Last time I wrote, I was downloading the OpenSim server software to my external hard disk via SVN. That went well, but I have to admit that the instructions for compiling and running it on MacOS 1.5 were so daunting that I deferred that until after I’d tried out the binary under WindowsXP.

It worked! I installed and ran the binary version of the open source server on WinXP, which was installed on a virtual machine running in Parallels Desktop for Mac on my early 2006 20″ Intel Core Duo iMac, and while I couldn’t do much except look around with the camera tools (since I had not configured any of the other servers — asset, inventory and avatar databases), it was quite a thrill to know that I could have my own little world running on even a laptop unconnected to the internet if I wished. (The reason I use an external disk for my virtual machines is so I can access them using my husband’s 17″ MacBook Pro or any other Mac with Parallels Desktop installed.) I logged in using a copy of the SecondLife viewer, just editing the target definition in the shortcut’s general properties window, and using the default login ID and password of “Test User” and “Password”. The target I specified in Properties, of course, was the localhost URI, http://127.0.0.1 plus the designated port, in this case “:9000″.

Other VW Developments

In an already-running OpenSim grid (OpenLife), a week or two ago I met the person who started that system, Sakai OpenLife (OL name). It was interesting chatting with him, and he gave me a tip I’ve followed up on for porting content among VWs. He said many people have had good luck with Second Inventory, an application that creates a backup on your own hard disk of objects, textures, bodyparts, etc. as long as you have full permissions for those assets. I discovered that there is a multi-avatar version available, so while it’s a bit pricey (29 Euros, vs 14 Euros for the single-avatar version), I went ahead and bought it. It does indeed work as promised, although it is a bit slow to copy a large inventory since the “folder copy” function isn’t yet enabled and items must be backed up and restored one at a time. Folder actions are promised for the next version, though.

I ran a few tests, and I was able to back up and “restore” copies of simple and linked objects from both my primary and alt accounts in SecondLife to accounts in Open Life and OS Grid. It isn’t perfect; embedded scripts don’t always make it, and when they do they must be recompiled since not all LSL functions are available in the OpenSim VWs yet, and animations also don’t seem to come across when embedded in an object. Presumably those might be uploaded and added to objects if one has the .bvh files for them, though. My coffee mugs came through with their handles and “coffee” intact and didn’t require relinking, but the “drink” animation and script aren’t there, and the little “ring” piece used for the rim of the cup wasn’t linked. I just threw away the rings since they aren’t critical, and copied the particle steam script I used in SL, recompiled it and added it to the “steam” prim, but I haven’t done anything about the animation yet.

Interestingly, once I had the backups made, I could restore inventory items from my SL alt account as well as my main account to either SecondLife or another VW with impunity. The owner’s name didn’t make any difference to the software. When an asset is “restored” to an inventory, whether it came from that account or not, the owners name becomes that of the account that it’s being restored to, not the source inventory owner’s. There is certainly some potential for mischief here, especially since I was also able to “back up” some full-permission assets that I did not create, and when they were restored my avatar’s name showed up as the creator.

Copyrights and DMCA Issues

The ability to “rebrand” items that I owned full permission copies of, but had not created, made me wonder what the attitude of some of the content creators in SecondLife were toward these brave new virtual worlds. Would I be able to legally use copies of fulll-perms textures I’d bought in SecondLife in other worlds? I sent that question to one of the texture store owners I’ve patronized extensively, LilyBeth Filth, owner of Textures-R-Us. Predictably, she said, “No.” Here’s a direct quote from her IM, which I think explains her reasoning and the problem very well:

Hi, Our User License does not allow customers to use them in any other virtual world including SL open source clients. The reason for this is because they would be uploaded in your name and not that of the creator. In time people will share these textures with friends (as they always have) and before we know it people are selling work created by the original artist but uploaded by other people and it creates a nightmare of a DMCA issue. We create & sell textures for SL only. Sorry. LillyBeth 2008/5/17

So, it sounds like there could well be a whole new round of rights issues to hash out, even when the dream of a mostly seamless metaverse becomes a reality. The technology is not the only thing that needs to be mastered.

That was discouraging. The Wonderland software is available for Mac OS, but only up to version 10.4, and I’m running 10.5. Maybe I can compile the source code for 10.5, since Apple claims “Leopard can compile and run all your existing UNIX code”, but I’m not quite ready to do that just now.

