[opensource-dev] oh give me a break

[Soft Linden]

On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Kevin Woolley <kevin at geomantics.com> wrote:
> I own three Sims in SL, that's ~$600 a month or so to the Lindens, and
> that's supported off DRM'ed content creation that I sell. If my income was
> to vanish because of widespread content theft then I'd be out of SL.
>
> I find Hax's attitude extremely concerning.

It's a good thing he's neither a contributor, nor - to the best of my
knowledge - representative of anyone with code in our project. He's
just a guy showing up with an opinion.


> In fact I think we should now recognise that Open Sourcing the viewer has
> been a mistake, and the Lindens should close it off again, possibly
> replacing it with controlled licensed development.

copybot and copying proxies existed before the viewer was made open
source, and would continue to exist without the viewer being open
source. Abandoning source publication wouldn't stop the problem. There
are literally dozens of tools that don't use one line of our code.

Keep in mind that open source projects also include clients and tools
that help identify copy botters, added clothing layer protection even
before Viewer 2, add automatic recognition of some copied content, and
more. It's also meant some better building and scripting tools, free
clothing texture upload previews and other things that help in
creating content.

On the balance, the open source viewer has improved the situation for
content creators.