I need to do a little digging. Open source licenses completely confuse me. I was thinking about the way the SL viewer includes components that are closed - the sound library, for example. I’m wondering if there’s a way to release the new viewer with “base code” that’s open source, but plug-ins that are closed. I wonder this, because I wonder whether you can put the genie back in the bottle so to speak - like you say, whether they can release the viewer with components that you can’t copy, that are proprietary. It sounds really messy to me however.

I wonder if this explains Snowglobe - a shift to a closed, or more closed viewer, while Philip continues to support an open source version of the “old viewer”.

By the way, don’t get me wrong about Svarga. It was one of the reasons I stayed because it was the first sim I ever visited that was a fully built environment that was ‘professional’. Up until then, all I had seen was mainland and a few immersion sims like Midian I think, the Hobo place, but I didn’t realize that the content in SL could look as good as a game, say. Svarga seemed like a fully built, professionally done sim with a narrative potential that I hadn’t seen anywhere else.

Having said that, the “ecosystem” thing they had going confused me - I didn’t see the flowers growing and bees pollinating or whatever they were supposed to be doing, I kept thinking maybe it wasn’t working. However, what I did see was that you could build out a full environment with narrative potential. I was left stumped, however, by the business model but at the time I didn’t care.

I don’t disagree that it was Disney-ish, same with Greenies. On the other hand, I am a believer that there’s room in the world for curated experiences, and that there’s funding available for such experiences. Greenies and Black Swan and Svarga were all curated experiences, but….well, no one seemed to be paying for them, or I couldn’t figure out how paying for them was leading to revenue.

Of course, closing up the viewer could be accompanied by increased moves to formalize and “legalize” content creation by residents to the point that amateur content will be heavily discouraged if not outlawed.

Dusan, I count on you to be one of the few smart people in SL. So when you say that you “stayed in SL for Svarga and Starax,” I have to grimace.

Starax is wonderful and all that, but…it’s kitsch. It’s Disney’s fantasia. His earlier years were better. The Black Swan thing, that looked like a lot of poured tar for my money, was hideous. I kept looking in the sky and the water for this other cool thing that he supposedly made — never saw it. My recollection of Starax was him throwing a tantrum and leaving SL because the Lindens broke his famous wand — but then not returning even when they fixed it, and coming back on a secretive alt that only seemed to serve to make his statues insanely priced on the market of resales.

Svarga? I’ve written reams about the essential socialist claptrap around Svarga, and this manipulative posture that Lauk has taken time and again saying “the community” or “the Lindens” must “save Svarga,” but then…winds up selling it. Or saying she’ll sell it, but not with the scripts.

I used to be a huge fan of Lauk’s. No more, for all the reasons I’ve outlined in my blogs about her posturing around the land sales in Orwood and with Svarga. But…take it on its own merits. What’s the big deal? It has artwork that is matched or exceeded by Straylight and other natural sims — and Straylight makes tons of money,most likely, for its creator. There is absolutely no reason why Svarga couldn’t have had way more content sales, much more advertising, and more tier paid. It was only ideology that hobbled it.

It is absolutely NOT imperative to have the Lindens preserve it. They should do no such thing. People that stubbornly refuse to engage even in a non-profit style business plan that helps cover costs and sustain the creativity deserve scorn, not another coin in the hat passed. I never “got” what was so fabulous about the AI, either. It’s not as if there aren’t other groups working on AI and making creatures and flowers realistic, too. The world has turned on its axis since Lauk and Starax, the beta-era oldbies, came and conquered. There are new creators doing as wonderful work and even more interesting work, so it’s time to thank them for their services, write an encyclopedia page on them, and move on.

As for Rezzable — meh. I’ve said my piece on that bog and my own blog. I keep asking what will happen to all those artists the led on and kept paid for quite a while and now will suddenly dump.

