From a Second Life build to an OpenSim installation (courtesy Mr. Zaius)
Late last week, leading OpenSimulator developer Adam Frisby (known in SL as Adam Zaius) announced he's been creating a revolutionary tool: as yet unnamed, it "allows you to export a OpenSim Archive from a Second Life Region". In other words, it enables you to copy and save Second Life content you own, and import it into an OpenSim server. (As above, with an old moonbase Zaius owns in Second Life.) Anticipating fears of another CopyBot scare, Adam reports he won't release the code publicly as yet, "although I might release a binary version containing creator and permission checks similar to Second Inventory." (As blogged here.) Copying objects embedded with scripts may even be theoretically possible.
This is groundbreaking for at least a couple reasons: since OpenSimulator operation is so much cheaper than paying for SL land, this tool would enable cost-effective archiving of Second Life content, off the SL grid -- sort of a Wayback Machine of the metaverse, as Adam notes. (As we saw only last week, great SL content often disappears because the owner finds it too expensive or irksome to maintain in-world.) Which suggests a second reason why this may become so important: a means for SL content creators to quickly extend their creativity and commercial products into OpenSim-based worlds.
This makes transferring sims as one build easier, but making backups have been possible ever since we have second inventory. You just needed to do some extra work to have complete transfer of a sim.
Posted by: Frans Charming | Monday, June 15, 2009 at 04:40 PM
I think he would be insane to release the code. Sell the application. It is sure to be a goldmine in the coming months rofl.
And if he does release the code it will instantly be converted to steal sims regardless of content owners. There are some other issues Adam might want to look into before releasing the code. It might be useful to study the DMCA sections involving DRM whilst keeping in mind the SL permissions system constitutes DRM. Something Linden Lab needs to do themselves in respect to cloners and second inventory which are items within LL's sphere of control.
Posted by: Ann Otoole | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 01:07 AM
Ironically, I'm working on the reverse tool: building in OpenSim (where land is cheap and a new island-wide sandbox is set up in a minute) and importing the content in Second Life. The purpose is for content developers to be able to cheaply build everything on OpenSim first — a process that, depending on the project, might take weeks, months of years of costly tier payments to Linden Lab, in advance to having it publicly seen on the grid — and quickly launch it on Second Life.
But yes, I've used a similar approach to Adam Zaius to backup whole sims too. There is some use for this approach too. At my company, for instance, we're contractually obliged to provide a six month guarantee on all content licensed to our clients. Since Linden Lab does not allow backups to be done, we have to do it on our own, and copying everything to OpenSim's OAR format for easy import if needed is one of the most simplest options. In our case, we have no issues with "content ownership" and "permissions": our content is 100% originally developed by us and fully licensed (in RL) to the client. I can imagine that things might get tricky for others, though.
And yes, it's technically possible to save an object's inventory too, at least things like scripts, landmarks, and clothes. Objects inside objects is a bit more tricky :)
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 04:13 AM
Second Inventory sadly doesn't back up *locations*. You have to pick it all up into your inventory and, at a later stage, deploy all items, one by one... I also have never managed to use Second Inventory to do large-scale backups, since at least the version I've got only backs up (when it does) one item at the time. Saving 15,000 prims that way is... a nightmare (granted, if they're several linksets, that will take less time, but a regular 15,000-prim-sim will hae "thousands of linksets").
Also, it's a very clunky tool :) It works, but... barely ;)
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 04:16 AM
Gwyneth,
I'm looking for an official, semi-official or at least reliable confirm from Linden Lab that building in OpenSim and importing the content in Second Life is legit and it doesn't infringe on Second Life Tos & CS in any way.
Could you please help with that?
By the way - Hamlet & everyone - don't miss Meerkat viewer, that I successfully used a few days ago to export to my Opensim region something I created in Second Life:
Posted by: Opensource Obscure | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 05:23 AM
There are several viewers that allow importing and exporting, heck there is a JIRA for a patch that enables object import/export, whats so special that Zaius has accomplished? Bleh.
Posted by: Nexii Malthus | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 06:24 AM
how exactly does adam's tool download protected scripts again? unlike textures and prim descriptions, no-copy / no-mod scripts are not transferred to the client. if adam's found a vulnerability in this system, filing a JIRA would seem like the correct thing to do.
