[opensource-dev] Open Viewer Development Announcement

[Henri Beauchamp]

On Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:56:25 -0400, Oz Linden (Scott Lawrence) wrote:

>   On 2010-08-16 14:23, Henri Beauchamp wrote:
> > Well, the first improvement to do is to actually revert 80% of the UI
> > to the way v1.23's one was working, especially getting rid of that
> > moronic side bar and its modal tools which impair productivity and
> > user-friendliness... The question is: will LL finally admit that the
> > viewer 2 UI is a failure and widely rejected by 80% of its regular user
> > base, and accept a move in the way of "going back" (actually repairing)
> > UI-wise ?...
> 
> I've said this before, and I'll repeat it again here:
> 
> Don't waste everyones time suggesting that we throw away Viewer 2, or 
> that we revert the UI to Viewer 1.   It is absolutely not going to 
> happen, and any suggestion to that effect will be ignored.
> 
> That does not mean that we don't recognize that some choices in V2 were 
> not optimal, and that some probably need to be revisited, and we're open 
> to doing that.  But we will do it in the context of calm discussions of 
> what problems exist and creative ideas for how to solve them.  We are 
> not moving backwards, we are moving forwards.
> 
> Think about it for a minute - there are an infinite number of possible 
> solutions for how to build a UI for a virtual world viewer - what are 
> the odds that the first or second attempt produced the best possible 
> UI?  We need new and creative ideas focused on specific problem 
> descriptions.

This is this kind of extremely arrogant arguments that LL keeps showing
up year after year, and that discourage people from helping and encourage
then to search elsewhere for greener pastures...

You (LL) are lucky that you do not yet have direct competitors, since
the fact there is (for now), no other "pasture" preserves you from a
massive mass emigration. But things might change, and quicker than you
might expect...

The move to an Open Source model is a good move, and I applaud to it.
You (LL) recognized that you made a mistake by not developping viewer 2
in the open, and for this I (and all Open Source developpers and also
all dedicated residents who want to see SL survive and even thrive and
grow) acknowledge that you did a great step in the right direction.
Alas, if you build a brick wall on the road, you'll crash your face
into that wall at the next step !... You now need to remember what
was SL's initial motto "Your World, Your Imagination" and restore
this spirit, extending it from in-world contents to the viewer and
services: yes, the residents (most of whom are actually paying
customers) CAN help you improving SL further. The question is WILL
they do it ?... Well, not if you are to discourage them and act
stubbornely.

The viewer 2 has been countless times proven to be a huge failure
and is widely rejected by SL's regular users (and the fact 20% of
them more or less like it won't change this fact).
The Open Source developpers involved with SL are, for most of them
already contributing in one way or another to TPVs: just look at the
latter. But for Marine's viewer (Marine restricts herself on purpose
to provide RestrainedLove support to the official LL viewer), ALL
the TPV viewers are based off v1 codebase or already have gotten rid
of the most annoying and actually impairing "features" of viewer 2
(namely, Kirsten's viewer and the removed sidebar, since this is
the only other TPV based on viewer 2 around).
Now, ask yourself this question: "How much these developers who
constitute the actual task force in the OS viewer develoment and are
cranking up the patches to bring useful new features) will be ready
to work for you, Linden Lab, and contribute to SnowStorm, if you
are so inflexible about the changes to the UI that they think are
MANDATORY to render the viewer USABLE ?... Personally, I won't
contribute and I bet many other developers will do the same.

I never said that we should go back to the v1.23 code base, but
I did say, and will keep saying, that the UI of viewer 2 *MUST*
be changed, and yes, most of the time to make things work more 
or less  like they used to work in v1.23 (such as the modal tools
that *MUST* be made non-modal again).

If nothing changes on the viewer 2 UI front, I can already tell you
what will happen (since it is happening already): the Open Source
developers will simply work to improve Snowglobe v1 and the TPVs,
backporting the usefull features of viewer 2 to the v1 codebase
(I personally already backported the Alpha and Tattoo wearable
support months ago, and recently the inventory links support;
I'll work next on multiple attachments per point support).
This is a WASTE in valuable programing power for both YOU and US,
since our skills would be better spent IMPROVING viewer 2 !

> > How the submission will be done ? Commits to the repository, or some
> > filtering process where LL will have the final word about what goes in
> > or stays out ?...
>
> .../... 
> 
>     We're a multi-million dollar business with hundreds of thousands of
>     customers, and we need to deploy a coherent and reliable software
>     product to them.  If anyone thinks they can do that without some
>     kind of product management and quality control, they are welcome to
>     go build a business the size and complexity of ours and demonstrate it.

Again, this is utterly ARROGANT a stance, and won't buy you anyone's
sympathy. Do you think we (the developers) are just a bunch of script
kiddies ?... Most of us do work for multi-million dollar (or euro)
businesses or even for government agencies, with a staff sometimes 10 or
100 times what LL's staff is, many of us with decades of experiences in
programing (3 decades, personally). LL doesn't impress me...

We, however, have an HUGE advantage on you, Lindens: we are *using* SL,
be it for building, scripting, roleplaying (either freeform RP or combat
RP, which are two different matters), running businesses, exploring,
communicating, etc... And by USING SL, we KNOW what we NEED in the viewer.
I doubt very much the people behind the viewer 2 UI desing ever actually
used SL like we do !

> >> Code in the Development repository is now released under version 2 of
> >> the GNU LGPL. This allows community developers greater freedom to use
> >> the viewer code, including incorporating it into products that also
> >> include closed source.
> > Does it mean we don't need anymore the privacy-threatening "contribution
> > agreement" form ?... I do hope so, unless you want to keep segregating
> > developers like myself, who value more their privacy than helping LL to
> > make a better viewer.
> 
> Again, this is described in the public documentation...
> 
> The Contribution Agreement is unchanged and still required.
> 
> Note: if we did not have the CA, we would not have been able to make 
> this license change.

I don't understand the need for the CA anymore since LGPL basically
allows LL to take any snapshot of the Open Sourced viewer and use the
code in their own, closed source viewer if they so wish... Wasn't it
the very spirit of the FLOSS exception and the resulting CA ?...

> > Will try to come, hoping it's not going to be one of those voice meetings
> > where non-English people like me can't speak well enough neither understand
> > what is being said...
> 
> This meeting will include voice because it's so time consuming to do 
> everything in chat.  We will have someone putting the important points 
> into chat as much as possible, and will certainly respond to questions 
> in chat.
> 
> For anyone who wants to have a separate chat-only meeting at another 
> time, I'll be glad to set that up.

Look at it this way: people who, like me, do the effort to write in
proper english to communicate with you, while english is just a second
language for us, could expect from Linden's part that they'd do the
little effort to type their words in chat, so that non-native english
speakers have a chance to understand what is being said... Voice is
a communication killer and segregation tool for us, non-native english
speakers. Offering a separate meeting is very kind of you, but then,
we still loose what has been said at the main meeting and cannot
exchange our ideas and arguments with people who attended it, plus, it
consumes more time for you, a time that you could have spent typing
the text in the chat at the main meeting...

Regards,

Henri.