[Opensim-dev] The Future of Open Simulator(?) (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Michael Emory Cerquoni]

One good analogy for OpenSimulator is comparing it to Apache Web Server.
There are 10s of 1000's of web masters who do not have the foggiest idea
what Apache Web Server is, and If OpenSimulator is Apache, then Second Life
(or Second Life Style) Simulators are WordPress.  While there are 10's if
not 100's of 1000's of people who manage WordPress websites, many of them
have no idea what Apache web server is or how to set it up. The Goal of
OpenSimulator is to go beyond just a single style of simulator (IE Second
Life) and allow for people to mix and match different modules to suit their
own needs, very much Like WordPress or other CMS style websites that run
inside of an Apache Web Server.  I Would say the target audience for
OpenSimulator developers is people looking to build applications on top of
that architecture, much like a fresh wordpress installation when you
initially set it up, the website does absolutely nothing until you choose
how you want to configure it, make it look and how your users will interact
with that end product.

There are many layers to making OpenSimulator work, most everyone I talk to
has no problem downloading and setting up the OpenSimulator software and
understanding the configuration files, where most people fumble is with the
networking side of things.  OpenSimulator is very complex software and the
average user of OpenSimulator will just simply not have the skills required
to setup and use a Second Life style simulator properly at this point
without a ton of hand holding, while there are certainly things we can do
to make OpenSimulator easier to use, there are ultimately going to be
things we can not make easy enough for everyone to just understand.

My own personal opinion is that the target audience for OpenSimulator is
going to be Server Admin/Resellers / Software Developers / Hard Core
Tinkerers for the foreseeable future, and those who are maintaining
packages like Divas Distro or OSgrid that makes running OpenSimulator out
of the box for the average person much easier will maintain varying
audiences for their particular packages or grids.

