is going to happen, but also post my own suggestion. Obviously 
> I'm not someone who can say what's good and bad, but personally this 
> is what I strongly believe OpenSim should do and go for.
>
> The way I see things, OpenSim has primarily been a server-side for 
> Second Life during its existence. Even if its purpose is a general 
> virtual worlds platform, SL was the only usable viewer in practice. 
> Now that LL cut its support, it's in the situation of having no exact 
> client to be used with. There are many third-party viewers that will 
> continue supporting OpenSim, but IMHO they can't be considered a 
> reliable source in the long term. I assume most of them have their own 
> developers which take decisions independently from the OpenSim team. 
> If one of those viewers dies for instance, it's up to the user to go 
> looking for another one that's still under development. Apart from the 
> fact that people have to hunt for a viewer, this situation also kept 
> OpenSim from being able to make changes that would require viewer 
> modifications as well.
>
> My opinion is that OpenSim won't get far if it relies on random viewer 
> forks to be used with at this point. We are not a clear standard 
> technology, unlike web browsers for instance where you can use Apache 
> to host and FireFox to browse, both unrelated and a variety of choices 
> available for each. This is not to say OpenSim should be unusable with 
> viewers unrelated to SL, since that would go against its purpose. But 
> the SL viewer is a very large and complex thing, and there will surely 
> never be anyone making a client from scratch which will implement all 
> of its features, look as good, be as fast, as bug free, etc. The 
> building and prim editing tools, the terrain editor, the avatar and 
> mesh system, the rendering features, the GUI... it's unlikely anyone 
> will properly re-write all that from zero when the SL viewer exists 
> and works fine.
>
> This is why I believe we need our own official viewer, developed by 
> and with the OpenSim server, and based on one of the Second Life 
> viewers. Apart from the fact that people will know they don't depend 
> on someone else to make them a viewer, it would allow client + server 
> changes to be done for the first time, rather than having to stay 
> within the SL viewer's limits. If that doesn't happen, I don't believe 
> we'll ever become a better virtual worlds platform outside of SL's 
> shadow. I remember the days of RealXtend (I heard it's dead now) which 
> took the SL viewer in one hand, OpenSim in another, and created its 
> very own project which was completely amazing for those days (SL now 
> has mesh support and better graphics so it makes RealXtend less 
> special at this day). My personal opinion is that it's time OpenSim 
> does something similar.
>
> If it was me, I'd say grab the latest SL viewer without the 
> restrictive Havoc library and make OpenSim viewer from that. If Linden 
> adds a nice feature to theirs which we can copy over, sure thing, but 
> otherwise it can go its own separate way. On the other hand, it would 
> be a good aim to allow previous SL viewers to still connect to 
> OpenSim, though they wouldn't recognize some of its specific features 
> then. I know OS and SL and under two different licenses, but that 
> doesn't make it wrong to distribute both on the same website and as 
> part of the same project.
>
> What does the core team of OpenSim think about this? Are there any 
> plans or will to go in this direction? Or does anyone believe that 
> instead we should continue providing support for SL's features and 
> have OpenSim users find their own clients like until now? I believe 
> this is an important question, and would like to know what to expect 
> in the future. Personally I really hope something in this direction 
> will be decided, but I'm not one to know best.
>
>
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