Citing Havok License & Lack of SLer Usage, Linden Prohibits Viewer Log-in Option to Second Life's Open Source Spinoffs

Linden Lab has removed the ability to log into OpenSim grids from official, authorized versions of the Second Life viewer, Hypergrid Business reported last Friday, a move that will effectively fork SL from its open source spinoff. There's a lot of debate in the OpenSim community whether this move will benefit or harm its users, but according to Linden Lab, it's a win for Second Life's users. I just got this official statement on the subject from company spokesman Peter Gray:

The Second Life Viewer is still open source. The terms of our license to use Havok in the Viewer limit it to connecting to our services, so we removed the -loginURI option from the official Second Life Viewer in order to comply with that license requirement. Very few Second Life users ever have a need to login to anything but Agni or Aditi, so to reduce confusion, we've also simplified our Viewer to display only those grids that we expect our users to use.

Emphasis mine. As I understand that passage, he's saying few SLers have expressed any interest in using OpenSim, so to offer that option, as, for instance, the Imprudence third party viewer does (see image above), is not needed.

Last I checked earlier this year, OpenSim only had about 15,000 active users; most if not all of them are also SL users, so requiring them to only use a Linden Lab-compliant viewer to enter SL is not a lot to ask. For OpenSim developers, this will probably be a major inflection point: Now unable to market their grids to the SL user community, they will need to grow their own userbase organically. But without a widespread virtual currency system, marketing campaign, or other features needed to make it a commercial product, OpenSim may go from being a niche of a niche (which it was, when still linked to SL) to something even smaller. I'm open to other interpretations, however -- please share yours in Comments.

10:02PM: Tweaked title to remove original mention of "disable log-ins", which was poorly worded on my part.

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Comments

[Galatea Gynoid]

Do any OpenSim users even use the official LL viewer? Seems like it'd be a non-issue for OpenSim...

[Lani Global]

I checked my visitor logs, out of 4,573 unique avatars visiting my OpenSim sim in OSGrid (region name: Lani) in the past year, only 521 used an "Official Second Life Viewer". That is about 9%.

91% of the visitors used some "non-SL" or SL Third Party Viewer (TPV). I have no idea what the statistics are like on other OpenSim grids or other sims.

The most popular (and most stable) viewers among non-noob SL users seem to be Phoenix/Firestorm. Both of these viewers perform wonderfully in ordinary OpenSim grids and "standalones" (sims operating on their own without a traditional grid).

Of course, since the Havok physics engine viewer license is limited to SL-only, TPV developers already knew they would need to separately issue OpenSim-compatible non-Havok versions, or set up some mechanisms to switch off Havok when not connected to one of the Second Life official grids. This really seems to be non-issue, because Havok is not even used by OpenSim simulators. OpenSim uses other physics engines in the sims.

[Sandy Sandalwood]

You mentioned OpenSim marketing campaign. Does LL have any marketing campaign going on for SL? If so, what is it and where can I observe it?

[Jamie Wright]

“Last I checked earlier this year, OpenSim only had about 15,000 active users;”

I just did a quick add up from Maria Korolov’s July stats:

http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/statistics/july-2012-opensim-grid-statistics/

We’re clocking in at 17,097 for reported grids. Keeping in mind not all grids report as well. I’d say the OpenSim is bigger than you think and growing exponentially.

“But without a widespread virtual currency system, marketing campaign, or other features needed to make it a commercial product, OpenSim may go from being a niche of a niche (which it was, when still linked to SL) to something even smaller.”

The decentralized non-commercial approach of many of the OpenSim grids is the main appeal to many of their users. Countless non profit organizations and educational groups have had to leave SL for the OpenSim because of the discontinuation of discounts and the rising costs of tiers.

I personally don’t believe that people who love both SL and OpenSim will shift back to only using SL over a viewer issue. Most of us make use of more than one viewer anyways so I don’t see this having a negative impact at all. What I think is the unfortunate result of the choice is the closing of the dialogue between LL and OpenSim developers about viewers that may result.

[sirhc desantis]

Complete non issue really, personally I use an older Singularity for pretty near anything at the moment including any open sim base grids I play on, commercial or non. For now LL strictly for MP related. Havoc doesn't really play a part in it and understand the license issue, so no biggie.
The only possible change is SLers stumbling across the existance of other grids by accident when fumbling a login if they were not already aware of them :)

[Iggy]

For educators, Hamlet, traffic numbers matter little in OpenSim.