On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 4:16 PM, Dahlia Trimble <dahliatrimble at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I'll take a stab at this.
>
> This mailing list is targeted primarily at developers (hence the name). I
> believe the target "customer" if you will is... developers and system
> administrators. There are developers who also provide end-user solutions
> but these solutions are generally not part of the OpenSimulator project.
> Such end-user solutions could be public or private grids or single-user
> solutions such as Sim on a Stick. For the most part, however, the
> collaborative activities of developers under the OpenSimulator umbrella are
> geared towards developing a common framework and the SL emulation
> application of this framework.
>
> Anyone is free to offer suggestions and indeed these suggestions should be
> encouraged. On some occasions activity related to some suggestions can
> become disruptive and unproductive but for the most part it's ok. Offering
> suggestions is by no means any guarantee that they will be developed, in
> fact most are likely ignored. On some occasions suggestions are deemed of
> sufficient value to inspire development but this is the exception, not the
> norm. The best way to get one's suggestions implemented is to either
> implement them using one's own resources or pay a developer to do it.
>
> As for documentation, help here is most welcome! :) Probably the best way
> would be to become a user and/or developer and set up a editing account on
> our wiki. Having a presence on our primafy IRC channels (irc.freenode.net
> #opensim and #opensim-dev) is a good way to get questions answered for
> developing expertise or creating documentation.
>
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 10:46 AM, Drew Hart <drewehart at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello, all.  I have been following this email thread for a long, long,
>> long time.  I am a psychologist, not a developer, though my day job is
>> managing technology for a law firm - go figure that one out.  Anyway, who
>> is your audience.  I write documentation for lawyers on how to use Word,
>> etc., and would love to help write documentation but I lack developer
>> knowledge to do that.  If someone has a solution, perhaps a mentor or go-to
>> person for questions, I am more than happy to dedicate a lot of time to
>> documentation.  But back to my original point.  Who are you building this
>> for?  It seems to me that much of the discussion implies that only
>> developers will be able to use Open Simulator.  Novices, like me, won't.
>> Earlier a house analogy was used.  Well, I understand that Open Simulator
>> is only meant to be the frame, but without default extras, without Diva
>> Distros, etc., why would any non-developer get involved?  I can't use Open
>> Simulator as it is too advanced for me.  But yet I am a customer of the
>> service, if you will.  Anyway, just my thoughts.  This is part of the
>> basics. Define your audience.  Define your workers, contributors.  Define
>> your future goals based on those things...etc.  Thanks,
>>
>> Drew
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 1:16 PM, Diva Canto <diva at metaverseink.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Given the enormous investment made in SL viewers, as well as in the
>>> server-side OpenSimulator plugins that support them, the default
>>> application behavior of the OpenSimulator framework is going to be SL-ish
>>> in the foreseeable future. There will hopefully be several improvements
>>> to the SL viewers made by the viewer developers with collaboration from us,
>>> but these will still be SL viewers. Maybe we can evolve them beyond
>>> recognition, but they will still be SL viewers.
>>>
>>> Going beyond the default SL-ish application, someone needs to develop 3d
>>> clients that are completely different. The development of 3d clients, even
>>> SL viewers, is not part of the OpenSimulator project itself; it may come
>>> from teams that include some of the OpenSimulator core developers, but
>>> those are different teams and different projects. It's 3rd-party
>>> development, as far as the framework is concerned. (just like Diva Wifi is
>>> 3rd party development, even though I'm a core developer)
>>>
>>> The most the OpenSimulator framework can, and will, do is to facilitate
>>> sharing of those alternative 3d applications. So if you're developing a Web
>>> client for OpenSimulator, the necessary server-side modules that you will
>>> certainly need to develop should be easily installable in binary form by
>>> other people running OpenSimulator. This can be made on your side so that
>>> people need to pay you, if that's what it takes to get you motivated. Ask
>>> me about it in the IRC if you want to know more about this, but here's the
>>> gist of it:
>>> http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Developing_OpenSim_Addins
>>>
>>> I have been quietly experimenting with paid licenses for these
>>> OpenSimulator addons; I don't plan to get rich with this, but I'm exploring
>>> the territory from a *technical* point of view, so that others can
>>> eventually make money with their own ideas for what virtual worlds should
>>> look like.
>>>
>>> It is very unlikely that the OpenSimulator project will absorb those
>>> modules either as dlls or as part of the source code (again, it's a
>>> framework, it should be as small as possible), but we certainly encourage
>>> their development by providing a mechanism that connects providers and
>>> consumers, for both paid and free modules, open source or not.
>>>
>>> On 8/17/2015 2:51 AM, M.E. Verhagen wrote:
>>>
>>> Well the compatibility is in these days just that there are still
>>> viewers having the ability to login into opensims as well as in SL. You
>>> cannot teleport from opensim to SL, send im's, share inventory or something
>>> else. As I see it the compatibly with SL is just wishful thinking of an
>>> opensource opensim wanting to be compatible with a more and more closed
>>> source SL.
>>> So that implicit means the core developers will have to do diverge and
>>> lay out the things they want to develop. They will longer be able to say
>>> let's reverse engineer that cool new features LL has done. That will lead
>>> to a roadmap ... I hope.
>>>
>>> An yes it is just a prediction of how I think opensim will look in 5
>>> years time. For at least one thing is sure, opensim will still be around in
>>> 5 years time :)
>>>
>>> 2015-08-17 2:39 GMT+02:00 Shaun T. Erickson <ste at smxy.org>:
>>>
>>>> I see very little of that happening (except, maybe, the forks). All
>>>> these (non-core-dev) people writing to the list, with their ideas of a road
>>>> map and where it should go, seem to forget that unless it tickles the
>>>> fancy/curiosity of a core developer, or helps their bottom line,
>>>> financially, or is submitted by someone else willing to support it and the
>>>> core devs think it's useful and won't conflict with what they want to do,
>>>> it isn't happening. All you're doing is engaging in wishful thinking.
>>>>
>>>> This is not a product, no matter how we might wish it was. It's a
>>>> research project, for some, and the core of something that others make
>>>> money from. Aside from bug fixes (which they've always been happy to take,
>>>> if done properly), if it doesn't move either of those goals forward, it's
>>>> unlikely to happen.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not a developer (I'm a Systems Administrator), and I most certainly
>>>> do not speak for any of the developers. They may disagree with my
>>>> assessment, and I hope they will not take offense at what I've said. My
>>>> comments are my own, based on hanging out with them for the past six years,
>>>> watching, learning and enjoying the use of what they have produced (which
>>>> is, to be fair, impressive, to say the least). I might wish a lot of things
>>>> were different, but, you know what - they don't work for me (which is good,
>>>> because I know myself well enough to know I'd be a terrible boss). I look
>>>> forward to whatever else they come up with, but I don't for a minute think
>>>> that anyone can tell them what they should or ought to be doing (well, you
>>>> can, but that doesn't mean they'll listen).
>>>>
>>>> I do think there's two direct ways you can influence things though - 1)
>>>> write 3rd party modules to add functionality you want or that
>>>> changes/overrides existing behavior. As long as you stick to the core
>>>> framework, so that your module will work with core OpenSim, you have free
>>>> reign to do whatever you want, and 2) as some have done, pay someone to
>>>> implement/fix what you want.
>>>>
>>>> I suppose there is a third way - fork it and do whatever you and other
>>>> like-minded folks want to. But this has been tried before, with only a
>>>> modicum of success. It *can* be done, but it's a tough row to hoe.
>>>>
>>>> -ste
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 8/16/15 7:44 PM, M.E. Verhagen wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In 5 years time I see ...
>>>>>  opensim having it's own viewers
>>>>> There will be no compatibility left with SL
>>>>> It will have compatibility with other virtual worlds :)
>>>>> The core will be relative bug free
>>>>> There will be a decent road map
>>>>> Opensim will be the apache of the virtual worlds.
>>>>> There will be many forks of opensim.
>>>>> There will be providers offering opensim with a one click install
>>>>> Gadgets like the hmd devices and 3D cams will change the virtual
>>>>> landscape forever. Opensim will adopt these changes and thrive on it.
>>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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-- 
Michael Emory Cerquoni
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