[Opensim-users] Announcement of inventory tool (MyInventory), mostly of interest to grid operators/grid nauts

[Snowcrash Short]

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 9:00 PM, Melanie <melanie at t-data.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 15/11/2012 19:33, Snowcrash Short wrote:
> > Closed source is just another word for security through obscurity, which
> we
> > - hopefully - all know really doesn't provide any security. [...]
>
> Closed source means that it's not trivially possible to modify the
> tool to assume the open policy for all grids and then put the
> modified tool in the wild for all and sundry to abuse.
> Most existing tools are either hacking tools sold through dubious
> channels, difficult to use or lack important features. There is to
> this day no free, widely available, open source, easy to use content
> ripping tool. Your project is bound to become that tool if it is
> released as open source.
>
There is no if about it, the code is ready for release, currently I'm
working on a windows installer and documentation. Initially the code will
be released under AGPL, once the code base is more mature I intend to
change the licence to BSD.

I have decided to wait for two weeks after my initial announcement, because
I wanted to give grid operators a heads up before releasing the code.

>
> > Atleast it will be very simple for the administrator to determine if
> assets
> > are being duplicated, especially if MyInventory is being used in a mode
> > where it accesses the asset service directly.
>
> No closed grid will ever be able to provide direct asset service
> connections because these also allow to extract any and all content,
> in full quality and without restrictions. This would include script
> sources - an unacceptable situation.
>
> Not really, it would be almost trivial to implement an asset service which
restricted access to assets, at least in a non hyper-grid scenario. The
only worry would be rouge simulators which could be attached to an existing
grid.

On a similar note it would almost as easy to implement a fully distributed
asset server, which retrieved assets from the users local asset store, "My
Suitcase" is clearly an example that such a scheme is not only feasible but
almost fully implemented in the existing code base. The only question is
whether grid operators are willing to surrender control of assets, and
leave those assets to be the responsibility of the visiting users. This
distributed asset store, where asset are fetched from individual users'
asset stores would very likely - and counter intuitively - be the one that
offered the greatest amount of protection against asset theft compared to a
hypergrid enabled grids asset store.
/Snowcrash



> - Melanie
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