I paid about $300 for the last year's worth of tier for an entire region and used my sim for 20 unique visitors. That's one class section plus a couple of observers.

The students completed their assignments, took notes, wrote up final exams, and were done. No need for a big world or big prices.

That's the magic of OpenSim for this educator. Build a simulation, use it on occasion, and tweak it before the next use (Spring 2013). Now there's no way I could justify $300/month for such infrequent usage in SL.

Plus you can build and share items between grids, just as educators do with their 2D Web content. I would love an intergrid marketplace, but I can make do without it. I think it will emerge in time.

So we pulled our SL island as many others have done. Only due to the largesse of another university did part of the OpenSim build return to SL as a showcase. And without import ability in my TPV, I'd not have even done that.

[foneco zuzu]

Useless to make some like Hamlet understand there are reasons besides making Money!

[shockwave yareach]

Once there is an economy system (maybe based around paypal) in Opensim, there will be little reason to keep paying the extreme land prices in SL. Only the lack of merchandise brought about by the lack of money keeps Opensim from being far more popular than it is.

[Hamlet Au]

"That's the magic of OpenSim for this educator. Build a simulation, use it on occasion, and tweak it before the next use (Spring 2013)."

Sure, OpenSim is great on that level, but it will still be less and less appealing to educators without a true browser or tablet-based solution. It still has all Second Life's shortcomings, just now without a profitable corporation with a relatively large userbase to help sustain it.

[Graham Mills]

Hmmm - not following your logic there, Hamlet. If OpenSim is doomed for edu on that basis, so is SL. As it happens, I am developing with Lumiya in mind so am keeping my mobile options covered to some extent.

[foneco zuzu]

It seems SL is really doomed, path finding was rolled out today it looks and it is not good at all!

[foneco zuzu]

And why virtual worlds need to be mass market? IS not Facebook a example how that will be terrible to ALL?

[Hamlet Au]

"If OpenSim is doomed for edu on that basis, so is SL"

Not necessarily, there's a market for high end 3D graphics, but almost entirely for online gamers. But for schools trying to make do on 5 year old donated computers? See my next post. :)

[foneco zuzu]

Sorry Hamlet but the future more and more will be Open sims one, even if that will not be mass appeal!

[Dave Bell]

I have my own little set of OpenSim regions I can run on my computer. There are things I can do there which I cannot afford to do on SL. and the barriers that Linden Labs impose mean that I can't get anything from using the official Linden viewer.

So I don't think this latest thing makes any difference.

It would be nice if I could run a connection to localhost and get at my own, personal, private, space. I have my doubts about the innovations of the post-Mesh era, both Pathfinding and "Experience Tools". And the path from announcement and limited demo to actual availability has been a mess.

OK, the PF issues have been the same as, with the RC system, we would get with any Havok upgrade, but we suffered from massive incompetence in the planning, putting a disproportionate load onto the sailing and aviation communities in SL. It was 20% of the Blake Sea, and almost no mainland.

Pathfinding, one might think, is only for fish.

[shockwave yareach]

Foneco - not until you find a way to have an economy inworld, no. If there's no money trading hands, there will be none but us madboy creators who build only when we feel like it, and only what we feel like making.

You want more content makers? They have to have some way of at least making the world self supporting.

[Iggy]

Hamlet wrote: "OpenSim. . .will still be less and less appealing to educators without a true browser or tablet-based solution"

I tend to agree, though I'm only concerned for the immediate future. I may run this simulation two or three times in the next 10 years. Then I retire :)

As to a longer-term solution, something that is browser-and-tablet friendly would be ideal for edu, with some caveats:

--Tablet usage is slowly growing on my campus, but it's not booming. Wireless + Laptop is the norm. That took off rapidly, compared to what we have seen with tablets. So for the next couple of years, Browser-based is enough.

--In my classes, students will troop to a high-end lab setting for a few meetings and for a single assignment, outside of class hours. They will be delighted to do so if the alternative is another analytical essay or in-class exam.

--But MAKE them go to a lab every week to do work in SL or an OpenSim grid? In a humanities class? And without "lab credit"?

As we say back East, "Fuggitaboutit."

[shockwave yareach]

Heheh. I wonder if Furries are permitted in a Humanities class inworld :)

(In case you aren't aware, Furry literature frequently uses characters which are not human to examine human actions and behaviors, pulling the viewer outside their humanity for a time and studying it from a different vantage point.)

[Lani Global]

Follow-up... to @Au

Questioning the twisted logical analysis on Linden Lab company spokesman Peter Gray:

"... he's saying few SLers have expressed any interest in using OpenSim..."

