On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Soft Linden <s...@lindenlab.com> wrote:
> This is a company with an open source project, not an open source project > with a company. That statement I think reflects an important difference in perception. That sentence would be fine in an internal Linden Research communication. But on this list, it's misplaced. "This" is not a company. "This" is an open-source project. You work for a company that has released code to this open-source project. If Linden Research continues to project the attitude that open-source is no more than a convenient way to get some free grunt labor from "enthusiasts" (which strikes me as code for the "hobbyist" term Microsoft likes to use to veil their contempt when they want to deprecate open-source folks as unprofessional), while locking them out of strategic discussions and decisions about the project's direction, this effort is doomed to the "throttling" your scolding referred to. I think the perception is widespread outside Linden Research that--under the relatively new VC-installed management--there's a desire to find a means and rationale to "throttle" (as in control or extinguish) the open source project because it's being used by some for purposes other than generating revenue for Linden Research. The code may have originally opened relying on the belief that that turn of events was unlikely because "enthusiasts" would not be capable of making use of the viewer code while the server was still proprietary. Events have proven that belief mistaken. It's neither far-fetched nor paranoid to think that Linden Research would like nothing better than to see the viewer devolve into a balkanized forest of incompatible versions and forks, struggling to catch up to capabilities designed and built in secret, perhaps even implemented as proprietary binary plugins outside the project. The TPV policy has already established that Linden Research will set capabilities requirements, and the means to deny connection to viewers they don't like. Once there's a few stable binary plugins interfaces, the path to injecting required dependencies on proprietary code (already a stumbling block on non-Windows platforms for voice chat and video; just look at the archives of this list for examples) will be complete...while still maintaining a barely plausible fig-leaf rationale to claim "the viewer is still open". It will be instructive to see how mesh support is implemented, and what role DRM plays in that implementation. The server side of that is naturally proprietary, as is the rest of the server. One can't help but wonder what will we see happen on the viewer side. If we can see anything at all. To draw a metaphor from the structural view implicit in your quote above, your company can no doubt act to prevent this open-source tail from wagging the Linden Research dog. That may involve "throttling" to the point of amputation. But the dog should take care not to bite himself in the butt too much in the process. _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/OpenSource-Dev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
