> > im
> > > still dreaming of parallel metaverses interconnected via portals or
> > > teleport. Where SL takes its role maybe as sotial life platform,
> > > other virtual universes e.g. based upon Croquet or others show up as
> they are needed. That sounds like a vision!
> > >
> > > Finally i dislike the idea to be member of an SL-group that thinks
> > > about how to avoid SL. Isn't that a bit unfair? so we could meet without
> placing a group.
> > > maybe eventually that makes sense. But not before it becomes clear whats
> up...
>
> FWIW, I agree that the "big dream" of the metaverse is actually a web of
> platforms with sensible, fluid portals between them so that content is
> interconnected in useful ways. I doubt it is a matter of inventing one uber
> platform to rule them all. Despite the many obvious flaws in Second Life,
> Linden Lab has accomplished many great things with the Second Life platform
> and their virtual world is currently at the frontlines of turning virtual
> spaces into usable,practical everyday tools for people who aren't developers
> or academics. The P2P architecture of Croquet makes it supremely attractive
> to me as a developer and I would cite SL's direction toward open clients and
> open servers as a stop-gap sort of solution to what needs to be genuinely
> p2p to support the "big dream" that many people have for the multiverse.
>
> So I'm not looking to avoid Second Life (I own a big chunk of mainland but
> have no plans for an island until they open that up too and I can just set
> it up on my servers). I just hope to bridge my SL-based content to other
> platforms, especially something p2p like Croquet, so that I can inch closer
> to the kinds of entertainment applications I want to be designing and
> deploying.
>
> Our SL group should acknowledge SL's leadership in this metaverse space but
> should seek to extend beyond the boundaries inherent with SL. Some things
> that Croquet may do better than SL:
>
> -p2p world management decentralizes power, resources, and opportunities
> better than any model that requires expensive remote servers (even if the
> servers become/are "open source")
>
> -higher quality avatar art and the ability to import 3D assets from
> professional tools, more control over art import/export in general
>
> -privacy: no central organization owns your chat logs
>
> -access: totally free sdk (no need to sign up or create an account with a
> controlling organization), no central TOS that can ban your account from the
> entire metaverse system for any reason/no reason at all
>
> -distributed ownership of users: each publisher of a world could easily
> require a sign up or verification per application just as most users have to
> create an account per web application rather than one big account for "the
> internet" where none of the individual sites had access to the account info
> held at "the internet db of users" which is the current system for
> applications developed within SL (also for commercial apps "owning the
> customer data" is very important so that you can do many important things,
> such as ensuring due diligence in age verification or dealing effectively
> with griefers)
>
> -liberation from corporate whims: companies decide to break things or drop
> backwards-compatibility goals whenever they feel like it. SL is obviously
> not the only platform (or even the most notable) to do this but considering
> that most SL developers are not making anything close to a profit from their
> SL development... It's a ridiculous financial burden to have to fix things
> when you were developing at a loss to begin with. Hopefully Croquet *in
> future versions* will always maintain reasonable measures to run legacy
> croquet code and to give advance warning/notice when something is going to
> be depracated rather than having developers login and find a bunch of Ims
> from customers saying "x doesn't work anymore" and having to drop everything
> to rush in a fix. In general I hope that Croquet's birth as this open
> developer-centric platform means that external devs are treated well and not
> just as disposable value-adders for the central Croquet software.
>
> Heh, you can tell from my final item that I think the main flaw with SL is
> actually not one of architecture but of business policy. The developers and
> content creators who make SL viable for end users are treated very shoddily
> by SL decision-makers, imo (SL shipped as a fancy chat room, and what little
> Linden content there is, it's not nearly as engaging as the user content).
> Croquet is truly based on open development practices and I've been able to
> watch a community working on the software, just as I have with other open
> projects I follow like TikiWiki. That is the main reason why I think
> developers should be looking at bridging SL to Croquet because Croquet might
> give developers more opportunities to extend the platform and profit from
> their contributions (by profit, I mean "pay people for their time so they
> can make more stuff" because SL is a charity case for devs right now). And
> for players, obviously they are going to benefit from a p2p world where they
> can create their own island instead of paying insane set up fees and a
> monthly rent that rivals most family's utility and grocery bills. It will
> also be nice to have builds limited only by PC resources than arbitrarily
> limited by "prim count" tied to blocks of virtual real estate. ;)
>
> -Kelly
>
>
>