Obviously! SLers don't express interest about OpenSim to Linden Lab... because they express such interest to OpenSim entities instead.

Absence of expression is not evidence of disinterest. It follows that World of Warcraft could say: "None of our customers have expressed any interest in Second Life to us." But, a significant number of their customers have played in both "games" and have interest.

And to @shockwave yareach,
"Once there is an economy system (maybe based around paypal) in Opensim, there will be little reason to keep paying the extreme land prices in SL"

Answer: OpenSim economy already exists, including Paypal. In fact there are several choices: Grid economy (spacebux, OS$, coins, beads, money, etc), Paypal converter (built into OpenSim), and several other virtual currency systems. Also, there are 2D websites that sell virtual goods (RL$) either for direct download or for in-world delivery in some of the popular grids.

[Masami Kuramoto]

@ Hamlet

>> "a move that will effectively fork SL from its open source spinoff"

No, it won't. Linden Lab's viewer is already a minority client even on Linden Lab's own grid, but it will continue being useful as a code repository to build the viewers that people actually use. The "-loginuri" option was a kludge anyway; all the mainstream viewers have graphical grid managers, and that will not change any time soon.

>> "Last I checked earlier this year, OpenSim only had about 15,000 active users"

If the WELL grew to 15,000 active users, you would marvel at its success.

>> "Now unable to market their grids to the SL user community, they will need to grow their own userbase organically."

The only thing harder to market now is Linden Lab's viewer. Denying it access to OpenSim worlds is like shooting the patient to cure his disease.

>> "But without a widespread virtual currency system, marketing campaign, or other features needed to make it a commercial product, OpenSim may go from being a niche of a niche (which it was, when still linked to SL) to something even smaller."

Reality check: The largest OpenSim grid is non-commercial, has no currency, and required no marketing to become what it is today. Apparently you don't understand how OpenSim users tick. Do you expect them to trade their beautiful seaside mansion for a stinky basement in Guangzhou?

[foneco zuzu]

Masami, is useless to try to put some sense in Hamlet Mind!
But there is only one way to make any understand Open Sims, just create an acount and login!
its much easy then doing that on SL!

[Gaga]

Hamlet is unbelievable *laughs*

Linden Labs is loosing a regions every week. Often the loss is 100 or more while any gains are pitifully small beans (check Tyche's site: http://www.gridsurvey.com). In contrast new Opensim grids and hypergrid-connected standalones are coming on line at the rate of between 10 and 20 a month and each of those grids brings new people, new web sites and new promotion (see Hypergrid Business grid stats: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/statistics/july-2012-opensim-grid-statistics/).

Hamlet can faithfully tread in the footsteps of the SL dinosaur but no matter how he likes to down play the open Metaverse it continues to grow in every way - more stability, more features, more grids and more users. Opensim is without doubt coming of age it is people building it. People building the Open Metaverse just the same as it was people that built Second Life in the past or Facebook and all the other social media.

The Open Metaverse is growing and will continue to grow because people are making it happen. Get use to it Hamlet!

[Hamlet Au]

"more users"

Citation, please? Jamie Wright's link above suggests OpenSim has about 17,000, meaning it hasn't grown much in terms of actual users at all this year. Then again, it only had about 15,000 when I checked in three years ago:

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/06/small-opensim.html

[Han Held]

Removing a feature is not the same as prohibiting anyone else to have it.

The lab may decide to actually forbid accessing Second Life from a client that can also access Opensim; but so far they haven't.

And, anyway, with the decline of desktops and the rise of tablets both OpenSim **AND** Secondlife's days are likely numbered!

[Gaga]

Active users is almost impossible to count for Opensim grids. There are too many and no central collection of stats other than those manually collected by Hypergrid Business. Second Life has the advantage of Linden Labs collecting and publishing metrics for the grid as a whole because it's all under one roof.

There are 200 grids listed by Hypergrid Business but it depends on grid owners reporting their stats to HB and many don't so the figure is not really known and can only be guessed at. But it's probably a lot greater than is known.

[Gaga]

Atlanta puts OpenSim in every classroom
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2012/03/atlanta-puts-opensim-in-every-classroom/

[Hamlet Au]

According to Google Trends, searches for "OpenSim" have been steadily dropping since its peak in 2008, and are now about 1/3rd of that level:

http://www.google.com/trends/?q=opensim

If there really was significantly increased activity, it would at least be stable. So absent any solid evidence, I'm very skeptical there's any meaningful user growth. If you do a Google Trends comparison to opensim and "second life", it's utterly dwarfed in comparison. Interestingly, the first article Google Trends returns is one *I* wrote about OpenSim four years ago. I thought it had promise back then, and it does as a very small niche, but far as actvity growth, I just don't see any.

