[Opensim-users] Safe use of OpenSim

[John Sheridan]

Justin Clark-Casey wrote:
> John Sheridan wrote:
>   
>> Sorry - message got bounced back due to size, had to chop the body...
>>
>> John Sheridan wrote:
>>     
>>> Thank you Charles, Teravus, Adam, and Justin for your input. 
>>>
>>> At the moment, we do not have any paying customers and its likely 
>>> going to be some time before we're able to accommodate such 
>>> creatures.  Mainly, our plan for now is to simply provide a free 
>>> access grid to various genre of roleplayers and then further down the 
>>> road once both OpenSim and my add-ons (mostly web and unix stuff) are 
>>> ready enough (as well after we have some environments operational) we 
>>> were planning on subsidizing the server costs by offering land rentals 
>>> in each environment for players to use as their in-character homes. 
>>> Another possibility after the fact may be to begin renting clusters of 
>>> simulators for others to add in their own roleplay environments.  As 
>>> far as in-world assets are concerned, we're modeling everything after 
>>> the Arcadia Asylum approach where our in-world currency will have no 
>>> real world value and everything should be available preferably with 
>>> full permissions for no fee.  In all for now we're not expecting to 
>>> nor are we seeking to generate a profit.  However in the unlikely 
>>> event that we do wind up generating a profit we would likely be 
>>> accepting resumes for a developer! :)
>>>
>>> As for riding the bleeding edge (and gosh that sounds gruesome!) going 
>>> by everyone's input I'd think for now since we're still building it 
>>> sounds relatively safe for us to continue that route provided we keep 
>>> in step with the backups and pay attention to warnings on the mailing 
>>> list.  As well stick to the recommended releases that Charles alluded 
>>> to.  But, in future once we start seeing heavy loads and possibly 
>>> start pulling in some kind of income to pay for all of this we may 
>>> need to step back a bit and only keep one cluster on the bleeding edge 
>>> for testing (probably our gateway / entry point Ellis) while the 
>>> others would remain on the stable releases.  Although, be that as it 
>>> may we've not had to submit many bug reports recently - GOOD JOB GANG! :)
>>>       
>
> Sounds very sensible, John, and the grid sounds like a lot of fun :).
>
> Maybe the blessing in disguise from all this is that better 'best practices' for managing grids and an improved OpenSim 
> release process will emerge.
>   

Yikes!  Sorry for taking so long to respond.  I was so busy with work 
stuff that this is the first chance I've had to check my email.  And I 
totally agree, as with everything in life be it good or bad in the end 
at least some good and constructive can come from it. :)
>   
>>> As for attending Office Hours, yes I'll admit it I'm a night dweller! 
>>> But for the sake of contributing I'll do my best to crawl out of bed 
>>> and drag my pajama ridden zombified self over to OSGrid at 3:00 in the 
>>> afternoon.  Now that I realize that its Tuesday at 3:00 pm my time and 
>>> not Monday at 11:00 am pacific. 
>>>       
>
> What kind of job do you do that let's you sleep in all day? :)
>   
As I mentioned in my last email I write small scale database / windows 
applications, but to give a bit more info I work for the student lab at 
the local community college.  For the past 7 years I've been writing and 
maintaining a piece of software called Lab Manager which is a student 
lab management system that tracks lab use, appointments, help requests, 
inventory / resource use, employee / student records, and payroll / 
scheduling along with statistical reporting for metrics based on all of 
those. 

At the moment however, the entire system is a pretty big mess and is all 
but held together with band aids.  The original sections were written by 
my predecessor using a series of overly complicated spreadsheets and 
badly designed Access databases augmented with VBA macros while the 
sections I've written were done in VB6 and VB.net.  Meanwhile since 
Office 2007 was installed half of the system has taken a big hit 
stability wise meanwhile the sections I've written face total 
annihilation compatibility wise once  IT decides to upgrade everyone to 
either Vista or more likely Windows 7. 

Luckily though, I do have a plan in place to basically rebuild the 
entire system into a more stable platform that has less built in 
obsolescence.  After my experiences with OpenSim and the bit of 
puttering around I've done inside the code base I've realized that C# as 
a replacement for VB (or possibly Mono if I can get WinForms to work in 
DLL form without having to install anything) along with SQLite to 
replace MS Access look to be a match made in heaven for our purposes.  
As for releasing the project, I've been gently dropping hints to the lab 
heads about the possibility of open sourcing the whole thing once the 
new code base and structure have been established and then possibly 
turning it into a team effort similar to how you guys operate only 
involving student labs at other institutions who are likely to have 
developers or at least development capable people on staff. 

As for my strange and almost vampire like schedule, lets just say that 
they're pretty flexible with my hours at the lab.  Just as long as I 
keep showing them steady results they don't really mind if I put in some 
late night hours from home.  :)
> I look forward to seeing you at the meetings too. There's always been talk of setting up an extra Office Hours meeting 
> at time more suitable for people such as yourself.  This hasn't happened yet but maybe it will if enough demand comes about.
>
>   
>>> Thank you all once again...  Live long and prosper!  \\//
>>>
>>>       
>
> Indeed \\//
>
>   
>>>  - John / Orion
>>>
>>>       
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>>
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>
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