tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7115117288012344406.post2495391009550788894..comments2023-10-20T16:58:03.335+02:00Comments on Daltonic Gin: Let the thousand worlds bloom: the response to Gwyn's article about IBM, datacentre, and OpenSim.Dalienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16460776649089139090noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7115117288012344406.post-19144695735963391702008-03-02T16:36:00.000+01:002008-03-02T16:36:00.000+01:00"confidentiality"If you note, in the use case, it ..."confidentiality"<BR/>If you note, in the use case, it is a non-profit company working with public data.<BR/>For dealing with confidential stuff you need a hosted instance behind your firewall. That's not there today but it's not far away either.<BR/><BR/>"First of all, licensing doesn't really matter to a business project." - Boo. This statement is *soooo* wrong. Ask the lawyer nearest to you what does he think about this statement.<BR/><BR/>"There's a market niche"<BR/>I'm not interested in market niches. I'm interested in what can be used today by fortune 500 companies. The aspect of virtual worlds that has the most power for business transformation is the MMO aspect. OpenSim is quite some distance from that.<BR/><BR/>"running 3 billion lines of the LSL - it's a question of time"<BR/>Yes, but I can run those 3 billion lines of LSL TODAY in Second Life. Why wait?<BR/><BR/>"Ask the lawyer nearest to you what does he think about this statement"<BR/>Trust me. I deal with lawyers all the time. Open source licenses are the worst to deal with, especially if they are viral like GPL. If I wanted to publish the tool I mentioned for checking if a piece of LSL code would run to the web (which, incidentally, dynamically references the web page you gave) I would have to apply for a Certificate Of Originality. This is a painful process of discovering the provenance of every line of code in what I'm shipping, and if we have the rights to publish it. For commercial code with which we have a commercial license, it is easy. The license clearly states we have the right to redistribute without further pain. For open source code it gets... complicated.<BR/><BR/>"the datacenter was built on the opensim code, and it is very hard to arque with"<BR/>I'm happy to cede OpenSim it's niche. I've never argued that. I've only argued against assuming that it is moving in a Second Life direction of that it will have the aspects of Second Life that make it compelling. It's a conclusion that too many people jump to.Johttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06531826547112113283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7115117288012344406.post-88746382831685428822008-03-02T12:29:00.000+01:002008-03-02T12:29:00.000+01:00re. confidentiality - thanks for the reference - y...re. confidentiality - thanks for the reference - you're building the visualisations of the data, and the info to do them goes into a domain you do not control. Of course if the spreadsheets contain the investment data, etc. - I suppose you would not want to push it into the SL. Or, any sane infosec department would not want you to do it :-) If you've been observing the domain tasting by the NetSol - where they'd register the domain which existence you have just checked - it's the type of thing I'm talking about. If your info is important, you might want to be a bit paranoid who sees it.<BR/><BR/>"First of all, licensing doesn't really matter to a business project." - Boo. This statement is *soooo* wrong. Ask the lawyer nearest to you what does he think about this statement. <BR/><BR/>"There's no one who will sign a support contract, no guarantee of stability or suitability." - take a look at <A HREF="http://daltonic.blogspot.com/2008/03/better-than-free.html" REL="nofollow">this post</A>. There's a market niche there indeed of someone charging the businesses for taking some part of liability for the stability/etc. And there are a couple of potential players for it.<BR/><BR/>re. running 3 billion lines of the LSL - it's a question of time and desire of folks. <BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Alondria" REL="nofollow">here</A> and <A HREF="http://opensimulator.org/wiki/LSL_Status/functions/summary" REL="nofollow">here</A> there's some information you might want to keep an eye on.<BR/><BR/>In any case - we'll see what happens in the future. <BR/><BR/>The fact remains the fact - the datacenter was built on the opensim code, and it is very hard to arque with :-)Dalienhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16460776649089139090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7115117288012344406.post-10874252038532982362008-03-02T02:09:00.000+01:002008-03-02T02:09:00.000+01:00"I assume the confidentiality requirements will co..."I assume the confidentiality requirements will come into play"<BR/>O_o I'm not quite sure what you <I>think</I> I'm talking about, but I'm pretty sure it's <I>not</I> what I'm talking about. I guess I have to be clearer. I just did a posting in <A HREF="http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/roivw?entry=a_vision_of_symphony_spreadsheets" REL="nofollow">my blog</A> so I could be as longwinded as I like about the sorts of integrations I'm talking about. No confidentiality agreements, hackery, protocol interventions, or overlays required. If you still think my approach is a "broken concept" I'd like to know.<BR/><BR/>"you're comparing ... code base which is available ... under BSD license *right now*, versus something which *may* be available sometime later under some form of licensing"<BR/>First of all, licensing doesn't really matter to a business project. If you don't care about manipulating the code it's not a benefit to you that you can. What you care about is it's suitability for your purpose. *Right now* OpenSim is not suitable for any MMO purpose. Second Life is. As for timing, solving a legal problem is a lot easier than making open source code enterprise ready.