[Gaga]

@Hamlet
said...
"According to Google Trends, searches for "OpenSim" have been steadily dropping since its peak in 2008, and are now about 1/3rd of that level:"

Try it for Aurora sim too and Inworldz and some of the other Opensim forks. Opensim is bigger than a short name. try Open Simulators too

[Gaga]

yeah, as I thought. It's a different story for "open simulator"

[Gaga]

Second Life too has dropped back to 2005 levels since its peek in 2007

[Gaga]

Linden Labs should have blocked the loginURI two or three years ago before the bulk of the Second Life community learned about it if they had thought to stop Opensim. It is a bit late now and kind of locking the gate after the horse has bolted. New sign-up's to SL don't stay because the viewer learning curve is too high so they don't matter. The old guard all know about Opensim and many of them are in both worlds anyway.

Linden Labs should have blocked Opensim long ago or embraced it fully and stuck with the course Mark Kingdom set them on with interoperability between SL and Opensim. See Diva Canto here http://metaverseink.com/blog/?p=43

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Open_Grid_Public_Beta/Map_Locations shows OpenSimulator regions that were connected to the Linden OGP beta grid.

[Gaga]

Recently when Second Life suffered outage a flood of people flocked to OSgrid, InWorldz and Avination, and probably other grids too which caused quite a big spike in traffic to the open Metaverse. These people knew about Opensim grids and are probably to be counted amongst the regular cross-grid traffic that happens all the time. Since that traffic spike Inworldz and OSgrid have seen increases in traffic as well so don't count on Linden Lab's blocking of the loginURI to put a stop to their growth.

[Masami Kuramoto]

@ Hamlet

>> "So absent any solid evidence, I'm very skeptical there's any meaningful user growth."

User growth isn't meaningful anyway. I've been a Second Life user for five years, but I never spent a dollar on the game. By the way, how's your Facebook stock performing, Hamlet?

The only meaningful metric is land mass, because land must be paid for by someone constantly. And there's no way to deny that OpenSim land mass is growing while Second Life land mass is shrinking. That is the solid evidence you are looking for. Anything else is a distraction.

The magic keyword here is sustainability. Linden Lab needs a steady stream of new signups just to stay afloat. It cannot do without a vibrant inworld economy, because SL land owners want to offset those $300 per region and month. Dedicated OpenSim hosting on the other hand costs about $5 per region. That's not even a blip on most people's financial radar.

So if you ask what will collapse first, SL or OpenSim, the answer is perfectly obvious. All you need to do is extrapolate from here.

[Hamlet Au]

"Second Life too has dropped back to 2005 levels since its peek in 2007"

That's not correct, it had less than 100K repeat users in 2005, and less than 550K in 2007:

http://gigaom.com/2009/04/15/exclusive-internal-second-life-data-shows-returning-growth/

At the moment, depending how you count them, SL has about 600-700K monthly repeat users.

[Hamlet Au]

"Dedicated OpenSim hosting on the other hand costs about $5 per region. That's not even a blip on most people's financial radar."

Yet somehow, there's no evidence of many people going with that option. There's about 17K OpenSim users that we know of, but let's be generous and assume it's actually twice that number. A fraction of them have an OpenSim region, which is still many times smaller than the number of total SL landowners (including Premiums, which is probably about 120-150K.) Why? Two reasons are user and economic activity. No matter how cheap it is, there's not much reason to own land if very few people can meaningfully connect to it, and even less reason, if they can't buy and sell content they make within it. OpenSim has very few users and few robust virtual economic solutions, especially in comparison to SL.

[Gaga]

What you overlook Hamlet is that Opensim is just the platform software but there are many users running a variety of economic models beside the large number of users that don't care about buying and selling and would rather give what they make away to help people out. You see, a lot of people just want to be creative or use the software for affordable education - something Linden Labs doesn't care about. Add to that examples like small businesses that use Opensim software to showcase their real world products and design layouts for all kinds of things like House, home and stores. Opensim software has huge potential at affordable prices. Can't say that for Second Life and that is part of the reason it is in decline.

Still, I don't expect you to have a broad view of Opensim.

[Sarge Misfit]

"Now unable to market their grids to the SL user community, ..."
Since when was anyone allowed to discuss other grids in SL's flogs? From what I've seen, any such threads get taken down within days, if not hours.

