Town Hall with Cory Linden Tomorrow
Monday, January 8th, 2007 at 10:09 AM by: Jeska LindenWe hope you can all join us tomorrow for a Technical Town Hall with Cory Linden. In recognition of our recent announcement, the event will be focused on open source and other technical topics. Hope to see you there!
Event Details:
Event: Town Hall with Cory Linden
Date: Tuesday, January 9 (tomorrow) from 3pm-4pm PST/SLT
Format: Text-based Question and Answer, moderated
How to Ask Questions: You will be able to ask questions via the Linden Town Hall Questions group (you will need to join the group in advance)
Location: In-world at the Pooley Stage, with text repeated in the Linden Town Hall Closed Captioning Group (again, join the group in advance). The Town Hall questions and answers will be pasted into the Group IM which will allow you to “listen in” to the Town Hall from anywhere on the main grid.
Can’t Make It?
If you are unable to make it to the event tomorrow, please submit questions as comments to this post. Questions must be submitted by no later than 4pm PST today (comments will be closed at that time). Cory will post answers to as many of the pre-submitted questions as possible here in the blog before the Town Hall tomorrow for your reading pleasure.
We will also be posting a full transcript of the Town Hall in this blog after the event.
Please note, individual billing or support questions will not be accepted. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, it is not always possible for us to answer all questions during the Town Hall. Get there early.
January 8th, 2007 at 10:24 AM
Could you also release details on the LSL bytecode and make it possible to use alternative compilers?
It would be VERY NICE to have options for scripting languages (not the LSL has any problems of course).
January 8th, 2007 at 10:25 AM
A town hall on the same day as a Steve Jobs keynote? Are you mad?
(glad to see you follow up on the OS release with this meeting so quickly!)
January 8th, 2007 at 10:34 AM
24 hour notice of this right on the heels of the announcement about open source isn’t nearly enough time for people to really get their heads round the implications - and dangers - of open sourcing the SL client, to be able to fully think about the right questions to ask.
But then again, I guess that was part of the plan.
Broccoli
January 8th, 2007 at 10:36 AM
Okay, i don’t think anyone has had time to go through all of the code yet, but from what i’ve seen so far it looks like the viewer is doing a huge load of unneccessary work, like computing all levels of LOD for every object before it selects one of them.
How open are you to changing the rendering pipeline around in the official client?
How about doing a rough culling on the object level based on where the camera is, then assign the remaining list of drawable objects LODs depending on distance from camera and current fps, split that list depending on how many CPUs a system has and let all availible cores work on converting prims to meshes, then when the final triangle data is done let a separate thread pass that off to opengl while you get started on the next frame. And how about retaining the triangle data for the scene and just changing the stuff that’s in motion. Some of this might be going on already, you’ll have to excuse me if i’ve misunderstood the code i’ve read so far.
Oh, and here’s hoping people will implement lots of shaders for use on prims. I want to see custom environment maps, dynamic fur shaders and normal maps for a start
January 8th, 2007 at 10:37 AM
There are no “implications” other than a higher quality client in the long run. The only “danger” is that bugs will get fixed faster.
January 8th, 2007 at 10:38 AM
Oh yeah, i think the community would also appreciate any and all flowcharts and design documents you’ve made to explain how the various pieces of the sl viewer work together, all this code is A LOT to wrap your head around.
January 8th, 2007 at 10:47 AM
Now that the source code is released, what is the position of LL regarding the “official” viewer vs. the new ones we will undoubtedly see appear ? Another way to frame the question, how can we submit a significant feature for release in the official viewer ? That would require both a reasonable hope to see the feature sanctioned by LL and discussions with LL on implementation strategies.
As an example, what if someone wanted to implement SVG on a prim, in a fashion similar to what we have with bitmaps today ? There are different ways to do that, many of which probably conflict with LL’s own roadmap. How could a dedicated team get help towards choosing the “right” approach, the one most likely to end up in the LL release of the viewer ?
