[Opensim-users] Cry Havok:On new World Notes has me worried.

[Justin Clark-Casey]

I think things depend on how the feature is integrated into the viewer and how the Havok sublicense clause

“Sublicensee must require the Third Party Viewer to connect only to servers owned or operated by the Company [Linden Lab].”

is interpreted.

If LL allow a TPV to develop both an LL-only Havok version and an OpenSim/other non-Havok version then I don't think 
it's too bad.  This requires that the new code be modular and not absolutely core to the viewer experience in some way. 
  At the moment I believe it only touches optional pathfinding but this could change over time.

If either of these conditions is false then I think TPV developers are forced to make a choice - use Havok and develop 
for LL only or abandon LL and develop only for OpenSimulator and similar platforms.

And to be honest, I'm not sure how the Havok sublicense could be enforced.  Once a Havok binary is out in the wild it 
doesn't matter who you whack - the code isn't going to disappear.  Anybody could glue a viewer together with the Havok 
binary and use it how they like, or publish a patchset which moves any LL-only restrictions from an existing open-source 
viewer.

Then again, Havok do have a free (Intel sponsored) physics download (albeit win32 only) which can even be used in 
commercial games with a value of 10 USD or less.  I hear that this doesn't contain pathfinding functionality (?) but 
this doesn't seem a million miles away from allowing a similar package to be used in open-source software

On 15/04/12 14:27, InuYasha Meiji wrote:
> I just noticed this article, and wanted to know what is really means to those of us who want to see opensim keep going
> and hope for newer updated and continued progress on new clients that support opensim.
>
>
> Cry Havok: New Linden Rules May Forbid 3rd Party Viewer
> Development for Use on Non-Lab Servers (i.e. OpenSim)
>
> http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2012/04/cry-havok-new-linden-guidelines-third-party-developers.html#comments
>
> Is this a show stopper??
>
> InuYasha
>
>


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