Again, I don’t know what you are talking about, intellectually, Dusan, and critically. Disney, all over again. The Borrowers Meets Toy Story. It’s a scene that reduces you, the viewer, to a, well, audience, not an interactive part. Nothing to click on, hardly. Nothing to buy. Not even a t-shirt readily available to take home unless you figure out to TP to the sky. These people sit on traffic and don’t provide the basic gift store that a RL museum would have to cover its rent. It’s disgraceful. It’s disgraceful not because it’s amateurish or bad business, that could almost be forgiven, but because it’s ideological. Rezzable joined the big Chris Anderson Free train. Give everything away for free…except charge sometimes…except sell a perfume ad…except wait for a lecture fee. Oops, Chris Anderson can get lecture fees to sustain his lifestyle as he goes around evangelizing “Free,” but Rezzable’s Himoff couldn’t likely get his way paid to appear on a VW conference somewhere.

Again — frustrating sims. Cliches. Junkyards. Urban post-apocalypse. Carnivals of doom. To be sure, things like Toxic Gardens had a lot of punch to them. But…Himoff was hugely reluctant to rent out a single thing, even an ad board or store. Insane. You cannot have land in SL and not develop it for rent or resale. it is a brutal fact. It also creates sterility when you never interact with other businesses.

As for those whining about the expense of Linden servers and whining that we help the Lindens buy servers, I can only reiterate what i say to all such whiners: they are not just servers. They are such stuff as dreams are made of. All the interactivity, the content of others, the serendipity — that is what you pay for. Understanding it as mere rack space is the sort of nerdy literalism that people in SL, even tekkie wikinistas, should have left behind by now.

And that brings us to OpenSim. Huh? Why do you think OpenSim is where it’s at? No one ever reports anything happening in OS because…it doesn’t. It is a lot of people playing in their garages…

Google — the ad agency that provides search as a loss-leader — already owns a lot of stuff and you won’t have to wait 50 years.

http://davidcheney.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/immersion-2-0-via-rezzable/

suggest you watch “The Ascent of Money” on PBS….”virtualization” becomes more of a history lesson after a view than any metablogs futurism;)

Also why not look up PONZI… he fed on his own, as did Madoff, as does the SF tech valley types. But as the virtualization of Money went more and more “electric” and digital the collatoral damage that could be done in the shortest accelerated time became larger and larger.

What will also be obvious to many soon, 15 years late, is that Artists/ IP creators need to own tools and own their works. Almost NONE of the current Virtualization of 3d, storage, or media has that in mind. Either control is being taken away by large investment corporations via “service medias growth meme”, or by “free” content metachildren “meme” that are of course funded by the large vested financial interests anyway.

Banks virtualized money- and now they own all the land- property- and even your cars;)

Google and others are virtualizing IP, and who do you think will own it all by 2050.?

Rezzable learned what Protozoa and others;) did 15 years ago. - google it, before google decides to remove the past listings– they can do that you know;)

BTW- as yourself- what will be left of this blog in 15 years?

In any case, ‘pyramid’ post to follow, feels like a good one for the weekend.

Metacam - I disagree. Artists are a different story. Rezzable was clearly a business, not a patron of the arts, although it happened to provide patronage as part of its wider business model.

There were artists working for Rezzable, and Rezzable supported art on its sims. But Rezzable was a business first and its the business side of what its doing that’s the issue at hand.

just more fodder for the virtual economy of the real world and the slow realization that the virtualization of money has run its course.

any real economist will tell you money is only about “trust” and that systems that by nature, dont offer “trust” cant offer any actual virtualizations of money- aka an economy.

so much for casanova and metanomicons.;) EVE has a economist on staff, dosent it? and the latest run of its bank by a medical paying dad playing a “pirate” certianly put all that “virtualization” of others peoples money and time into clear perspective.

Las Vegas casino have economists too, right?>

Anyhow, Rezzables story is nothing new from the internet and 15 years of its virtualization dreams and falsehoods.

His conclusion? “No, SecondLife is a classic pyramid scheme. Or, more of an Amway-like pyramid: partially legitimate, partially ponzi.”

His only comment was, “So what you’re saying is we are all just suckers.”

And my answer was (and still is) yes, but WILLING suckers … for now.