January 8th, 2007 at 11:06 AM
Thank you for hosting another town hall meeting.
Whilst I praise the idealism with which you have released the source code, I have to question your reasons for doing so. Why have you made the source code for the viewer open, please? What are you hoping to acomplish? Also why have you released it so soon, when you only recently told us it was a long way from being ready to release?
Thank you in advance,
Tiny.
January 8th, 2007 at 11:08 AM
My question: so now that you’ve got a few thousand or so more code monkies sitting around, what’s your wish list for what you’d like to see the community work on? Either in-general stuff or specific stuff or whatever comes to mind..
January 8th, 2007 at 11:13 AM
How do you plan on keeping development versions in step with the current server versions (Or how quickly do you plan on giving access to a source repository like subversion) given the rapid deployment of new server code
and do you plan on leaving a test server on a particular version to allow people to work on new features without having to keep updating to new server changes to test it.
January 8th, 2007 at 11:14 AM
Have you got a chat repeater that is guaranteed to work? (Last time the chat repeat was defective, loosing lines of text or some such problem.)
January 8th, 2007 at 11:17 AM
@Tiny Hickman (and others)
Many of the answers you seek are available at http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/faq .
January 8th, 2007 at 11:18 AM
why open source sl when theres a high chance someone could imput a exploit or manipulate it so that they can instantly ban someone without a linden officer knowing it
January 8th, 2007 at 11:22 AM
Question from a non-technical user: I’m a bit worried about the Mac client future with all the changes that open source will surely bring (and I warmly applaud open source, as I know there are many bright individuals ready to be creative and helpful) . Will you continue, at Linden Labs, making the effort to implement all new future improvements into the Mac client? Thank you very much in advance.
January 8th, 2007 at 11:26 AM
why open source sl when theres a high chance someone could imput a exploit or manipulate it so that they can instantly ban someone without a linden officer knowing it
Do you have information as to HOW this might be done?
January 8th, 2007 at 11:31 AM
“why open source sl when theres a high chance someone could imput a exploit or manipulate it so that they can instantly ban someone without a linden officer knowing it”
Remember, only the viewer is being open sourced. This is essentially the same as a web browser like firefox being open source.
Your example would be like having a random visitor to a web site banning another user from accessing it, through a browser hack - and that doesn’t happen. Banning, and other important things like that, are controlled on the server side. And the server is not open source.
January 8th, 2007 at 11:33 AM
Ok then, a question for the meeting.
“Given the history of libSecond Life, the most well known open source group, and their activities which have produce ‘Big Prims’ and ‘Copybot’, what is there to stop anyone else creating similar ‘problems’ or worse?”
Broccoli
January 8th, 2007 at 11:39 AM
Do you have any thoughts on how the opening of the client may effect combat, including the very popular safezone combat system(s)? Will there be anything to prevent widespread cheating via autoaiming client hacks, for instance? Thanks!
January 8th, 2007 at 11:52 AM
Are there any plans to open source any functionality of the sims themselves?
January 8th, 2007 at 11:52 AM
Suzanne - There will not be a chat repeater this time, as we did indeed have some technical issues with the grid-wide repeater during the last text town hall.
We will instead be using the Linden Closed Captioning group chat as a repeater for the text. To “listen along” from anywhere on the grid, simply join the group and watch along as the Town Hall questions and answers are pasted into the Group IM.
January 8th, 2007 at 12:04 PM
Will there be an update to the terms of service?
January 8th, 2007 at 12:05 PM
Question for the town hall:
Cory, can you please respond to those who feel that this is just an attempt by a for-profit company to get free development work? How does having an open source client substantially benefit anyone other than Linden Lab?
January 8th, 2007 at 12:22 PM
Ricky: even if it *were* an attempt to get “free development work”, such work would by definition benefit anyone who uses the client software (which means… everyone.)
