[Opensim-dev] [Proposal] Expanded Grid Info Availability

[Haravikk]

> On 2 Aug 2017, at 00:49, Mike Lorrey <bntholdings at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> At the IMA's Commerce Working Group we are discussing developing a
> blockchain standard, if not an actual blockchain, that would be useful for
> making a lot of user-centric data (like UUIDs, user content licenses, money
> etc) independent of any one grid, decentralized so that users can
> communicate with and do commerce with other users.
> In my teams work at http://galacticsystems.net, we have found difficulty
> finding consistency across the hypergrid in issues like email modules,
> http-request functionality, not to mention the perrenial teleportation and
> IM issues. We feel that grids should focus on hosting worlds, and let users
> control their identities, commerce, and interactions, secured
> cryptographically by blockchain technologies.
> One example of the problems inherent with having user registration on a per
> grid basis is in commerce:
> If I am shopping on a gloebit or podex mall somewhere on the hypergrid, I
> can buy things from vendors for myself. If I want to gift content to
> people, the vendor must be specifically coded to allow that, and unless the
> customer knows the UUID of the recipient of their gift out on the
> hypergrid, unless the recipient is a resident of the grid that vendor is
> located on, there is no way for the vendor to use a script function to
> request the UUID of that avatar across the hypergrid.

Wow, that certainly would be a much more substantial system! Probably a bit out-of-scope for this particular topic, but very interesting that someone's looking into it!

> I would propose therefore, to make commerce work better, for all sorts of
> uses, there be a function osGetHGName2Key( string user.name, string
> gridURI);  The script would query via Robust the indicated grid for the
> UUID of the indicated user name, and return it to the script.
> Some might say "but thats a privacy issue". Sorry, no it isn't. If I can tp
> to a grid on the hypergrid, look up their profile in that grid and see
> their UUID key on their profile dialog, the UUID is not a private key. If I
> can create an account on a grid without providing any relevant information
> about myself, log in, and look up a name and get their key off their
> profile, it is likewise, not a privacy issue, even if it is a closed grid.

This does seem like it'd be useful; since it would need access to a grid URI, I assume then that you agree with the idea of making that information more widely available? As I say, currently this information is only available to scripts if the OSSL threat level is set to Low or higher; I'm hoping the relevant functions for getting that info can instead be downgraded to at most VeryLow, but ideally I'd like to see them be available as standard (i.e- no threat level at all, available even if other OSSL functions are disabled).

Of course it's not something I just want to go and change unilaterally; it'd be great to hear from anyone that knows why the threat level on functions like osGetAvatarHomeURI() and osGetGridHomeURI() was set so high in the first place! My suspicion that it was just being overly cautious, in which case a downgrade should be fine.