Massively^™

Apparently it's popular, or they are running their web server on a Commodore 64, because the link won't load for me.

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Yay!

A Second Life without Linden Labs.

/me is happy

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"Having said that, one must remember to 饮水思源。"to recognise where one has come from originally." It's okay not to cloud one's judgement with a bias towards Linden Lab, but a little nostalgia and recognition is due."

Let me make myself clearer.

Linden Labs are great visionaries, and alright programmers. The SL codebase isn't the greatest, but remembering that (for example) LSL was created in one single night - that's kinda impressive.

HOWEVER, Linden Labs lack the qualities needed to RUN and LEAD the virtual world. Something I hope this new grid will do a much better job at.

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I vehemently disagree.

Just like the Real World has police and judges, and just like Roleplaying Games have Dungeon Masters - everything needs an authority to run it.

Anarchy is never a good thing. It may make exploiters and griefers happy but just look at Second life.

Griefers run rampant and are unstopped, DMCA reports for stolen content are ignored - further encouraging copyrights violations, etc.

All that exists because Linden Labs refuses to do anything about it.

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... and OSGrid http://www.osgrid.org/
and DeepGrid http://www.deepgrid.com/


:)

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And I still can't port my wildcat avatar across grids.

Joy.

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oh, you'll wait for that.... after coders lawyers have to come to the party...

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I don't really think too much of that. I'm considering enabling Residents to get a copy sent to OpenGrid on a Gentlemen's Agreement as soon as I figure out how to work the system.

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Wow,

It's amazing how much uninformed chatter can be found in the blogosphere.

openlifegrid has been around for quite some time, think of this as a 'grand opening' announcement. It is not the only, nor the first such grid. It is, however, the first to pick up OpenSim software from http://opensimulator.org, and try to base a business model on it. Will that work? can a business be built on open source software still labeled 'alpha'? it's been done before; the jury is still out on the relative sensibilities of such endeavors.

For the record, OpenSim software (see the wiki at http://OpenSimultator.org) is free as in beer. It is not even remotely based on Linden Labs grid technology. The *only* common material between OpenSim and the Linden grid is the format and payloads of the communications packets.

This software provides *anyone* the capability to host a grid, standalone regions, or region servers attached to a grid hosted by someone else.

If you are interested in giving this a go your self, access the wiki, and find the instructions for obtaining and building the software from the source code via svn. It's the best way to get the latest revision of the code. FIllow the instructions on the wiki carefully for configuration. This is -not- an apache webserver. You cannot simply run the software and toss a couple of region descriptions in.

Once you have your region(s) working in standalone mode, you may wish to connect them to a running grid. If so, drop by http://osgrid.org/ for instructions connecting to this community testing grid. Dont let 'testing' fool you - we are emphasising 24x7 uptime as a goal for the regions on this grid. Connecting your regions to osgrid.org is free as in beer, just like the software.

If you have additional questions concerning OpenSim software or OSGrid, please feel free to give us a shout on #opensim or #osgrid on Freenode IRC.

James G. Stallings
Operator, OSGrid.org

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daTwitch, thanks for supplying us with info we already have.
One thing is not clear to me though. How something that is BSD licensed is free just as beer and not as speech too?

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This will become extremely interesting because of the BSD license of the OpenSim project. ANY startup can develop it's own enhancements to OpenSim and not be forced to contribute them back to the community.

Because of this there exists a real potential to create a moneymaking venture as a huge number of current SL users are unhappy (and for good reason) with the current state of affairs on the Linden ran grid.

Be sure to read Sakai Openlife's blog entry at

http://www.openlifegrid.com/Blogs/tabid/61/EntryID/3/Default.aspx

to get a glimpse of some of the possibilities. Absolutely fantastic!

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Having visited OpenLife and posted it here:

http://dusanwriter.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/the-joy-of-unbearable-lag-crashes-and-bad-hair/

...I can say that, not being an SL old-timer, it feels like visiting what it must have been like in the early days. Lots of virgin land, no ad farms, but laaaaag, glitches, crashes (oh....hmmm...well, like the good old days compared to the ad-farmed good current old days).

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Since this article is still kindof off I wanted to let everyone know that there has been an official press release made available about realXtend, OpenSim and the viewer.

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/other-grids-virtual-worlds/7027-now-here-real-shiny-realxtend-joins-opensim.html

OpenLifeGrid is a commercial application of OpenSim code and OpenSim has been around since 2007. The rex viewer is an extension of that and developed for OpenSim and has nothing to do with OpenLifeGrid aside from the fact that OpenLifeGrid is operating on code developed and made available for free by the OpenSim team. While undoubtedly OpenLifeGrid will make use of the rex viewer and server code, the realXtend team developed it for OpenSim and not specifically OpenLifeGrid.

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