[sldev] Opening the server source?

[Dzonatas]

Argent Stonecutter wrote:
>> Does that help?
>
> It helps me understand what your position is. It doesn't help me 
> understand your position.

As long as we are on the same page, that is good enough. Let me answer 
your questions.

>
> Right now I get the closest thing to "complete ownership of land" on 
> the sims that Linden Labs most closely controls. Where Linden Labs 
> control is weaker, my ability to own land is weaker... that is, on a 
> private island even if I buy land it's only rented.
>
> Why would you expect a private server owner to provide me more 
> "ownership" of land than a private sim owner?
Limitations can be overcome easily. For example, why should businesses 
wait for LL to provide the best scripting language when one can build 
the best sim for their business with the tools and scripting interface 
for their needs. A private sim owner would have to provide all the 
tools. A private server owner only has to provide the basic platform.

If the private sim was the real answer, nobody would want to, likewise, 
host their own Apache server.

>
> Or are you equating "owning land" to "owning a sim"?
...
That wasn't the intention of my position. Land is land... and virtual 
land can be made of sims... but both virtal land and real land is made 
of sand... real sand. The group I started is not "Dreamland".. it is 
"Dreamsand".

If one would ask the difference, one could put on the old Metallica tune 
on... Enter Sandman. =)

Dreamland and everybody that has followed foot has the line drawn on 
their business model. If you are worried about the economy, you would be 
aware of that line. I'm not after just the land. =)

>
> Even there you're beholden to Linden Labs for the access to the grid, 
> to an ISP for access to the Internet, and to a hosting site for power 
> and maintenance.
...

Hmm. ISPs don't make the Internet. Telephone companies have been a great 
instrument to speed up the Internet connections. Consider such 
businesses power play industry like http://www.ballard.com and you'll 
probably understand how power and maintenance can be... well, like... A 
Happy July 4th!

>
> "Land" in SL is the thing that seems hardest to treat as something you 
> "own" rather than "rent". Land is processor time that you rent, that's 
> all.
...

That would be more of a false sense of security started by the telephone 
companies and their terms of service agreements where you aren't suppose 
to have any other Internet connection at your home besides their own. 
That was the only way for them to make money. They had to stop the 
growth of the Internet by mandate of a star topology. The Internet was 
never intended to be a star topology. It was and still is intended to be 
quite an arbitrary mesh. The star topologies is the limiting factor in 
"Land" in SL.

Nonetheless, we don't need to worry about these things right now. How 
the aspects of Land changes in SL won't destroy the economy unless LL 
limits itself, also.
>
> The *configuration* of that land and the *contents* of that land, 
> maybe, but there you run into the property rights problem that I 
> started with: when you buy some asset in SL you're rarely buying 
> unlimited rights to that asset. If you can take that out of SL you're 
> taking more rights than you're entitled to.

Hmm. I understand your fear here. We see the same thing, but our fears 
are different about it. Where one sees a beast the other sees beauty.


> If you want to connect your virtual land to Agni, to use the property 
> right you're interested in, you will have to give up so many rights in 
> that land (including the right to retain the contents of the server if 
> you remove it from the grid) that you might as well simply buy a 
> private island. And if you're going to retain the kinds of rights that 
> make it worthwhile to talk of "exporting" the land in any meaningful 
> sense, should you be allowed to connect to Agni?
>
> That's what I'm going on about, here. What kinds of things could be 
> done to accommodate people who want to control their "real estate" in 
> Second Life without wrecking the economy of Second Life.
...

Yes, exactly.

If the server contains special scripts, lets say written in Mono instead 
of LSL, to access special C# libraries only available on that server's 
land, then those scripts are completely worthless to anywhere else on 
Agni. C# is not the best most powerful language, but under Mono it can 
be controlled pretty well to allow residents to develop on a special sim.

A demo, I know people want to see a demo. Let me see what I can do this 
week (or two) to let my Apache server that runs my old (pre-java!) 
object-oriented scripting language open a port to the public for trial. 
It has a wiki like interface where you can program it over the web. If 
you are used to interfaces of web-wikis and the old LambaMoos, think of 
the mother-of-all-mutant-hyrbids and you'll understand how this works. A 
simple name for it could be "co-generation".

Hmm. It's on my coLinux server, so I'll have to upload it to my public 
server. Oh see SVC-98, I wanted to integrate it with LL's sim, but...

How do we do it without wrecking the economy of Second Life?  Simple, 
Second Life shouldn't wreck the economy of the residents. Does SL/LL 
push people to the streets? I know the answer to that! =)

Interesting, it appears that Anshe Chung has started to pave the way for 
her own street to walk on. http://wselive.com/news/show/10   DSE, hehe 
D.S. coincadink

'nuff said....  thank you for reading.

-- 
Power to Change the Void