Policy on Third-Party Viewers changed (TPV policy)

The policy has been changed on February 24, 2012. These points have been added:

2.a.iii : You must not provide any feature that circumvents any privacy protection option made available through a Linden Lab viewer or any Second Life service.

2.i : You must not display any information regarding the computer system, software, or network connection of any other Second Life user.

2.j : You must not include any information regarding the computer system, software, or network connection of the user in any messages sent to other viewers, except when explicitly elected by the user of your viewer.

2.k : You must not provide any feature that alters the shared experience of the virtual world in any way not provided by or accessible to users of the latest released Linden Lab viewer.

There is a MP3 with OZ Linden who answers questions about the meaning of the implementations. It runs 1 hour and ~45 minutes. The key points from the interview i wrote down here, but please, for detailed information, listen to the MP3:

In general, the MP3 starts with that it is not touching the existing viewers right now. But all updates to those.

For 2.i:

2.i : You must not display any information regarding the computer system, software, or network connection of any other Second Life user.

The "true online status" is one of those. There are also scripts using an LSL function which shows the online status of an avatar. This function will be altered and return "False" at all times where the request refers to someone not owning the script. This means: once it is fully in place, Paul can not see with an LSL script anymore, whether Peter is online, if Peter has set so in his privacy settings. Scripts who are allowing this to do at the moment, will always return "False" (Offline?) in the future. Advertising boards who show online status might be affected from this as well delivery systems that check online status before they deliver items.(In the interview at about 7:30)

There is no timeline for that. (at ~13:00)

The next bit discusses two aforementioned changes in one go:

2.i : You must not display any information regarding the computer system, software, or network connection of any other Second Life user.

2.j : You must not include any information regarding the computer system, software, or network connection of the user in any messages sent to other viewers, except when explicitly elected by the user of your viewer.

One intend is to get rid of the viewer tags (~21:00) and after some short sidetracked discussion: "the reason is, that it is nobodies business what you are running" and further: the user is allowed still to tell what they are using, but the viewer should not do it for them. (~23:50)

Viewer tags can not be displayed in the future and the function to that is going to be broken by next week anyway.  New users have been harassed about what viewer they are running, which is not acceptable. That is the reason for this change.  (~25:00)

2.k : You must not provide any feature that alters the shared experience of the virtual world in any way not provided by or accessible to users of the latest released Linden Lab viewer.

As example to this change, the moderator referred to the "Emerald Multiple Attachment points" (for new SL residents: a feature that has been around two years ago and no longer exists.). When one has used these, the Avatar appeared correctly only to Emerald users, but not to other users. (~35:00)

This is not about providing different kind of presentation objects. Different render engines for example are fine to use. No change to control objects. Like how to move objects or interface changes. As long as all other users with different viewers see the same that you do, you provide the same shared experience, which is perfectly ok. You can not redefine, how objects in the world behave, without doing with LL. If parcel windlight did not already exist, this would have been a good  example of violating this rule. Viewers that can not interpret this parcel windlight, will see the parcel differently and that would be a violation. Parcel windlight is a great example of something that should be done, and should be done with "us" ((Linden Lab)) . LL made region windlight. You do not have to do anything about your parcel windlight yet. Until we provide a proper implementation of parcel windlight, accessible for all viewers. Once the official parcel windlight implementation is on, one has to change the parcel settings to that. Until then, one has a free pass. (~37:50)

Later on one of the guests says that the TPV have introduced new features to SL, that have been proposed to LL and have been declined. Oz Linden replies here, that the statement is correct, but one needs to consider that this has been past, with an entirely different management. An example of what is in progress that shows that the approach of LL to suggestions is the mesh deformer which is currently under development. (~45:00)

 The reason behind is, that LL observed confusion and fragmentation about the user experience. No one should have a different SL just because they use a different viewer. (~51:00)

If viewers are not actively maintained, they will sooner or later possibly break. But viewers that are now on the grid are not being banned because of these new rules. (~53:00)