Ex-Linden Lab Developer Karl Stiefvater Joins Development of Emerald, The Popular Third Party Second Life Viewer

Shortly after being fired from Linden Lab, influential 3D graphics developer Karl Stiefvater told me he'd like to "find some way to continue my work in Second Life." And so he has, in a big way: He is now a member of the development team of Emerald, the third party viewer which is so popular, some 30% or more daily SL users prefer using it, over the official Linden Lab-made viewers. It's a distinct irony, therefore, that Karl (known as Qarl Fizz in-world) might have even more influence on Second Life's evolution now that he's no longer with the company that owns it.

"Why'd I join [the Emerald team]?" he says, when I ask him. "Why not? I want to help the community any way I can. I happen to know a LOT about the viewer -- so. And it'll be nice to be able to code just for the pleasure of it, without having to deal with the bureaucracy of a large organization." As for what he's doing for Emerald in particular: "Keep your eye out for some seriously cool stuff."

And yes, I did ask Karl about a recent controversy over another Emerald developer (which far as I can tell, involves an academic or highly conjectural coding issue.) As for that, Karl Stiefvater says, "I must confess, I'm not up on the ins and outs of the Emerald group. I'm merely here to help -- and hopefully not to offend."

Hat tip: Adeon Writer

Comments

[Nexii Malthus]

The fact matters that Qarl is helping with his skills and talent the best way possible for SL -- by applying them to a third party client.

[Delinda Dyrssen]

I think this is great news.. Way to go Qarl.

[Loraan Fierrens]

The "bureaucracy of a large organization?" Lordie, that gave me a laugh. Karl sure doesn't want to come work for my gigantic company. I've seen some teams that were around 200 - 300 people.

Concerning the controversy, here's LordGregGreg's side of the story: http://lordgreggreg.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/emerald-reassessment/. One of his points was that he did not feel he could adequate assure the quality of the code, from a security standpoint, which I would hardly qualify as being an "academic coding issue." I do not say and do not know whether his concerns were valid, but I do think you are minimizing it a bit. You make it sound like they were arguing over indenting standards in the source code.

[Nalates Urriah]

I agree with Loraan. Without good explanations from the Emerald Dev Team as to why special information handy for cracking Linux systems was being added to baked textures I think many people have lost trust in Emerald.

http://nalates.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/emerald-viewer-scandal-erupts%e2%80%a6-again/

There is lots of tedious drama swirling around the Emerald viewer. While it is hard to know who is telling the truth and who is being dramatic it is easy to tell who is offering rational and who emotional arguments. Sour grapes and haters are quickly obvious. Those with things to hide are more difficult, but show up in time. So, we have no easy answers and little if any real evidence. It leaves many of us doubting Emerald.

There is little if any doubt there is hidden code in the Emerald viewer that they refused to let LordGregGreg see.

I would much rather have seen Qarl go with KistenLee or Imprudence.

[Hamlet Au]

"special information handy for cracking Linux systems was being added to baked textures"

Nalates, I'd be very careful how you phrase your sentence; to my knowledge, that's not exactly what happened.

[Troy McConaghy]

Here's why I don't trust Emerald:

1) It's got encrypted code in it, and we don't know what that code does.

2) People who login using Emerald must enter their Second Life password.

3) Emerald must send your password to the Linden Lab servers to login. What's stopping it from sending it to other servers? (What does that secret code do?)

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Hamlet - They were retrieving the full directory path of users. There is no apparent reason for doing that as you only need the sub-directory to determine what viewer a user was using. When this was pointed out the other Emerald devs were promised this would be removed - all the above has so far been uncontested by the Emerald team. Apparently, instead it was buried in deeper obfuscation which was cracked and the evidence presented again. The file is now obfuscated further, so no-one is sure whether the code is still there or not.

There is definitely a privacy issue here, but there are some security issues if an attack on these systems was to be made from inside or outside Second Life, not that anyone is suggesting such a thing has taken place. It is NOT a conjectural coding issue.

[ColeMarie Soleil]

Yall are paranoid this is awesome news :)

[JR]

Troy, download the source code and verify those rumors for yourself. That's the lovely thing about open-source; you can scour the code to heck and back, and if you're OK with it, compile and use it.

[Adric Antfarm]

Hamlet, you never reported what happened (that I saw), so perhaps you could enlighten Nalates and the rest of us as to what did.

[Lili]

Even though I hate it, all this has driven me to use viewer 2. ***shivers***
If nothing else, it's at least twice as fast as emerald.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

JR - the module in question is not open-source, nor is it GPL, one of the Emerald devs bought a license for it - and it's contents are encrypted so you would never know if what they told you was in there actually was.

I am not one of the 'Emerald ate my cat' brigade - but this does raise legitimate concerns. The best way that the Emerald team can allay those is by giving responsibility for the module in question over to a trusted source, such as Qarl.

[Qie]

Hamlet, we need a follow-up on whether Qarl is staying with Emerald now that the DDoS-via-iframes attack / prank is public, what plans Data has for involvement, and how many other ex-Lindens are waiting in the wings--just to estimate how many more shenanigans Modular Systems will be needing to paper over.