-peekay
January 8th, 2007 at 12:53 PM
With the open sourcing of the client and the recognition that textures are now “free-for-all” to copy (inevitably, there will be a client which has this option nicely built-in).
I can think of ways to protect against this, though. Please take the following consideration seriously and respond to what you think about it:
-Link the texture ID to the original uploader’s key.
-Add a switch that allows the uploader to determine whether the texture can be applied to prims/clothing created by another agent.
-Since prims/objects/clothing are stored on the servers, it should now be possible (in combination with the switch) to stop copyright theft by using the original texture ID.
This still leaves the possibility of texture theft as raw image data, which is more troublesome to fix (since multiple people may legally upload the same image found on the internet), but IMHO something must be done for all the people selling custom clothing. I also understand that a transition period to the above scheme would have some issues to overcome, but you can’t really let a significant portion of SL’s economy just die.
January 8th, 2007 at 12:57 PM
Cool now with open source, maybe I can fix this shoe sticking out my ass!
January 8th, 2007 at 1:11 PM
[...] Corey Linden is holding another Town Hall tomorrow, this time in-world and via the Linden Town Hall Closed Captioning group (last time the Linden repeaters crashed so text was repeated in this group and worked well). [...]
January 8th, 2007 at 1:14 PM
Tijn Erde has some good comments! Will Linden be taking a proactive stance on possible texture theft by looking at MD5SUMS or some such thing of image data? Granted, all it takes is a single bit to change to destroy a hash based-dupe finder, but there’s got to be a good heuristic way to look for these (scale image to some minimum texture size and then compare?)
January 8th, 2007 at 1:16 PM
I have a question… Given the big flop that firefox, apache, linux, macOSX, and other horrible open source based products have been, and how they’ve been riddled with security holes, exploits, and bugs as compared to the outstanding rock solid security/bug/stability history of closed source products like Windows, IIS, and Exchange, I just want to know why you don’t listen to the hysterical people here who have no real knowledge of software development and give in to their fears built on their ignorance of the process and just 86 this whole crazy idea right now?
A thousand scared people scared of what they don’t understand can’t be wrong can they?
January 8th, 2007 at 1:21 PM
Tijn: “-Link the texture ID to the original uploader’s key.”
What’s to keep somebody from changing the client code so that there’s a new pie menu option to re-upload the texture(s) of whatever you’ve clicked on, complete with your ID? I think LL is going to leave enforcement of these kinds of things to the residents. As much as I don’t like that, I don’t think there’s much else they can do unless they want to start auto-watermarking things in some secret, randomish way (which would still not work long-term).
January 8th, 2007 at 1:27 PM
QUESTION: With the realease of the open source viewer, the client-server API will be very clearly exposed. Will this make it possible for developers to create a “compatible server infrastruture” that can be used to create independent non-Linden-Labs sims? If so, what is Linden Labs assessment of the issues and risks associated with having completely independent Second Life communities for which there is no longer any Linden Lab involvement whatsover? Is there anything to prevent this from happening?
January 8th, 2007 at 1:44 PM
Will SL be optimized for running on dual core Systems?
January 8th, 2007 at 1:50 PM
Could you release a road map of the new important incoming features we should expect to see in the next year or so (in practical terms over technical)?
It would be beneficial for land owners and Second Life entrepreneurs to better plan their strategy along with the road map, as well as to prevent eventual long term setbacks that could result from such changes.
January 8th, 2007 at 1:51 PM
it isn’t possible to protect texture data that way as you stated, but it’s possible to include a digital signature inside the image and let the client check these against a blacklist. If anyhow a texture is illegal to copy, the client could block the image so it isn’t visible any more. This makes texture theft useless as reuploading the texture still keeps the digital signature. The signature should contain the creator id as it should allow it on any prim, that was created by the same creator. With clothing and bodyparts, it would be safe, if asset server do not allow downloading them to the client if no modify. This means, baking and rebaking has to be done serverside. That way it will be very difficult to download and extract clothing and bodyparts
January 8th, 2007 at 1:53 PM
with digital signatures I mean water-marking
January 8th, 2007 at 2:04 PM
I have looked at some of the code for the client, and most of the classes/functions do NOT have any documentation/comments. May I suggest that the API specification be similar with “Java™ Platform, Standard Edition 6 API Specification”, located at: http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/index.html
My question(s):
-Is there such a document named “SL API Specification”?