<BR/><BR/>"it is mostly just a means to relax and experiment"<BR/>I think it's the same for most people involved in OpenSim. You have to understand this gives most people looking at it from a business point of view the willies. There's no one who will sign a support contract, no guarantee of stability or suitability. "But you can edit the code yourself" doesn't really reassure someone who just wants to get a job done with minimal risk.<BR/><BR/>"it is a comparison of apples and squirrels"<BR/>I couldn't agree more. That's where this conversation started. Gwyn assumed that OpenSim was going to have the same objectives and capabilities as Second Life (e.g. could run the 3 billion lines of LSL) and I was pointing out the problem with those assumptions. :-)Johttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06531826547112113283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7115117288012344406.post-41104214858447331092008-03-01T22:40:00.000+01:002008-03-01T22:40:00.000+01:00Sorry for the teasing with the programmers content...Sorry for the teasing with the programmers content :-) I just could not help to pick on that :)<BR/><BR/>If you talk about integrating Lotus with 3D environment, I assume the confidentiality requirements will come into play - and satisfying them would mean hackery either with the client or with some kind of middleware that would intercept the packets and filter the content as it comes to the client, creating an "overlay" on top of the SL - which is, while looks easier, is a bit of a broken concept IMHO. And this is the bucks *not* spent on the content contrary to what you are saying, but rather on the coding.<BR/><BR/>Besides, there is an availability question - even though LL made somewhat an improvement in grid availability, it is still far from what it would need to be to allow it to be a layer to host the business-critical data on.<BR/><BR/>And aside from the above, there's one more thing - you're comparing an (obviously feature-incomplete, I agree) code base which is available for the download under BSD license *right now*, versus something which *may* be available sometime later under some form of licensing - and most surely not BSD.<BR/><BR/>I do not have any religious feeling about OpenSim nor any business interest as such - for me personally it is mostly just a means to relax and experiment - there're a lot of very interesting problems to solve in the distributed architecture with respect to the trust, identity, and storage.<BR/><BR/>Nonetheless, when I see the SL serverside code opened and licensed under the comparable (MIT or BSD) licensing terms - I'll be happy to take a look at the code and make the judgement and agree with you. <BR/><BR/>Till then, it is a comparison of apples and squirrels, IMHO. :)Dalienhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16460776649089139090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7115117288012344406.post-536441613961295542008-03-01T17:40:00.000+01:002008-03-01T17:40:00.000+01:00I was hoping that you would engage my comments mor...I was hoping that you would engage my comments more seriously. For example:<BR/><BR/>"Hiring the programmers to create the content is one of the worst decisions a hiring manager can make, really"<BR/><BR/>A company has resources and chooses how to spend them. The *point* is that they can hire people to work on OpenSim, or they can hire people to create content. Each costs money. If you hire people to work on OpenSim, then you still need to hire people to work on content once OpenSim is to the point where it is commercially useful to you. I'd rather have seen you engage this point rather than erect a trivial strawman about getting programmers to produce content. You just have to glance at any of my builds to see what a ridiculous concept that is! :-)<BR/><BR/>"everything is a bit raw" is a bit of an understatement. I wrote a tool that would analyze LSL scripts with respect to what functions have been implemented in OpenSim and report on the results. 77 of the 78 scripts that happened to be on my hard disk were unrunnable in OpenSim. So much for those 3 billion lines of LSL code out there.<BR/><BR/>"Up for some coding, Jo ? :)"<BR/>This appears to be the typical OpenSim answer. 'If you don't like it, roll up your programmer sleeves and do something about it.' This developer hubris is naïve if you are going to look at this from a commercial perspective. As above, it's a question of how far your dollars go.<BR/><BR/>From a personal perspective, my interest is integrating IBM Lotus Workplace products into virtual worlds. (Personal, alas, I don't get paid for this.) Choice one: work on this with the already existing, massively used, world of Second Life, and burn some time getting around the technical limitations there. Choice two: work on OpenSim to make it easy to integrate these things technically, then work on OpenSim some more to make it capable of deployment at an enterprise level, the hope that users flock to OpenSim, and <I>then</I> work on integrating in Workplace technology. It's not a hard choice.<BR/><BR/>The outcome of a similar debate with another IBMer lead to a bet between him and me about how far and how quickly OpenSim would go. More importantly, we came up with a metric for measuring that progress. The bet is chronicled on <A HREF="http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/roivw?entry=betting_on_opensim" REL="nofollow">my blog</A> and I'm happy to take anyone else up on the same terms. :-)Johttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06531826547112113283noreply@blogger.com