What happens if Linden lab closes/shuts down

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, CoffeeDujour said:

 

If SL drops dead. We will not all be going to Opensim. Even if only 1% of us went to Opensim, we would kill it and it would take significant developer time (months) to reengineer the parts that don't scale up the the standard required. By the time that work is done, we would have all moved on.

Opensim can not be fixed by adding more better faster hardware.

The entire online population on the biggest Opensim grid right now (Opengrid, 133 Online) could be simultaneously hosted on 2 SL regions. This happens routinely at SL shopping events.

With the available architecture options of Opensim, there is no need to create a grid like Secondlife. There can be many (and there are) different grids which still have access to each other through the Hypergrid. Each Grid or region thereon is capable, hardware and pipe permitting, of having 40-60 avatars on it at once. Opensim by its very nature is capable of hosting every avatar that is and ever has been on the secondlife grid at once, just not localized to one grid like here but yet have access to each other through the hypergrid protocol.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

16 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

With the available architecture options of Opensim, there is no need to create a grid like Secondlife. There can be many (and there are) different grids which still have access to each other through the Hypergrid. Each Grid or region thereon is capable, hardware and pipe permitting, of having 40-60 avatars on it at once. Opensim by its very nature is capable of hosting every avatar that is and ever has been on the secondlife grid at once, just not localized to one grid like here but yet have access to each other through the hypergrid protocol.

I turn off hypergrid and I've load  tested with 30 avatars at once, yeah.  not fun.

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

With the available architecture options of Opensim, there is no need to create a grid like Secondlife. There can be many (and there are) different grids which still have access to each other through the Hypergrid. Each Grid or region thereon is capable, hardware and pipe permitting, of having 40-60 avatars on it at once. Opensim by its very nature is capable of hosting every avatar that is and ever has been on the secondlife grid at once, just not localized to one grid like here but yet have access to each other through the hypergrid protocol.

Second Life's ability to scale was born of a very rocky sudden uptick in growth where it very much did not scale. The grid would break in non-obvious and almost unrelated ways every few days. At scale, SL as a platform becomes an insanely complex system of interactions, and minor failures at any point can cascade into catastrophic ones that take some serious work to post mortem.

This complexity is why the cloud move has been so very cautious. 

Opensim as it stands, does not scale, does not have the potential to scale, and due the the complete lack of need, has no one working on making it or any of the sub components scale. Not that they could meaningfully test it even if.

Regions are only one piece of the puzzle (.. and Opensim regions alone are nothing like as performant as SL ones, let alone the rest of the infrastructure).

As for Opensim architecture options, if anyone expects it to be the go-to SL safety net, then it has to create a grid like Second Life. Anything less misses the entire point, neatly demonstrated by Opensim's complete failure to attract a meaningful userbase in almost 13 years.

At the time of writing, Opengrid's population count has dropped to 67 (from 113 earlier today). 

 

Edited September 26, 2020 by CoffeeDujour

[Conifer Dada]

I can't see any evidence that Second Life is likely to shut down permanently in the foreseeable future but just suppose that did happen, it could be for several reasons.

1) SL ceases to be profitable for the owners of Linden Lab.

2) SL becomes illegal under some kind of new censorship laws introduced in the USA in particular.

3) Technical Armageddon hits the SL servers or the 'cloud', wiping out any meaningful virtual world.

If any of these things happen, then we'd probably lose everything and that would be that. I suppose in the case of the first two scenarios, LL could decide to make everything open source during its remaining days. If they made everything full perms we could grab what we can and attempt to transfer it to OpenSim or wherever!

Edited September 26, 2020 by Conifer Dada

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

4 minutes ago, Conifer Dada said:

it could be for several reasons.

I would add

 

4) People talk up a doom-and-gloom mood to the point where they stop logging into SecondLife or spending money on land and Marketplace and ....

 

Well, it's not going to happen, is it? This is just disaster-porn, we're all gonna dye, (I'll be blue, you can be pink)

[Conifer Dada]

I agree. Given that SL has survived 17 years of predictions of its downfall, I see no reason to believe it will happen any time soon. This thread is about a hypothetical situation but it's still quite interesting to discuss. Not VERY interesting though - only quite interesting!!!

Edited September 26, 2020 by Conifer Dada

[FairreLilette]

The world is facing a lot of unknowns now because of coronavirus and we are not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.  

One headline read yesterday SELL ALL PAPER MONEY which more or less means invest in gold or other metals.  All countries and all currencies could be severely devalued.  The stock market could be trading like a ghost town with many companies which are actually bankrupt but haven't filed for bankruptcy yet.  Once all those companies do declare bankruptcy, their stock is worthless.  The whole DOW and others will have to be re-calibrated into a new monetary value.  