"But without a widespread virtual currency system,..."
Ever hear of Virwox and Bitcoin? PayPal?
"... marketing campaign,..."
Word of mouth seems to be working fine for now
"... or other features needed to make it a commercial product, ..."
Many of us are in this for the enjoyment with making money being a side benefit. Not everything has to be monetized into a commercial product.
"... OpenSim may go from being a niche of a niche (which it was, when still linked to SL) to something even smaller."
The only way OpenSim was ever linked to SL was the common link of viewer capabilities. That is, being able to use the same viewer in either SL or OpenSim. Oh, and the links of individuals who have a presence in both. OpenSim has no other links, ties or connections to SL.

"... but it will still be less and less appealing to educators without a true browser or tablet-based solution. It still has all Second Life's shortcomings, just now without a profitable corporation with a relatively large userbase to help sustain it."
There's schools in Australia and New Zealand that are using OpenSim to in the classrooms of their 4th and 5th graders. London uses OpenSim to teach civics. Atlanta is using it in their schools. And there's more than I can lsit. All of them are using OpenSim without tablets, pads or corporate backing.

"...there's no evidence of many people going with that [$5 region] option. ..."
That's only because many people keep a single region online for the purpose of gridhopping. They ahve no need to be publicly listed. Think of those as being similar to a residents home on SL. I doubt they advertise where they live in SL, inviting strangers to drop in.

"... A fraction of them have an OpenSim region, which is still many times smaller than the number of total SL landowners..."
Of course. We don't have land barons receiving subsidies and price breaks. Add to that the historical fact that it takes time for new space to be developed. LA was far, far smaller than NY in the 1800's, but look at it now.

The fact of the matter is that this move by LL shows that they have a new partner, Havok, who can now control what LL does with their software, including the viewers. After all, if Hvok doesn't like it, they'll jsut revoke thier license and LL is screwed for a physics engine.

For OpenSim users, it means that we can now develop viewers without LL's shabby coding and hampering policies. Viewers will be developed for OpenSim and AuroraSim that will make full use of the capabilities of the software.

It doesn't matter how many people are using SL or OpenSim for those numbers will change. They are changing. No matter what spin anyone puts on it, SL has been leaking regions for a long time.

OpenSim has no need to go on a marketing campaign as the quality speaks for itself. No, OpenSim's software isn't perfect, but its better than LL's. Has LL fixed region crossings yet? How's the lag in SL? How far behind is LL with their Mantis bug reports? Has griefing been brought under control? How's the incidence of content theft now?

The only marketing campaign OpenSim needs is the best one there is, word of mouth.

Your own myopic view of what is the Metaverse blinds you to how far OpenSim has come. It blinds you to the capabilities and potential of OpenSim.

OpenSim is actually doing what Philip promised for Second Life - Our Imaginations, Our Worlds.

[Masami Kuramoto]

@ Hamlet

>> "A fraction of them have an OpenSim region"

Citation needed.

If you look at the 40 largest OpenSim grids, the average number of regions per active user is 1.27. According to the latest report from hypergridbusiness.com, the total number of regions in those grids increased by 711 in July, while Second Life lost 402 regions. How anyone can fail to see the overall trend here is beyond me.

[Masami Kuramoto]

@ Hamlet

>> "OpenSim has very few users and few robust virtual economic solutions, especially in comparison to SL."

I agree. And you know what? That's exactly what makes it so appealing!

Keep in mind, the only reason why we have an economy in real life is because physical goods are scarce and space is finite. Second Life has an economy because that's the only way to make people get involved in a pyramid scheme and pay $300 per month for a game of virtual Lego, where you "buy" stuff but can't take it home.

With OpenSim land being virtually free, no one needs a sound business model to run a sim or two. No one needs to work, no one needs to show off. It's just a virtual place to hang out with friends online, build some stuff and have fun. Pure entertainment. We don't need your robust economic solutions, thank you very much. :P

[Vulcan Viper]

If Linden Lab wants "to reduce confusion", then I suggest that they get rid of references to the GMT and Pacific time zones, and use UTC.

SL is in use in several continents, so what's keeping Linden Lab from...

...using a time zone that reflects that?
...allowing European SL users to go through 2 (rather than 4) one hour shifts in time per year?
...decreasing the confusion with scheduling events?

I believe that switching SL to UTC would also benefit LSL.

If you agree, then please let yourself be heard on JIRA issue SVC-1385.