-If it is, where can we get it?
-If it doesn’t exist, does LL ever intend to make/maintain one?
-Will the client downloaded from LL have a directory named “plug-ins” that will contain plug ins that users download(from other places) ? I am talking about something similar to what Firefox uses.
p.s. Gringo Star, I am sorry to tell you, but Windows is NOT bug free, and Firefox is NOT a horrible product.
January 8th, 2007 at 2:11 PM
What’s the plan like with adding multi-processor support? Or do you encourage users to compile and distribuite their own releases that are optimized for multi processor computers.
(i.e. BonEcho has an optimized version of Firefox)
January 8th, 2007 at 2:11 PM
Although I bought and liked the official guide to second life, would it be possible to get another book published that is more technical ? Something part of or similar to the O’Reilly Hacks series of books ?
January 8th, 2007 at 2:25 PM
I think that however you look at it, a texture has to be rendered, and a prim has to be drawn by the client.
The data is just there for the finding, ultimately LL may just have to say that texture X was first uploaded on DD/MM/YYYY by owner with key K. several times, and delete duplicate D.
It looks like they need the Open source development (from which they will ultimately profit) because they will have to spend their time to sort out a lot of copyright arguments instead of fixing bugs.
In RL it is up to the designer/manufacturer to cope with the foreign cloner of their stuff who lives in some obscure, far-off land where the law enjoyed by the designer/manufacturer is ineffective.
January 8th, 2007 at 2:26 PM
p.s. Gringo Star, I am sorry to tell you, but Windows is NOT bug free, and Firefox is NOT a horrible product.
sarcasm is lost on some people.
January 8th, 2007 at 2:32 PM
@ Rex - ” Gringo Star, I am sorry to tell you, but Windows is NOT bug free, and Firefox is NOT a horrible product.”
Gringo was being entirely tongue-in-cheek. It threw me on the first reading as well.
Someone asked if this meant that there could be compatible, non-Linden servers. One surely hopes so. LL is an unreliable single point of failure (uptime percentage, anyone?) Consider the idea of partitioned client-side login states — I would expect to see grid-hopping come about this year.
My big question: did the resources that went into this project impact some of work on stability that needed to happen over the last 6 months?
January 8th, 2007 at 2:39 PM
Town Hall Question:
The first questions from content creators are, can we import/export content, and can we work offline? A little thought tells us, no, barring a herculean effort to reverse-engineer a viable server emulator, we can’t.
My question: is it possible, from a coding and user hardware standpoint, for LL to release “single player” software to emulate an SL sim or sims with a complete toolset in an offline environment? Such software could be published to CD or DVD-ROM and sold as an optional Gold Edition, updating with the viewer patches. It would allow exploration of the total toolset, an offline work environment, and back-up of creations (and possibly purchases): some of the greatest concerns of new and experienced users alike.
I’ve made a feature proposal to this end, but would like Linden feedback on viability. The proposition is linked to my name above. I know there are other proposals addressing parts of the issue, but a complete, LL authored offline emulator strikes me as the simple solution to our Gordian Knot.
January 8th, 2007 at 2:59 PM
I got a question:
I’m sick of all the BS with SL right now.
I can’t create, because some objects after hours of creating, lose perms.
I can’t stay logged in, because SL feels the need to crash the sim I’m in.
I can’t move in SL, because I can’t rez objects most of the time.
