Outside looking in Pt 1

I am a Second Life expatriot. From what I have seen and heard so far, most people active on the OSGrid have been previous Second Life Users (I joined SL in March 2007) and became fed up with one of their policies or their approach on virtual reality, be it the most recent changes that were made during last years final quarter, the pricing changes on the turn of 2008/2009, any other policy or term of service or simply because they got banned from Second Life for one reason or another. In my case, it was all of the above.

Now most people might think, the OSGrid, or any other open-simulator-driven Grid is just an open source and cheaper version of Second Life, and on the surface, it’s hard to see any difference between the two. The worlds look the same, the rendering is the same, you (can) use the same viewers and operate your avatar the same way, use the same creation tools and many other features work just like you were used to from Second Life.

However, beneath the surface, the two are very hard to compare. I’m not talking about code here – even though it seems that’s completely different, too – but about a completely different approach at virtual reality. Both Second Life and OpenSim have their own merits, and also their own limitations. A comparison, which got me into the OSGrid in the first place, was Marcus Llewellyn’s post ‘What is a Grid?‘. Basically, open simulator enables anyone to connect their own servers (even if they use their home PC for that) to connect to an existing grid and thus, anyone can run their own regions at home, at a very low cost, whereas on Second Life, everything you do is being managed and held on Linden Lab’s servers and there is almost no (approved) method of backing up your own creations. (This is the point that got me banned in the first place.)¹

So there are several things to keep in mind for a Second Life resident moving to OSGrid, or any other OpenSim-grid.² Many of these were already covered by Zonja Capalini in her blogpost “The Openspace fiasco: six months later“.

First is: Your inventory will be gone. Technically, you’re not able to export any assets from your second life account, except things you made yourself, using second inventory. Several alternative viewers offer an export function for creations, with varying degrees of what can be exported. Most of them only export assets of which you are the sole creator, Emerald exports, as of the time if this writing, objects you have full permissions on (copy / mod / transfer), and several ‘copybot’ clients make it possible for you to export many more things. Discussions about the legality of exporting virtual assets are common on the OSGrid, and I don’t have a real answer to that. For myself, I have decided that it’s safest to rely on my own creations, and am trying to make everything I need for myself, which is going good so far.

Which brings us to the second topic: Safety. Creating things on OSGrid (or other open simulator driven worlds) isn’t as ‘safe’ on the permission system, as it is on Second Life. Basically, anyone running an opensimulator region, can gain full permission on any object rezzed there. This is, however, just the same problem creative people have faced all over the planet ever since their creations became ‘digitalized’ (and of course, when your creations are digital in the first place, it’s the thing you have to deal with) and a restrictive system is not a solution. You’d rather have to accept the fact that there are dishonest people who will copy your creations, no matter what. And that these people are not, and never will be, customers. They won’t appreciate your creations the in a monetary way, but a copy is still the most honest kind of compliment.³ And there are RL laws to deal with copyright infringement. It may be hard to understand, but the ‘safety’ of Second Life is not even much safer than having no copy protection in place. You trust your inventory, your funds, and your server space (land) to one and the same single company, and that one company can ban you any time, for any reason it wants to, without any refunds whatsoever.⁴

Finally, the community is still very small in comparison to the vast user base of Second Life, and the software is still worked on and experimental. It is up to anyone to decide if this is a challenge, or a handicap. For me, it is an exciting chance to take part in exploring the frontiers of virtual worlds, as well as paving new ways.

(Deutsche Version)

1. A rezzable article compares the features of OpenSim with SL. [↩]
2. I’m using OSGrid as an example of an open simulator driven grid here. I am aware that it’s not the only one by far. However, it is as of yet the largest and most ‘open’ (in terms of restrictions and/or policies) that I have heard of. [↩]
3. To quote an unknown asian source. [↩]
4. It is compelling to believe that someone with that much power and responsibility would act carefully, however I had to learn otherwise. [↩]