Soap Opera

It's been a while but I alaways found a reason to postpone any new posting. Let's say I didn't read the fine print in my contract with Blogger saying how often I must post.

Any way... I found a Third Party Viewer (TPV) to replace any viewer made by Linden Lab. It is Imprudence. They claim to be the most adventurous in design but, in the end, you have the "official" 1.23.5 with a bunch of little tweakings and fixings in every corner. Nothing really transformed but it's good, stable and they have no bad reputation like some other viewer with the name of a green precious stone.

I thought during a moment I lost my new viewer because the team behind it decided to just stop any development for Second Life. Guess what, it was Linden Lab's fault. They decided to issue a Policy on TPVs.

This TPVP poisoned the relations in between Linden Lab and the third party developpers for over a month. A real soap opera for anybody watching the whole thing from the sideline of the mailing list. This so-called TPVP was a legalese document with some really bad wording leading to confusion, possible contradictory interpretations and an obvious conflict with the GNU Public Licence under which the sources of the viewer are supposed to be available.

The Lindens made all they could to explain what the purpose of this document was but it didn't change the fact that the TPVP was still looking like a contract with the devil that developpers had to sign with their blood. They just said "no thank you", all visible development stopped and a lot jumped off of the ship, like the Imprudence team.

On the sideline, I was jumping high and low, resisting to the urge to shout "beeeeep beeeeep beeeeeeeeeep! Why don't you (Lindens) simply write down what you really mean instead of this legalese crap?" I'll spare you the vivid image of what I wanted to do with a cork oak and the "egg hole" of the guy who laid that stinky "egg".

In the end, before to alienate completely the Open Source community, Linden Lab organized two public meetings to discuss face to face with the developpers. I'm not really a developper but I went to the first meeting. It really was like going to a live recording of your favorite soap opera. (I've never actually done this in RL but I can imagine.)

The Lindens wanted to use voice so there was 3 or 4 people talking and a hundred chatting in text. I really mean a hundredth. Impressive! I've never seen so many avatars gathered in any place. The crowd was spread over the corners of 4 regions.

Since the Lindens really don't listen to what anybody says, the meeting started with the list of complaints that have be expressed in every possible way since the beginning of the season of this soap opera. The poor Linden who must have felt like a lonely gladiator thrown in the arena repeated Linden Lab lines from previous episodes: "This is not what we intend", "We don't mean this". Until somebody finally dropped the question: "Why don't you just write down your intention and what you mean instead of this?" It has already been asked repeatedly along the whole season on the mailing list but, apparently, the Lindens don't hear anything if there is no witness.

With a hundredth of avatars attending the meeting and probably as many chat logs, nobody could pretend not having heard any more. So the contentious parts of the TPVP have been re-phrased into something more acceptable.

And the Imprudence team is back into business with Second Life. Pheeeewwww! Finding another TPV was a trip into frustration land. Nothing beats the interface of the "official" 1.23.5 viewer. Certainly not this horror named "v2.0"!

But I'll keep this for the next time. I'm gonna nail this client to the wall. Who said "crucify"? :P