Open Source Second Life Viewers: The Sideways Survey

Early last year, the Lindens open sourced their viewer code, the software that accesses the SL grid, and since then, near a dozen alternate versions of the viewer have sprouted up, including Katharine Berry's web-based AjaxLife, and the Electric Sheep's OnRez.  There's an Able Edition that allows you to block out ads and other eyesores, a Dale Glass edition designed to better combat griefers, and perhaps most curiously, as Danton Sideways explains, a viewer custom-made for BDSM aficionados: "[C]odename 'RestrainedLife' ... [with] simple scripts to make attached objects un-detachable, prevent chat and otherwise restrain one's consenting BDSM partner."  Read the rest of Danton's vast survey of open source alternatives here.

Comments

[Daman Tenk]

I have two versions of Nicholaz's viewer myself. Eye Candy for Windlight shots and Old School for regular playing.

Best thing IMO to have happened to SL. I can't imagine running the official viewer anymore.

[Patchouli Woollahra]

I'm not one to prejudge, but as a general rule of thumb, I tend to shut down any support requests made of me the moment someone mentions they're using the RestrainedLife or any client that actively disables the freedoms granted by the official Second Life viewer that I am used to, if it seems apparent that the restraints in use are causing the problems that they are experiencing.

The SL viewer hasn't diverged much in the way it handles even after a year of opensourcing, so I can still do unofficial support with practically any SL official viewer, the OnRez viewer or Dale Glass' viewer. (I find that people get Dale's either for the enhanced griefer sniffing abilities, the embedded TrustNet scanner or the flashy stereoscopic 3D rendering, so it makes sense for me to learn how to work with it.)

But if you want to opt to actively cause yourself problems by denying certain abilities found in the standard SL viewer, I don't see why I have to work with you on fixing those issues.

Just my five L$ worth of opinion.

[Dedric Mauriac]

The problem with the open source viewers is that they are not open-development. Many open source projects have a team of people developing the product from all over the world. Linden Lab still keeps the development efforts closed and no longer integrate any contributed bug fixes through JIRA. Although just about every viewer for SL is open source and made available, the closed development efforts is the thing that holds back the effort of open source the most. Even the other versions of viewers have a hard time synchronizing their code with the new SL Viewers because they have to "re-fix" everything that the Lindens ignored on JIRA.