Second Life Architectural Working Group (AWG) URLs

Recently, Linden Labs announced that they were making Second Life a
completely open internet platform. These are some of the URLs associated
with the announcements, discussions, etc.

These should be of interest to Croquet developers/designers for various
reasons, such as insight into what the competition is doing, and insight
into what issues are being brought up that need to be addressed in a
generic metaverse system.


<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Architecture_Working_Group" target="_blank">http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Architecture_Working_Group

also check the most recent discussions during Zero Linden's in-world
office hours:

<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Zero_Linden#Transcripts_of_previous_office_hours" target="_blank"> http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Zero_Linden#Transcripts_of_previous_office_hours

recent in-world meeting of interested parties:

<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sept_28_2007_AWGroupies" target="_blank"> http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sept_28_2007_AWGroupies
<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Oct5_scale_rest" target="_blank">https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Oct5_scale_rest

wiki discussion of in-world meeting:

<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Talk:Oct5_scale_rest" target="_blank">https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Talk:Oct5_scale_rest

Lawson English wrote:
> Please let me know how I can connect to even one other Mac user over the
> internet with Croquet save by using the KAT world or moral equivalent.

You're missing an important distinction here. Croquet is an SDK, not a
product. So, no the SDK *doesn't* tell you how exactly one participant
finds one another - this is part of the application (like KAT or Qwaq
Forums). That part of the structuring is deliberate since while some
applications prefer centralized discovery services, others may do have
completely different ways of doing the same (some of the UMN demos used
XML postcards obtained from Jabber services for example).

> While the SL server source is not open yet, the Lindens are very
> seriously committed to the open source nature of the platform.

I think I'll believe that when I see the source code. It's easy to
support open source as long as it doesn't affect the bottom line but
open sourcing the server could have a dramatic impact on their business
model. In more than one respect btw: For example, even a small exploit
in their financial transactions could make the whole ecosystem implode.
And since there is real money to be made in SL you bet that some people
will look very closely at the server code for exploits. So there are
some definitive risks associated with open sourcing their server and
it's difficult to say what they'll really gain from it.

> How many in-world open meetings with Croquet or Qwaq people are hosted
> on a regular basis?

I'm somewhat surprised you don't know that. We have been holding
biweekly technical meetings in Qwaq Forums for several months now. With
usually 6-10 people participating amongst which usually 2-3 Qwaq
employees (that's roughly 50% of our engineering team at this point).
Mark has been posting the chat logs of those meetings, here are the
latest two:

https://lists.duke.edu/sympa/arc/croquet-dev/2007-09/msg00075.html
https://lists.duke.edu/sympa/arc/croquet-dev/2007-10/msg00022.html

> The lindens host about 2 dozen  regular meetings in-world
> every week,  including several each week with open source programmers to
> discuss open source issues and bug-fixes:

And your point is?

> How many croquet users interested in expanding croquet meet once or
> twice a week in a croquet world to discuss where Croquet is heading and
> how it should get there? HOw many choat in IRC on a daily basis for this
> purpose?

And again your point is? I rather fail to see much of a constructive
attitude in the above.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

I have been in SecondLife for over a year now and have been very interested in trying to use it in a platform and rather excited about the architectural discussions that they have been having.  It does sound like they are almost trying to setup different "countries" of server clusters, with customs at each border saying what foreign accounts are allowed in and what they are allowed to do, what local accounts are allowed to other clusters and what they are allowed to do, and so on.  And of course they aren't gonna open source the entire server source (the physics engine they are using will never be open source, they didn't write it), but enough of a chunk of it will be so that people can start their own.

However, with all of this my boss asked me "should we be in SecondLife" and my answer was a flat "no".  While all these companies are excited about jumping in, I still consider it more of a social environment than anything.  I am gladly looking forward to all the stuff that the guy in that 2hr video was talking about, about distance collaboration and sharing (I'm getting rather tired of GoToMeeting about this point).  I've twice downloaded the client and twice tried to dive into it (after reading and understanding the majority of the wiki i think) and have gotten rather frustrated after restoring to backup image half a dozen times.  After I saw the RoadMap page go up, I cheered as it contained most of what I was looking for and getting frustrated about not seeing.

I'm not entirely certain what I'm trying to say here, other than the fact that I see Croquet growing to be able to do things that SecondLife's architectural group will not get around to working on for years in the future.  At this point most of what I'm doing is lurking until Jabberwocky comes out and I try and see if i can get into this thing again :-P

On 10/8/07, Andreas Raab <[hidden email] > wrote:

Lawson English wrote:
> Please let me know how I can connect to even one other Mac user over the
> internet with Croquet save by using the KAT world or moral equivalent.

You're missing an important distinction here. Croquet is an SDK, not a
product. So, no the SDK *doesn't* tell you how exactly one participant
finds one another - this is part of the application (like KAT or Qwaq
Forums). That part of the structuring is deliberate since while some
applications prefer centralized discovery services, others may do have
completely different ways of doing the same (some of the UMN demos used
XML postcards obtained from Jabber services for example).

> While the SL server source is not open yet, the Lindens are very
> seriously committed to the open source nature of the platform.

I think I'll believe that when I see the source code. It's easy to
support open source as long as it doesn't affect the bottom line but
open sourcing the server could have a dramatic impact on their business
model. In more than one respect btw: For example, even a small exploit
in their financial transactions could make the whole ecosystem implode.
And since there is real money to be made in SL you bet that some people
will look very closely at the server code for exploits. So there are
some definitive risks associated with open sourcing their server and
it's difficult to say what they'll really gain from it.

> How many in-world open meetings with Croquet or Qwaq people are hosted
> on a regular basis?

I'm somewhat surprised you don't know that. We have been holding
biweekly technical meetings in Qwaq Forums for several months now. With
usually 6-10 people participating amongst which usually 2-3 Qwaq
employees (that's roughly 50% of our engineering team at this point).
Mark has been posting the chat logs of those meetings, here are the
latest two:

<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="https://lists.duke.edu/sympa/arc/croquet-dev/2007-09/msg00075.html" target="_blank"> https://lists.duke.edu/sympa/arc/croquet-dev/2007-09/msg00075.html
<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="https://lists.duke.edu/sympa/arc/croquet-dev/2007-10/msg00022.html" target="_blank"> https://lists.duke.edu/sympa/arc/croquet-dev/2007-10/msg00022.html

> The lindens host about 2 dozen  regular meetings in-world
> every week,  including several each week with open source programmers to
> discuss open source issues and bug-fixes:

And your point is?

> How many croquet users interested in expanding croquet meet once or
> twice a week in a croquet world to discuss where Croquet is heading and
> how it should get there? HOw many choat in IRC on a daily basis for this
> purpose?

And again your point is? I rather fail to see much of a constructive
attitude in the above.

Cheers,
   - Andreas