It is a time for certain SL business' to consider sales, that is for sure.  I think SL will "weather" through the forthcoming coronavirus years and economic depression, but it's going to be rough I'm sure.  Our governments would need to give us all about 10 thousand dollars a month to save business' and our governments aren't going to do that.   How this will effect a virtual world better is teleconferencing.   But, will the teleconferencer's be regular consumers or just buy one suit for example.  Aaaaaaaaaaah, the years ahead are going to be rough.

[Nick0678]

I am sure Second Life will be around for a few more years as long as it's still profitable, of course it is well known how it changed over the years.

 

June 2010

Total Main Grid Regions: 31,988

Private Estates: 25, 436  <<<<

Linden Owned: 6,552

 

January 2013

Total Main Grid Regions: 28, 036

Private Estates: 20, 921 <<<<

Linden Owned: 7, 115 

 

July 2020 (under COVID-19 Global Restrictions)

Total Main Grid Regions: 24, 947
Private Estates: 16, 662 <<<<
Linden Owned: 8, 285

 

In 10 years time there is clear loss of  about 10,000 Private Regions.

 

http://www.gridsurvey.com/economy.php

Edited September 26, 2020 by Nick0678

[bigmoe Whitfield]

9 hours ago, Nick0678 said:

I am sure Second Life will be around for a few more years as long as it's still profitable, of course it is well known how it changed over the years.

 

June 2010

Total Main Grid Regions: 31,988

Private Estates: 25, 436  <<<<

Linden Owned: 6,552

 

January 2013

Total Main Grid Regions: 28, 036

Private Estates: 20, 921 <<<<

Linden Owned: 7, 115 

 

July 2020 (under COVID-19 Global Restrictions)

Total Main Grid Regions: 24, 947
Private Estates: 16, 662 <<<<
Linden Owned: 8, 285

 

In 10 years time there is clear loss of  about 10,000 Private Regions.

 

http://www.gridsurvey.com/economy.php

SL lost a few situated people when LL had to move prices around on homesteads to cover their costs.  

I've had my sim and homestead since 2009 personally.

[Arielle Popstar]

On 9/26/2020 at 2:13 AM, CoffeeDujour said:

Second Life's ability to scale was born of a very rocky sudden uptick in growth where it very much did not scale. The grid would break in non-obvious and almost unrelated ways every few days. At scale, SL as a platform becomes an insanely complex system of interactions, and minor failures at any point can cascade into catastrophic ones that take some serious work to post mortem.

Did you see the notice recently that SecondLife was not going to sell any regions for now? Not exactly confidence inspiring about its ability to scale. 

Quote

Opensim as it stands, does not scale, does not have the potential to scale, and due the the complete lack of need, has no one working on making it or any of the sub components scale. Not that they could meaningfully test it even if.

Again, it does not need to scale in the same way as S/L does. Opensim is like the bit torrent of virtual worlds, many small nodes interconnected but independent. One node breaks down has little effect on the whole whereas if a Linden trips over the server cord, the lights go out for the whole grid.

Quote

As for Opensim architecture options, if anyone expects it to be the go-to SL safety net, then it has to create a grid like Second Life. Anything less misses the entire point, neatly demonstrated by Opensim's complete failure to attract a meaningful userbase in almost 13 years.

I disagree. No doubt there will be those who cannot wrap their heads around the idea of hypergridding and will be stuck on their own small grid or standalone but I think many will figure it out and take it in stride. Opensim's current lack of userbase attraction is simply that S/L is too convenient to pass up but being we are discussing what happens if S/L goes down, then for most there will be a lot less learning curve sticking with something like Opensim then moving to another virtual world.

Quote

At the time of writing, Opengrid's population count has dropped to 67 (from 113 earlier today). 

Are you meaning Osgrid? I don't know of a grid called Opengrid that would have a concurrency of 113. In any case that is only one of many grids out there, both visible and on the dark net. American daytime concurrency on those grids that publish their stats are much higher than that alone. Grids that hide their stats, education grids as well as all the Dreamgrid installations would bump those numbers up a lot more again. You are drastically underestimating the concurrency numbers basing it on this Opengrid alone.

[Arielle Popstar]

On 9/25/2020 at 9:45 PM, bigmoe Whitfield said:

I turn off hypergrid and I've load  tested with 30 avatars at once, yeah.  not fun.

Today on Osgrid at a fundraising event, they had 51 people on one region while I was there, without a speck of lag to be seen anywhere. Yesterday it was close to 60. That was with hypergridding on as a number came over from other grids. Fun was had by all.

[Solar Legion]

That's nice.

Gonna give the praise singing a rest?

[bigmoe Whitfield]

5 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Today on Osgrid at a fundraising event, they had 51 people on one region while I was there, without a speck of lag to be seen anywhere. Yesterday it was close to 60. That was with hypergridding on as a number came over from other grids. Fun was had by all.

