What happened in 2010 that stopped work on interoperability?

[animats]

I've been reading some of the old wiki entries, from the days in 2007-2010 when people were trying to link multiple SL-type grids together. There are chat logs on a regular basis, and then suddenly in 2010 it just stops. The final meeting is busy, has no indication that anything is ending, or that there are any major problems. So what happened?

[Mollymews]

by 2010 the work had been forked between Second Life Enterprise and OpenSim

Linden were going with their SL Enterprise edition and the opensource dev community with OpenSim

is quite a few mainstream media articles about SL Enterprise at time of launch. Like this one: https://venturebeat.com/2009/11/03/linden-lab-launches-enterprise-version-of-second-life-virtual-world/

[Lyssa Greymoon]

That's about the time Linden Lab fired a third of the staff.

[Aishagain]

Re all this:  The thing that stunned me most was that Mark Kingdon actually thought that SL Enterprise, as a "behind the Firewall" entity would actually be attractive to ANYONE!  Perhaps it is no surprise that Philip Rosedale was called back to extricate SL from the mess that Kingdon had made of it.

Edited December 1, 2020 by Aishagain
spelling correction

[Oz Linden]

Those efforts had pretty much stopped having Linden involvement by the time I joined the company in May of 2010 (which was also the time of that layoff - I was the last person to start before it happened). 

I discussed some aspects of it with my boss at the time (I'd worked on many standards efforts in the IETF and other orgs), and he told me that we had become convinced that standardizing on anything much like what we had then would not actually be in the interests of Virtual World technology evolution - put another way, we thought we should improve how things worked before standardizing. Having spent over 10 years now on making many of those improvements, he was right.

Neither the layoff nor Second Life Enterprise had anything to do with it.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

On 12/2/2020 at 10:24 AM, Oz Linden said:

Those efforts had pretty much stopped having Linden involvement by the time I joined the company in May of 2010 (which was also the time of that layoff - I was the last person to start before it happened). 

I discussed some aspects of it with my boss at the time (I'd worked on many standards efforts in the IETF and other orgs), and he told me that we had become convinced that standardizing on anything much like what we had then would not actually be in the interests of Virtual World technology evolution - put another way, we thought we should improve how things worked before standardizing. Having spent over 10 years now on making many of those improvements, he was right.

Neither the layoff nor Second Life Enterprise had anything to do with it.

any hope for any thing related to opensim from LL or such?  Not sure if anythings even on the table now, but just curious.

[Ardy Lay]

Hey Moe, you want another Nebraska?  I was gonna order then learned what the maintenance would cost and bailed out.

[ItHadToComeToThis]

Apparently the age for Enterprise still exists. I doubt anyone is using it though?

https://www.connect.secondlife.com

[Ardy Lay]

On 12/1/2020 at 12:23 AM, animats said:

I've been reading some of the old wiki entries, from the days in 2007-2010 when people were trying to link multiple SL-type grids together. There are chat logs on a regular basis, and then suddenly in 2010 it just stops. The final meeting is busy, has no indication that anything is ending, or that there are any major problems. So what happened?

Wasn't really much more than a logout-from-SL then login-to-<otherVW>, all done under software control.  You got to take nothing with you.  I really do not see any benefit in that.  Certainly no benefit that justifies the effort.  No, it was not teleporting from one grid to another.  It was literally logging out of one system and logging in to another system.  If it was a teleport then it could have just as easily been a region crossing.

Now, linking multiple grids would be interesting but HOW, when they are different and have different requirements and capabilities?  Oh yeah, let's add that software complexity and MASSES of resulting software defects that will result.  NO THANKS!  I will just logout and launch the other program.  There will not be a "universal client" any time soon.  Maybe that's never gonna happen until somebody comes along and trounces all the others, like, say, Google is doing with web browsers.

[animats]

4 hours ago, Ardy Lay said:

Now, linking multiple grids would be interesting but HOW, when they are different and have different requirements and capabilities? 

It could be done with modern technology. Maybe you don't get to take your inventory, but on arrival in the new system, you get the closest visual match from items in your inventory. Like font substitution, where, if you don't have the exact font, one that looks similar is used.

CasperVend supports selling items in a way that supports multiple grids. Few use it, but the system is in place. Kitely has that, too.

An important feature is to allow a party to cross as a group, so you and your friends can visit a different metaverse. (SL ought to have this in world. Fortnite has it.) With RLV and some viewer support, that could work.

So it's quite possible to implement crossing between mostly disconnected systems.

[Ardy Lay]

Wear your space suit.  Vacuum is cold and hard.

[Arielle Popstar]

On 12/1/2020 at 1:23 AM, animats said:

I've been reading some of the old wiki entries, from the days in 2007-2010 when people were trying to link multiple SL-type grids together. There are chat logs on a regular basis, and then suddenly in 2010 it just stops. The final meeting is busy, has no indication that anything is ending, or that there are any major problems. So what happened?

If you read the log from 2010-6-1 there is chat about the then upcoming SLCC and not bringing up VWRAP there since it was no longer a part of what the Lab was working towards. I remember sitting in on one of their meetings in Osgrid's Wright Plaza back then and the discussion being about where to go from that point since the Lindens were no longer involved. I did a search of the Opensimulator Wiki pages but was unsuccessful in finding the logs of those particular meetings held in Osgrid.

[Arielle Popstar]

On 12/2/2020 at 12:24 PM, Oz Linden said:

Those efforts had pretty much stopped having Linden involvement by the time I joined the company in May of 2010 (which was also the time of that layoff - I was the last person to start before it happened). 

I discussed some aspects of it with my boss at the time (I'd worked on many standards efforts in the IETF and other orgs), and he told me that we had become convinced that standardizing on anything much like what we had then would not actually be in the interests of Virtual World technology evolution - put another way, we thought we should improve how things worked before standardizing. Having spent over 10 years now on making many of those improvements, he was right.

Neither the layoff nor Second Life Enterprise had anything to do with it.

I recall that between the VWRAP, the May/2010 Tos changes to stop the export of full perm content and S/L Enterprise, the general feeling in Opensim at least was that the Lab was closing its borders and circling the wagons to protect its niche space.

After the demise of both High Fidelity and Sansar I have to wonder if some standardizing might not have helped both get a little more of a following. Philip even mentioned in one conference speech the possibility of a connection between Opensim (and by extension S/L) with High Fidelity. That would have been quite interesting had that come about and prompted some Opensim residents at the time to take a closer look at HF.

[Ardy Lay]

Let's connect an empty world of freeloaders to our world and let them suck out everything we have.  They can justify it by saying they haven't taken anything away from us because they just made copies of all our stuff and we have no right to deny them this activity.