Keep an eye on Martin Langhoffs presentations! – Moodle Networking, which allows you to“ network” a group of Moodle sites for SSO and other interesting things.. He is also presenting a session on the“ One Laptop per Child” program- check out his sessio…

The first is that I’ve found it impossible to discuss the idea of standards and code without first trying to grapple with the basis for the claim. And as I hope I made clear in the post, what I heard because of how it was communicated and what was meant are POSSIBLY two different things. On the one hand, there’s a dichotomy between two opposing views: standards versus code versus code from standards – but the openSim philosophy also injects more nuance into the debate by then injecting the “parallel policy” argument – so I’d rather also inject more nuance into the discussion as well….which is the subject of my next post on the subject.

A few very quick specific points:

1) My comment on innovation was compared to everything else on show at VW08. There is incredible innovation happening in OpenSim. I won’t list them all – you read UgoTrade, you’ve seen some of the innovations. And I’m not saying these innovations are appropriate for Second Life, but it really is a source of continual and significant structural innovation. Enhanced avatars, true browser-based clients, full integration with Web-based systems, procedural objects, artificial intelligence, mesh-based objects. Compared to the Lab, the level of innovation is continual and significant, but my point was in comparison to the other virtual world platforms at VW08 rather than as a specific reference to SL.

2. Yes, it was a knock-off, but as I said in my post they “may have used Second Life as its jumping off point, but that has moved well beyond that.”

3. I don’t believe I made a comment on whether I thought OpenSim was “right” or whether the modular architecture is a long-term solution to the objective of achieving ubiquity. Interesting, the guy from Intel said that part of their objective in working on OpenSim isn’t solely because they think it’s going to be the de facto standard, but rather that by being involved they get to test and learn about how virtual worlds work and, I assume, apply this knowledge to wider or other virtual world initiatives. So even the people involved in OS aren’t saying it will be THE standard, but they’re saying that the standards evolving from it may have applications elsewhere.

4. Yes, humor.

5. Yes, there’s a communication issue, I think. And again, what gets lost is the nuance – the heart of the matter is the comment that “policies evolve in parallel” but no one explained how, or who’s in charge.

6. I agree. And I don’t actually think they said that policy evolves from code. They said that standards evolve from code, and that policy then evolves in parallel. But again, this is the heart of the issue.

And to be honest, and I’ve posted about this numerous times, so it’s not a question of suddenly drinking the OpenSim Kool Aid – I haven’t changed my opinion that this sort of throw-away line or approach of letting policy “evolve” (in parallel or not) is a source of incredible concern to me, especially as it relates to identity and trust.

I don’t mean to sound blase – I’m not. But I really want to understand. And I want to understand because I really do believe that OS is a source of incredible innovation. And IF it’s a source of innovation then it’s not just going to sort of wither away – and so I’m committed to trying to understand it, as best as a non-geek can, and to frame the context from which they propose to derive policy so that I can contribute in a meaningful way even if it ends up being that all I can say is “NO NO NO”.

Also common knowledge: IE started out as a hacked version of Mosaic, which was developed at the University of Illinois; what’s that again about open source only being able to imitate?

(I note also that here in the US we used to say that about the Japanese. Remember also Samuel Slater, who brought the Industrial Revolution to the US with what we might now call industrial espionage. Those darned Americans–they only knew how to copy things.)

Re: “You get the mechanisms in place first and then run policy in parallel” and others noted that social models, role transparency and trust were significant issues that would need to be addressed.

No, no, no, a thousand times NO. Code may come in the form of Lego parts; people’s needs, institutions, requirements for business are not so many little components. They are complex systems and they have to drive the coding, not visa versa.

This is a ruse cooked up by extremist coders who want to weld into their code certain political and economic decisions, like “let’s not have copy/mod/transfer because it’s too hard to maintain, let people call their lawyers”.

So they reduce this vital, living, NECESSARY part of the SL economy to a mere “module” that can be “added on” — or not.

Re: “Whether decisions are being made at the granular level that will later restrict the range of policy I have no idea – I’m not a geek. And where the forums will be for testing various notions of standards and policy is somewhat unclear.”

Uh, yeah, Dusan. You got that right. Of *course* that’s what is happening now. And you are nuts to be so blase about it.

Standards do not “come from code”. First, people have to have a common understanding and an enterprise they find mutually acceptable, then they code what it needs.

Doing it backwards, as the geeks around SL keep doing, merely dooms it to irrelevance forever.

Here’s some thinner for your Kool-Aid.

1. OpenSim is not “driving innovation”. They have not produced anything different than an inferior reverse-engineered copy of SL. RealExtend isn’t interesting without a context of community and commerce, neither of which are present for OS.

2. Opensource isn’t about innovation; it’s about copying and taking things for free. I think the critique that Maklin Deckard keeps making on my blog, as a programmer himself, is valid: opensourceniks just make knock-offs of other people’s work, Gimp for PhotoShop, etc. They aren’t making anything that stands along as unique and original.

3. One of the shills that the OS people wield out for Firefox, or for their demand that VWs be “open” or have *their* standards, is that they want people to endlessly “build on modules” (like the muddle that is Moodle — God, a mess). But…these aren’t useful or valid because the general public only becomes annoyed with the excessive choices and lack of usability and fixability. The tabs of Mozilla are its most annoying feature, even though it’s supposed to be its unique proposition.

4. I detect a note of humour in your remarks about “OpenSim has a lot of people and adults” — well, so what? IBM is huge. It can afford to allow some of its long-timer programmers to go and play on SL and it doesn’t matter if they accomplish anything, they just keep their hand in.

5. Again, do NOT look to these people to make standards, they really can’t find their ass with both hands, as you clearly indicate in this discussion. They are unable to explain what they do even to an admiring geek or semi-geek public, let along the public at large, and it’s because they just fool around. Standards are made by grown-up real companies that have a stake in a real market, not rich people’s VC or their own money.

6. Policy should not arise from coding. Policies have to be for people, publics, stakeholders, businesses — and not coders. Coders should NOT make policy. Their voice is only one among many that have to be heard and sifted through, and often not the most practical or useful voice — they all took the economy, buy-sell, and IP out of their worlds, which make them useless.

In fact, David Levine is wrong. These people *do* bite. They bite *hard* and they grind institutions and values to bits and spit them out. They are destroying the economy and the successes SL enjoyed until now with community and commerce, and pretending this is “what disruptive technology does”. It doesn’t. They are not needed. No one needs interoperability at this point, and they are wasting their time.

It’s also a subterfuge to distract from the fact that LL doesn’t have its own business model lined up yet.

I’d say as a speaker on that panel, those translations are very bang on – and despite David not finishing that sentence, yes we want people to come in, test code and submit feedback.

Our mailing lists are the best spot for more drawn out discussions, for code contributions (including alternate modules, implementations, etc) put them on our mantis tracker (and also the mailing list if it touches core code), the only consideration for submitting code is our coding policy (http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Contributions_Policy)