 

what engine and that will tell me all? if it's the stock opensim engine, yeah not happening.   if it was halycon engine, then sure.  otherwise it will stall the stock engine out and it does stops responding after you get 20 people in the sim, with some tinkering you can get 30.   I've got top of the line dell units in a data center and some aws setups and even those it stalls on.    opensim needs load balancing,  needs to off load instead of trying to continue to run it all under one roof.  

[Arielle Popstar]

5 minutes ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

 

what engine and that will tell me all? if it's the stock opensim engine, yeah not happening.   if it was halycon engine, then sure.  otherwise it will stall the stock engine out and it does stops responding after you get 20 people in the sim, with some tinkering you can get 30.   I've got top of the line dell units in a data center and some aws setups and even those it stalls on.    opensim needs load balancing,  needs to off load instead of trying to continue to run it all under one roof.  

Probably Ubit's Y engine.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

I'd have to find out whats on their backend,  51 people to 60 people on a stock opensim core is just not happening,  moving the physical to nvidia's halycon direved engine that a few opensim worlds are using now, can get that number IF the hardware is up to it, most people skimp on hardware.  

 

currently working on a beta version of a opensim grid for a customer and we can only load it to 31 avatars before it stalls our opensim core out,   I've got a little over 25k in each server,  and spending to much on ec2 aws instances.     I'll see what this ubit is.  I'm not on stock engine either, so that one I can rule out.    gah, now I'm second guessing myself LOL.   thanks ♥

[Arielle Popstar]

23 minutes ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

I'd have to find out whats on their backend,  51 people to 60 people on a stock opensim core is just not happening,  moving the physical to nvidia's halycon direved engine that a few opensim worlds are using now, can get that number IF the hardware is up to it, most people skimp on hardware.  

The region it was on is Event Plaza at Osgrid, running OpenSim 0.9.2.0 Yeti Dev   726fc92a2b: 2020-08-04 21:28:37. More surprisingly then how many there were, was how fast both the region and the avatars all loaded. Couple minutes and everything was complete.

[Ardy Lay]

6 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The region it was on is Event Plaza at Osgrid, running OpenSim 0.9.2.0 Yeti Dev   726fc92a2b: 2020-08-04 21:28:37. More surprisingly then how many there were, was how fast both the region and the avatars all loaded. Couple minutes and everything was complete.

Couple minutes?   ?   ?   Are you serious?  That’s phenomenal...

 

 

 

 

for a Pentium 4 on a dialup modem.

Edited September 28, 2020 by Ardy Lay
I keep confusing i486 and Pentium 4.

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, Ardy Lay said:

Couple minutes?   ?   ?   Are you serious?  That’s phenomenal...

for a Pentium 4 on a dialup modem.

Lately it has been for my i7-7700 3GB 1060 with GB/30MB connection too in both S/L and Opensim.

[Coffee Pancake]

16 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Did you see the notice recently that SecondLife was not going to sell any regions for now? Not exactly confidence inspiring about its ability to scale. 

SL is almost the smallest it has been since the initial launch spike, the decision to stop selling regions has everything to do with LL being taken over and nothing to do with the platforms scalability,

[Solar Legion]

Not even that, Coffee. Between recent projects and the sudden spike in demand they saw for regions it behooved them to cease sales for now.

The timing is simply coincidental.

[Sammy Huntsman]

3 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Not even that, Coffee. Between recent projects and the sudden spike in demand they saw for regions it behooved them to cease sales for now.

The timing is simply coincidental.

Didn't they say that until they have fully moved to the cloud they are stopping the sales of new regions? I think that is what Ebbe said, but I am not too sure.

[Solar Legion]

Just now, halebore Aeon said:

Didn't they say that until they have fully moved to the cloud they are stopping the sales of new regions? I think that is what Ebbe said, but I am not too sure.

Even if not directly said, that is pretty much what is happening.

[Sammy Huntsman]

1 minute ago, Solar Legion said:

Even if not directly said, that is pretty much what is happening.

And even then they said they would have SL integrated fully into the cloud sometime in Feb or March of next year.

[Arielle Popstar]

Just now, halebore Aeon said:

Didn't they say that until they have fully moved to the cloud they are stopping the sales of new regions? I think that is what Ebbe said, but I am not too sure.

It is due to the uplift but was under the impression it was because extra regions were not scheduled to be put up till their time came. 

[Sammy Huntsman]

Just now, Arielle Popstar said:

It is due to the uplift but was under the impression it was because extra regions were not scheduled to be put up till their time came. 

Yes and when SL is fully integrated or migrated on the cloud things will be back to normal. They explained this during last years SL17B or at a lab gab.