[sldev] Opening the server source?

[Tao Takashi]

Isn't there a difference between web sites and a virtual world? Websites are
more or less distinct spaces while a virtual world IMHO should be more
continuous. So if you walk or teleport from A to B people usually don't
bother if you need to trust B or not. You even my walk into it and might not
even notice it. So people might need to be more sensible to the place they
are on. But then again on a website you are usually on a branded site and
you might know or might not know that brand. On a sim with e.g. residential
parcels you might not know who the owner is and if you can trust him or her
(Linden Lab's sim might be known as the ones you can trust though and
probably there will be some more bigger providers then).

Another difference is that I usually don't take content from website A to
website B (like attachements in SL). And certificates might also not help if
applied like on the web as they only secure the transmission between client
and server but not what the owner of the server might be able to do with it.
Different certificate application could be created of course in a way that
scripts are only readable by people with the right certificate etc. But I
guess everything can be broken and in the end it's nevertheless up to whom
you trust (on the web of course I can also copy any photo if I wanted to. I
just might not be allowed to do so).

Last but not least the main worry of people is that content might get stolen
because it's usually up for sale and not free. On web2.0 sites at least it's
different as the whole idea there is to share and if something moves to
another spot (like an embedded video) then this is actually intended
behaviour.

So all in all I think there are many not that easy to solve issues, some
technical, some structural and some UI wise.

As for the idea of opening up itself I think that backend database solutions
will be around quite quickly and thus I really wonder what a business model
for LL could be. Moreover I think that a true virtual world standard is hard
to achieve. If a business is doing it they need to make sure it makes sense
for their business model and they need to find partners. Now the term
"virtual world" is sort of a big term and it has many incarnations and it
might be hard to get all these incarnations into one standard.. So first it
needs to get broken up anyway and then maybe somebody can start on a
standard for e.g. exchanging objects (which already depends very much on the
internal representation of objects like prim based or polygon based).

All in all a non-trivial task.

(but I'd like to learn more about the business model of Linden Lab for that
case :-)

-- Tao







2007/6/30, Chance Unknown <chance at kalacia.com>:
>
> You fail to realize something : it's all just online hosted content. You
> "trust" websites enough to click the viagra links in your email. So what is
> the issue with trusting other online hosted content in the same manner?
> There isn't any -- update your virus scanners, and make sure your pop up
> blockers are up to date - and browse till your mouse finger falls off.
>
> On 6/30/07, Dzonatas <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
>
> >  Tateru Nino wrote:
> >
> > Jason Giglio wrote:
> >
> >  Tateru Nino wrote:
> >
> >  Whoever owns the hardware owns whatever's going on on that hardware.
> > Your rezzed objects and scripts, your textures. They can read your IMs
> >
> >  If only it were that simple.  Without some serious centralization, you
> > don't need to merely trust your sim hosting provider, you need to
> > trust EVERY sim hosting provider.
> >
> > Unless you plan on selling your neat objects only to people on your
> > own hosting service, and not allowing them to ever change providers,
> > which would kinda suck.
> >
> >  Ah, yes. Sorry - I didn't mean to trivialise the amount of work required
> > to migrate the grid from an every-sim-is-totally-trustworthy to a
> > sims-cannot-necessarily-be-trusted position. Just saying that even once
> > that is done, you, the avatar must still trust the person who is running
> > the hardware.
> >
> >
> > It appears a bit of false security is being uncovered here. I'd worry
> > less about who to trust and worry more about how to make it more secure.
> > Something along the lines of those security certificates you find in web
> > browser may help.
> >
> > --
> > Power to Change the Void
> >
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