[opensource-dev] Client-side scripting in Snowglobe

[Dahlia Trimble]

I haven't been following this topic in any office hours so I hope my
comments aren't too off base.

Personally I'd prefer to be able to run extensions as sandboxed, and maybe
have the option of running them unprotected on a per-extension basis. To me,
an environment such as SL or the web in general tend to attract a few
malicious developers, or more so, companies and individuals who are
interested in collecting personal data and usage patterns. I'd prefer some
level of control over what they can access without needing to understand the
source code of any scripted extensions (if indeed source was available).

Concerning Morgaine's list: while I may not fully agree with reasons 1-4,
they appear to reflect valid concerns and are presented in a agreeable
manner. Reasons 5 and 6 seem to imply political overtones to me, and I
suspect any platform choice will carry some political burden with it.
Personally I believe mono to be a reasonable choice for a scripting
environment, especially given LL's experience with it in their servers.

And now since I don't contribute to the LL viewer source, I'll shut up :)

-d


On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 4:57 AM, Morgaine <morgaine.dinova at googlemail.com>wrote:

> A line got lost from my post owing to finger trouble.  Item 6 about Mono
> should have read:
>
>
> 6. Some parties identify other reasons for avoiding Mono in general.
>  Without getting into that subject at all, requiring Mono for client-side
> scripting would make scripting unavailable to that portion of the user
> base.  Since client-side scripting without Mono is perfectly feasible, Mono
> should not be made mandatory for scripting, so that the widest user base can
> be supported.
>
>
> Morgaine.
>
>
>
>
>
> ========================
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 12:42 PM, Morgaine <morgaine.dinova at googlemail.com
> > wrote:
>
>> I referred recently to Linden's internal project "Firefly" to add
>> client-side scripting to SL viewers.  This has been the topic of open
>> discussion at several Office Hours with Lindens in SL, but that openness has
>> not extended to many design details --- the Firefly design process is not
>> open to the community.  The only technical details that are being disclosed
>> about Firefly appear to be:
>>
>>
>>    - "Scripts" are actually *Mono assemblies*, so that only languages
>>    that compile to Mono will be allowed.
>>    - The programs run in a *sandbox*, which means that most platform
>>    resources are not accessible to them.
>>
>>
>> Please note that I quite like C# as a language, but the following remarks
>> are about Mono use *in the SL viewer*, only, where its tradeoffs are
>> poor.
>>
>> The first known detail about Firefly (mandatory Mono) is problematic on
>> several fronts:
>>
>>    1. Only a tiny fraction of the world's applications, libraries and
>>    languages work on Mono, so client-side scripting will be unable to benefit
>>    from the huge mountain of resources available on the Internet.  This is an
>>    extremely severe limitation, and an unnecessary restriction in the context
>>    of client-side viewer scripting.  If I want to use a locally-installed
>>    package X from within my client-side script, I should be able to.  What runs
>>    client-side should always be our individual choice, not someone else's.
>>    2. Programmers want to write client-side scripts in the language that
>>    they know best, because that always yields the fastest progress and highest
>>    quality results.  There was a good technical reason for forcing everyone to
>>    use LSL server-side, but there is no technical reason to impose this
>>    requirement on all client-side scripting.  It is counter-productive to force
>>    CLR compatibility on client-side script developers when there is a simple
>>    alternative:  define a *socket-based viewer API* for client-side
>>    scripts instead, hence usable from any language.
>>    3. Mono runs poorly on Linux, so from being rock-solid on Linux now,
>>    the LL-derived viewers will become second-rate on this platform.
>>    4. The viewer is already extremely bloated and a memory hog.  Adding a
>>    Mono dependency will compound that horribly.
>>    5. There is only one effective supplier of Mono:  Novell.  That is a
>>    very bad situation to encourage and to support in the viewer.
>>    6. Some parties identify other reasons for avoiding Mono in general.
>>     Without getting into that subject at all,
>>
>>
>> The second known detail about Firefly (mandatory sandbox) is problematic
>> on two related fronts:
>>
>>    1. Sandboxes by design do not allow most platform resources to be
>>    accessed, as a security measure.  This is fine and important when scripts
>>    are being downloaded from unknown places (like Javascript in web pages), but
>>    that same protection also means that client-side scripts would be powerless
>>    to do useful things for us in concert with local applications, files,
>>    devices, etc.  Sandboxing client-side scripts effectively hardwires in
>>    script weakness for no reason discussed as a requirement.
>>    2. Sandboxed applications cannot be linked with user-chosen native
>>    libraries since allowing native code breaks sandbox protection.  This means
>>    no accelerators, no extensions, and no interop with other systems since
>>    sockets are inaccessible from any strong sandbox.  This also means no
>>    evolution or progress outside of what the sandbox designers permit.
>>
>>
>> This mailing list is concerned with development of open source viewers, in
>> particular Snowglobe.  This is heralded as a *community* viewer,
>> embodying *community* requirements much more directly than the LL
>> mainstream viewer.  Client-side scripting will impact on every single aspect
>> of Snowglobe bar none, yet the community is being excluded from the design
>> of its most powerful infrastructure element.  This is entirely wrong, far
>> beyond the normal observation that secrecy in design has no place in open
>> source.
>>
>> It is hard to assess things technically when the design requirements are
>> formulated in secret.  The Snowglobe community has design requirements too.
>>  Those deserve to be examined here openly, not limiting Snowglobe to a
>> design that stems from Linden requirements alone.
>>
>>
>> Morgaine.
>>
>>
>
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