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

[Diva Canto]

On 11/19/2012 10:21 AM, Diva Canto wrote:
> What you want to do, the inventory download and upload, can be done in 
> a way that doesn't upset anyone.

After I wrote this, I realized that maybe the reason why you did your 
tool the way you did it is because you don't know how to do it in any 
other way. So let me explain what's the "right" way of doing it. 
("right" meaning that you won't upset anyone; on the contrary, you'll be 
thanked)

You should develop a robust-bound service that packs and unpacks 
inventory, and that can accomodate a variety of export policies. The 
tool that runs in people's computers would then interact with that piece 
of server-side code directly. It's not hard to do.

Doing it this way, the people who run these services have choices. For 
example, Fleep would likely run that service in FleepGrid using its most 
permissive policy (all items). Melanie would run that service in 
Avination, maybe, using its most strict policy (only items created by 
the user). Some other commercial grids might not run the service at all. 
When we finally have the export flag, that can also be taken into 
consideration. Etc.

The way you are doing it, you give grid operators no choice, because 
you're exploiting the viewer channel using libomv hacks. The lack of 
choice upsets people. You're right that you didn't create libomv, and 
that what you did can, indeed, be done by others. I am on the camp of 
those who think that using the viewer channel for accessing grid 
resources should be done only and exactly by person-driven viewers, and 
that therefore grids should refuse service to ALL client bots, even 
those that are embedded in the viewers -- bots are not hard to detect, 
especially if they want to do things as fast as they must. Don't be 
surprised if you see bot-kicking opensim extensions coming soon, 
rendering your tool (and others') useless.

OpenSim is open source and has a great plugin architecture; practically 
everything you can envisioning doing can be done by extending the 
server-side with useful features, which can then be used or not by 
whoever runs these worlds.

Diva