I’ve lost inventory, which was supposedly looked at 3 weeks later with nary a word as to what the hell happened to my items, which Torley said was ’somewhere’ and resi’s would get it back, guess what? Still gone 6 weeks later.
I’m sick of attachments getting lost because I go to attach them, they get lost in my rear end, and then disappear for hours on end, or never get them back.
I’ve defended you guys. I’ve tried to make people laugh when you guys have ungodly updates.
I’m getting REAL sick of defending you guys when nothing is going right anymore.
What are you doing about ANY of this besides introducing new features to polish up for more VC, mainstream media and the like?
You’re gonna lose those who made SL what it is today, those who stuck by you with NOTHING from LL aside from a playable platform. Less and less residents are logging in that I knew from when I first came here. I’m sick of losing friends because you can’t get your act together.
When are you gonna fix the MAJOR issues? I’m sure scripters would be happy if a few scripts were broken, if it meant that the stupid scripts would save upon creation for a little while. I’m sure builders would be happy if it took a little longer to rez an item, assuming it stayed there.
Please, for the love of God, get your dang priorities straight. Screw the bug fixes and shiny flashing items on the ground. Get the game playable again.
(And yes, I have a high end comp, so it’s not me, don’t even tell me it is)
January 8th, 2007 at 3:10 PM
I just want to give Cory a great big hug to him, and promise him that I will never doubt LL’s word again
It’s been now 26 months since I first asked in a Town Hall meeting “Will Linden Lab ever open source their software?” The answer is here, today.
Now I’m afraid to ask any further questions — I’ll just give them a very heartfelt hug for LL keeping true to their vision, and continuing to show that their vision is true through actions, not words
January 8th, 2007 at 3:15 PM
Re: repeaters. I will try to have a relay up in #townhallrelay on EFNet. As long as there isn’t any unicode text it should be fine.
January 8th, 2007 at 3:20 PM
I’m almost afraid to mention this idea, since it immediately brings to mind echoes of store owners spamming their own land with “quit!” messages to prevent CopyBot from stealing their scripts and packaged clothing (both of which are impossible, from what I understand)…
How about a proprietary (non open-source) signature module for the official client, which will allow the server to tell whether the user has the official client or a … umm… non-official client? If land owners could ban users who don’t use the Game administrators who are worried about client-side cheats could prevent non-official client users from participating in their games.
It could (ok… probably would) be an annoyance for people with innocently-tweaked clients to be barred from certain places just because the land owners set the “OFFICIAL_CLIENT_ONLY” flag on their parcels out of ignorant hysteria or just plain ignorance (”What’s that check-box do?”), but at least folks could work on and test their own enhancements to the client in developer-friendly territory before submitting them to LL for inclusion in the official client.
@Rex: I do believe Gringo’s comments about Windows and Firefox were meant sarcastically (correct me if I’m wrong, Gringo).
January 8th, 2007 at 3:24 PM
Oh, a couple people pointed out the sarcastic nature of Gringo’s comment while I was working on that long-winded proposal that I’m not even sure I like… :-/
January 8th, 2007 at 3:38 PM
Ok this is all hokey pokey to me! Not everyone on here is a developer, coder or what not. I don’t understand the coding stuff and don’t have the time to read lenghty explanations why I should have it.
Do we have to have this VIEWER in order to log into SL, or will there be an alternative to play it just the way it is now?
January 8th, 2007 at 4:14 PM
Thanks for the questions everyone, I’m going to close this to comments and Cory will be back tomorrow with answers here and at the Town Hall!
January 9th, 2007 at 4:20 PM
[...] Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 4:20 PM PST by Jeska Linden Had a great text-based Town Hall with Cory Linden today. Also, be sure to check out Cory’s Pre-Town Hall answers for even more technical answer [...]
January 13th, 2007 at 10:59 AM
[...] a great text-based Town Hall with Cory Linden today. Also, be sure to check out Cory’s Pre-Town Hall answers for even more technical answer [...]