[opensource-dev] This is my goodbye

Henri Beauchamp sldev at free.fr
Thu Sep 9 07:20:33 PDT 2010


On Thu, 9 Sep 2010 00:22:23 +0200, Aleric Inglewood wrote:

> I've compared Linden Lab more often with an abusive husband.
> You take the beating and then believe the stories and hope that
> it all will become better. It's hard to leave such a husband usually,
> because you invested in that life and one lose a lot when one
> leaves.
> 
> Nevertheless, I have come to the conclusion that I've been a fool
> in the past. I've been mad, over and over and over again. I've
> told myself every time: this is unacceptable; but still I believed
> things would change for the better and came back... not really
> full force (in the end the number of patches that I actually
> wrote are a fraction of what I'd have done when I hadn't been
> beaten up on a regular basis).
> 
> Today, still with a black eye of my homestead being taken offline,
> I have been kicked in the face by the hard cut off of snowglobe.
> Yes, it was inevitable that in the end all viewers would be derived
> from the official viewer (aka, 2.x), but NOT by force! It should have
> been as a result of new features. Open source should be the
> evolution of ideas (and code) and not being enforced and dictated.
> 
> Slowly I have began to realize that Linden Lab is a control freak.
> They try to control EVERYTHING, from what you do in-world to the
> what name your viewer can have, or what you run on your PC to
> connect to their servers.

You know what ?... I got the same *exact* feelings...
But I'm the kind of guy to fight to the very last possible extremity,
and I won't give up before there is no more hope.
My last hope is that, hopefully before it is too late for Linden
Lab, they will realize that they screwed up their chances by being
an arrogant, autistic, stubborn, greedy, thankless group of soon
to be loosers...
Then they will perhaps *listen* to their *customers* and do the
right things, radically changing their behaviour and suicidal
policy.

SL has been on the down slope for over two years already, its
active users base shrinking every month. It would be time they
wake up before the down slope becomes a cliff and they take a
step too far...

It's not hard... all they have to do is to remember their
initial motto and actually apply it to their actions:
"Your World, Your Imagination"...

> They have never listened to the users before making important
> decisions (and seldom afterwards) and I have seen no recent change
> in that. I do think that the snowstorm change was a good change, but
> in the end it is just abuse of open source volunteers by giving them
> the exact same treatment as paid Linden Lab employees: all
> the hard work, *exactly* following the rules dictated by Linden
> Lab but no room to do it your way. No voice in any decision
> making, and certainly no room to experience, or freedom.
> 
> Open source, however, is about FREEDOM: The freedom to
> CHANGE the code and to USE it as you see fit. The Best Ideas
> then survive as a result of "evolution". Bad ideas aren't used,
> popular ideas are copied by everyone. Linden Lab makes
> this natural process impossible. The only thing that is left
> is working for a company, without freedom, without a vote
> and without being paid.
> 
> I'm sorry that this how they run their business. I'm a lot
> more sorry that I saw too late that I really shouldn't volunteer
> to work for them under those conditions.
> 
> THIIS NOT OPEN SOURCE

150% agreed, and thus why, like almost all TPV developers, I
will keep developing code for my own viewer and will not help
LL improving theirs... When they will actually run the project
as a true, Open Source one, then I'll change my mind.

> For now I have joined "imprudence" (http://imprudenceviewer.org/).
> This is a true open source project. Surely Linden Lab can still
> block it from their servers, and they WILL do so when they start
> to disallow 1.23,

I doubt it... They already have the gun on the temple, but
pulling off the plug on v1.23/SG1-based TPVs would be like
pulling the trigger of the gun.
No, they will just block their official builds of v1.23 and SG1
from the grid, but as long as your TPV can keep up with the
protocols on the grid and is TPVP compliant, it will still be
possible to use it on SL. Take v1.19: the Cool VL Viewer v1.19.2
was updated so to cope with the new protocols and features
(Mono, adult stuff, etc), and it still connects happily to SL.

> but at least I won't be working anymore for them.
> Patches contributed to Imprudence will be pure GPL and not fall
> under the Contribution Agreement. Because this project is really,
> purely GPL it will be possible to use OTHER GPL-ed code, from
> other third party viewers for example, or anywhere else from
> the net. THAT is what open source is about.

I told them in this very list that this was what would be
happening... Looks like I was right...
My own patches are also GPL, and since they don't want to
get rid of the stupid license agreement that I can't sign
without giving up sensitive private data to them, LL can't
use either any of my patches either...

It would be a fun thing, if all TPV developers could agree
to make all their code 100% GPL and refuse to release it
under LL's license agreement term... I'd really love to see
LL's "strategists" face then...

> I'm pleased to have noticed that all the important open source
> people that I have learned to appreciate and respect are
> already there. If you are not, please join us! This doesn't have
> to a goodbye: I hope to see you join us on the other side!

I have my own viewer, but Imprudence is already using many of my
patches, and I do intend to reuse some of the code from Imprudence
as well (although it would be very much easier if only they could
provide a patch set like I do for the Cool VL Viewer). That's the
beauty of TRUE Open Source that Snowstorm will never benefit from !

> Thank you for your time,

Thank *you* for your wonderful work on Snowglobe !

> Aleric Inglewood.

Henri Beauchamp.


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