However, a day or two after the Wonderland test I was reading the documentation for OpenSim when I saw that they offer a Subversion (SVN) download for MacOS X, and mentioned that OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has SVN pre-installed. So, what the heck, I pulled up a Terminal window to verify that yes, SVN is there, and keyed in the command to download OpenSim. It worked like a charm, although I should probably have done it on my external hard disk so I can play with it on Phil’s laptop while we’re driving tomorrow. Maybe I’ll do that anyway. It’s about 68 MB, which is smaller than I expected. It would certainly be fun to have my own region available to play in while we’re traveling and not online!

Sure enough, one can buy a whole region (equivalent to a SecondLife sim, or 16 virtual acres, 256 meters square) for just USD $90 for the first month, and $75 per month thereafter. That’s compared to Linden Lab’s new low price of USD $1000 set up and $195 per month land use fees. Of course, not much is working in OpenLife yet, and there are almost no residents, but I got so enthusiastic at the thought of a viable alternative world that I went ahead and signed up to become a “Foundation Resident” — one who owns a region in the first wave of land sales. My region is called “Queenstown”.

The text on the sign in front of the big ISM logo block reads:

This land was purchased on behalf of the International Spaceflight Museum R&D expeditionary force.

The International Spaceflight Museum (ISM) was created in Second Life in September 2005.

For information, IM Kat Lemieux in either Open Life or Second Life

But first, I should tell you how I got into the world. User accounts are free, just as in SecondLife. The client application in the OpenLife website is for Windows only. I did boot up my WinXP virtual machine, and dutifully downloaded their client, but I couldn’t get it to run. However, when I went looking for help I discovered a page in their wiki that described how to use the Second Life client by adding a single line to a file in the “Resources” folder in the Mac OS X application’s contents. It worked like a charm. It’s just as easy to do this on Windows or Linux by adding the same target definition to the application’s shortcut or (in Linux) command line.

However, while rummaging around in the OpenLife website, I found information about the OpenSim Standalone server code. This software does require Windows, though, and while one can set up a sim or a region of up to 4 sims using it on your own server, at present this cannot be connected to the OpenLife grid. What is more, according to one of the residents I met in the world, the plans to enable linking a server to this grid are far, far down the road.

While I was in the world, playing with my new region, I met someone who is also a member of the Association of Virtual Worlds. When I went to the association’s website to add him to my friends list there, I joined a new group on that site about Central Grid, which is described as “… a virtual world platform where recreational and business users create 3D communities or grids which are all interconnected.” Naturally, I had to try that one out, too, and see what was there. I instantly was overcome with buyer’s remorse over my OpenLife (OL) region purchase, since Central Grid appears to be much further down the development road than OL. However, their prices are rather higher than OL, although still far less than Second Life. Central Grid also uses the SecondLife client, with a one-line change to define the target definition, just like OpenLife. The only difference is the URI. Maybe I didn’t make such a gross mistake after all.

But I wasn’t through. From there I went to the OpenSim website, where I discovered a page that lists several more open source projects based on the OpenSim server. OpenLife is listed there, but Central Grid is not. However, another VW, OSGrid, looked very intriguing because according to its description, “Sims are all owned by individuals, companies, universities and are connected at no charge. [except the plazas, which are community regions]“. So, I made yet another copy of the SecondLife client, changed the line in the target definition, and went to have a look. I was impressed! This may be the place where I recommend the ISM put our efforts once we figure out how to create a Standalone sim. In the meantime, we can play in Queenstown to see what we will be up against when we try to recreate some of the ISM in another VW.

it occurs to me, though, that since all these worlds are based on the same code, and eventually all of them say they will allow 3rd party servers to connect to their grids, maybe we can just use one server for them all? Or perhaps it would be necessary to have a copy for each grid, but the group could do its work in one Standalone iteration, and the administrator could copy it to connect to the other grids on a regular basis, or better yet define a cron job to do it, in effect creating mirror sites. This might be the way all these grids are eventually connected to one another.

Someone speculated that in future your personal inventory would be saved to your own hard disk rather than being in a central asset database, thus allowing you to carry all your “stuff” from world to world. Being a person who tends to log in from different computers, I would hope that instead we would find some data grid in the cloud to store our things, so we aren’t tethered to a single machine. Since the inability of Linden Lab’s asset database to keep up with demand seems to be one of the major problems with scaling Second Life, maybe this would be just as difficult for an open source community to manage, but maybe it would be planned out in advance better for all the OpenSim based grids, since now we have a better idea of what the metaverse probably is going to look like for the immediate future than Linden Lab knew when they were designing their system.

One can hope that we will be able to learn from Linden’s experience, even as we take their open sourced code to go beyond the SecondLife world. However, given the unfinished state of all these worlds and the limited number of people using them, I think we (the ISM) will be in SecondLife for a long time to come, even if we experiment with additional virtual locations.