Posted by: Meadhbh Oh | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 07:03 AM
@Meadhbh Oh: "Copying objects embedded with scripts may even be theoretically possible."
Also, as the articles states with permission checks etc, it implies full perm scripts.
It is not particularly hard to copy fullperm scripts automatically. Just takes a little bit of works and that is all.
What I am more particularly interested in, is the actual interface implementation of getting something efficient, flexible and powerful.
Posted by: Nexii Malthus | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 07:51 AM
Wow, Nexii. Here's my suggestion for you:
read the article on Adam's blog.
Then, re-read it.
Then, read each article in that blog, and comments.
When you're done, read everything Adam has ever written about technichal aspects of both Second Life and Opensim. Mailing lists, IRC transcripts, wiki pages. Read. LEARN.
In the meantime, please refrain to talk shit about one of the most talented persons working on virtual worlds right now.
Posted by: Opensource Obscure | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 09:41 AM
@Nexii Malthus : Adam's blog post seems to say that it doesn't do deep inspection and that it doesn't copy scripts. Then James' writing says "Copying objects embedded with scripts may even be theoretically possible." I guess I was assuming that when James interviewed Adam and got additional information. I interpreted that statement as being "you can copy scripts independent of permissions" cause it uses the general case, rather than the more specific, "Copying objects with copy/mod scripts may even be theoretically possible."
I'm still kinda confused. Does Adam's tool copy scripts or not? Does it copy no-copy/no-mod scripts?
Posted by: Meadhbh Oh | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 11:37 AM
This is one of many attempts to organize a sim backup and transfer mechanism. I've been involved with a few of them and I can assure folk they exist and work. There is a big difference between sim backup and transfer and something like second inventory (or the brilliant new meerkat browser which allows similar functionality.)
The reason we don't hear about it however is because there is an innate fear amongst many folk that - like dvd ripping or cd copying software - one would only copy a sim for nefarious intent. Folk tend to keep their projects fairly low key lest they invite angry hand-flapping and fist waggling from the drm crew.
Recently Rezzable took down the greenies lawn sim - rest assured we wouldn't have done that unless we had a functioning backup on opensim should we wish to recover it. This was done with an internally developed sim backup/transfer system. When we initially went looking for such a system we were aware that several existed. The folk who knew of them however were very quiet about it so we had to develop our own.
It's a pity. With all this sim copying technology being developed in secret by so many teams there has been lots of duplication of effort. Now several systems have been developed independantly by different teams. The tragedy is they all work by (possibly) bypassing linden DRM, and it is only the honesty (and secrecy) of the developers that keeps these systems from being abused. Systems which do sim backup _could_ copy anything, and must deliberately check linden drm status in order to ensure they don't copy things they shouldn't.
If the lindens had given us a legitimate way to request backup files of sims stored on their servers then the drm could have been enforced by the lindens rather than possibly bypassed. If we could ask the lindens for a copy of an entire sim including _only_ the content that we have the right to copy, then the dangers of developing sim copy and transfer software would be avoided.
DRM on digital assets is impossible to enforce - there's always a hole somewhere for digital stuff to leak through. The main deterrent against unscrupulous copying is the difficulty of bypassing DRM. By not providing legitimate export of drm protected content as part of the second life service, the lindens have ensured that many developers have bridged that gap by writing their own code. The difficulty gap drm imposes has been bridged by the need for a basic service.
Now unfortunately we must trust that people do the right thing. Most do.... ocasionally a few folk don't. But I assure you, the sim copying cat is well and truly long out of the bag.
Posted by: Pavig Lok | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 01:13 PM
@Opensource Obscure, thank you for wronging me and making me realise my bad attitude, I apologise towards readers and Adam himself. I'm having some anger issues atm in RL and have accidentally purged my anger in the wrong direction.
Posted by: Nexii Malthus | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 01:36 PM
Don't really see how writing something to the OAR file so that OpenSim and import it as revolutionary. But it sure would be nice if SL would accept that we need to import and export our builds and setup a way for us to do that.
Posted by: Kevin Tweedy | Monday, June 22, 2009 at 06:52 AM
this simulator is really great. I just accidentally came here and read your post related to wayback machine and it looks interesting.. anyways thanks for post this
Posted by: Max Alvarado | Monday, June 22, 2015 at 09:02 AM