Saturday, February 25, 2012

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)

10 comments:

  1. So... Lindens are more concerned about people seeing a different color of sky and ground compared the person standing next to them, then about people able to circumvent security tools and do things like Denial of Service, and bypass sim bans, or about fixing the fact that when a person is ejected from a group, they can still remain in the chat indefinitely. Still feels they don't know how to set priorities. Sim security first, then worry if the daisies you are looking at are blue or red.

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  2. And there will be differences anyway, depending on the graphics settings: When I set my draw range to 64 or 256, a HELL of a difference. So what's the fuzz?

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  3. LL claims that new SL residents have been harassed about what viewer they are running? This statement is false! The issue was that users couldn't see mesh objects, because the new SL residents or alts were using an old 8 to 10 year computers, and outdated viewers. The viewer tag allows sim owners to suggest that you upgrade your computer and viewer. Sorry, this is not harassment. The other solution is Linden Labs to offer onlive desktop cloud computing for secondlife.

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    1. You must not have been around for a while. People regularly get told off by other people for not using their preferred viewer. This has been happening long before mesh ever came around. (Mostly ever since 2.0 came around.)

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    2. I have been around for over 4yrs and help ppl coming into second life. they are so confused with the new viewer. I tell you what I have used the new viewer and I am confused by it and I am a well educated, computer sauve woman. I am gaulled that linden labs blames other viewer and that you Thern blame others for people trying to help the new people coming into second life. I am in second life 365 day out of the year and have only missed one month in that time. my first priority is that person to help them to get the best experience in sl. if the sl viewer works for them great but if they are confused, yes i will suggest other viewers as I have them on my computer and have used them but I never, never in my 3.5yrs of helping new people forced anybody switch to a different viewer from the sl viewer. you are so full of damn crap that you don't know what the people that help the new people go thru to help people of all the languages do try it some damn time and see the time and effort that goes into it.

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    3. please let us avoid personal attacks with words like "full of..." whatever.

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    4. Hello Thern,

      I have been in SL since 2006. My friends are creators and they have suggested new viewers, grids, etc to me. (The primary reason for viewer 2 was mesh support.) Mesh development cycle probably started around 2008. This was known as second life 2.0 Here is a few old articles about it. http://changingworldsbuildingdreams.com/second-life-2-0-tom-hale-presents-the-new-second-life-viewer-website-and-interactive-web-media-at-slcc http://changingworldsbuildingdreams.com/linden-lab-offically-announces-mesh-support-in-second-life-at-slcc

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  4. Hmmm. Hope RLV won't be affected...

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    1. From how this was explained it shouldn't be. New or multiple attachments make you look a certain way but only to viewers with your same settings or abilities.
      RLV allows interactivity between people and objects.

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    2. I attended the Phoenixviewer session on February 28, but LL has only blocked the viewer tags. Anyway, the stream is listed on Phoenix's website. http://www.phoenixviewer.com/ RLV will stay in SL due to the number of creators developing RLV products.
      The multiple attachment feature is still in firestorm/phoenix. I have been on several different viewers, including Lindens. I just never noticed that people looked different. There was an issue in the past with Emerald and multiple attachments, but the code has been changed improved with firestorm.

      Lindens will have to adopt these features in their viewer or be able to see them for the shared experience. The multiple attachments would require avatar creators change their avatars. I know my minotaur avatar uses the multiple attachments feature, and it took him around 3 months to develop the new minotaur. LL still thinks that they are the only grid, but there has been huge amount of former Linden residents that have went to OpenSim. For example Rezzable, the creator Greenies Home pulled all his sims from SL 2 years ago. Rezzable has been developing unity3d with opensim. Mesh can be uploaded into Opensim now, so there is other options. Another option is Kitely, based on Amazon cloud service, but people that won't pay for a cool sim. Another advantage is that Opensims or other virtual worlds offer larger sims at a lower cost than sl. Blue Mars Online, and a dedicated server in the Open sims average around 32 regions at the same cost of 1 region in second life. If you want to build a realistic sim, then it has to be on multi-regions. SL island land model will bankrupt you.

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