With Hypergrid, ALL of those items can be stolen. I have no reason to believe that there won’t be people out there willing to go to the trouble. That they *will* go to the trouble is almost a certainty. So I find myself on the “caution” side of the issue… and I’m staying well away from Hypergrid systems. There are just far too many security holes for my comfort.

Regarding Inworldz: I don’t know about the Inworldz folks, but I’d be cautious about releasing my real name in any aspect of internet operation, much less griefer-heavy virtual worlds. This seems to me an industry in which people prove themselves by their actions. If they cross the line of the law, there are always ways to legally obtain RL information. But myself, I’m more interested in how they behave on a daily basis than in how they maybe might behave in the future.

Beside, I’m starting to realize that a person’s virtual name is just as valuable and binding as their real name– to the point that folks are starting to discuss a centralized registry of user names which will be employed by virtually all grids (mainly to keep people from stealing well-known SL or OS grid names). I think that’s going to become essential. I know most boards will already remove names that are proved to be “sniped” (usually by the person sending an IM from their SL identity saying “That is not me”.) I think that’s a good policy overall. From what I’ve seen, except with common names, people who snipe other people’s virtual names rarely do so accidentally; there is almost always an agenda.

The grid owners I’ve talked to who’ve enabled hypergrid say that a person who has those technical skills and who is willing to go through all that to steal content has far, far easier ways to do the same thing without spending money to buy stuff and without building their own grid. (I’m not going to list those ways here, for obvious reasons.)

Hypergrid has another security hole as well. A malicious grid owner can invite people to their grid, and steal stuff from their inventories. (This hole is plugged in the latest release of Hypergrid and OpenSim.) But, again, waiting for people to come to your grid so you can steal their stuff is a slow and painful process. Then you’d have to hope they have something valuable in their inventory that you don’t already have.

For the average visitor, hypergrid has the same content security protections as anywhere else in Second Life or OpenSim — which is already far more content protection than you get on on the Web.

That’s why we’re already tracking over 50 grids that are hypergrid-enabled on hyperica.com.

In addition, eight grids are already using the hypergrid-ready OMC currency from Virwox, and another dozen or so are testing it out.

Virwox info here: https://www.virwox.com/omc-open-metaverse-currency.php

– Maria

I’ve also been checking out inworldz. They aren’t a osgrid type set up where people hook up to them for free. I keep running into closed sims on osgrid. very frustrating, but they’ve come a long way too. Inworldz doesn’t hypergrid either but the owners are using game names. If i’m going to be throwing my hat into a new place I’d at least like to know who they are in real world terms. Anyone got info on them? Did victoriona peeps turn to one of those or just scatter? Really sad to see just a wonderful project go poof.

In both cases of course, it’s a matter of having a “pioneering” spirit and not expecting everything to work just peachy. But face it, after 9 years in development Second Life doesn’t work anywhere near “just peachy”. So it’s a matter of personal need and preference. For my coin, $75 a month and 32,000 prims sounds a lot more attractive than $295 a month and 15,000 prims under Linden Lab’s abusive TOS and corporate policies.

but the bitterness that Linden Lab leaves in your mouth can only be understood by someone in the same shoes

come try reaction grid, we are very happy there and have 16 sims for $175 a month (but 16 sims in reaction grid does not equal 16 in SL)

you may also want to look at sim host, they seem to have a similar offering to reaction grid but with more ram (4 vs 1.5)

Overall, I’d say that the OpenSim project has moved extremely quickly from idea to usable product. The closest thing to it in the WWW space is the Apache Web server — which also wasn’t the easiest thing to use when it first came out.

In fact, average users STILL don’t use Apache — instead, they get Web hosting from any of a million Web hosting providers. We’re already seeing this happen in the OpenSim space. My list of OpenSim hosts has more than 15 providers on it now, and I’m sure I’m missing a few: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/opensim-hosting-providers/

New ones are popping up all the time. They’re competing on price, customer service — and on who has the best, easiest-to-use Web interface for managing the OpenSim installs.

– Maria

I think one of the primary drawbacks of OpenSim at this time is an issue with a central core group attempting to enforce their whims on the entire project. I’ve heard some real nightmare reports coming from devs who have left the projects, accusations of plagiarism, attempts at profiteering, dismissal of valid code because one or two people don’t want that feature. There is certainly a failure to prioritize and assign critical projects. And even after (what, over 3 years now?) there is still no turn-key installation package, and no turn-key updating system (in fact, someone updating OS is as likely to destroy their region as improve it).

The OS website itself states that installing OpenSim is a task for technicians, not general users. There is simply no reason for that. It’s a reality that’s holding back the entire project. In truth, quite a bit of what we’ve seen going on with OpenSim is people working on pet projects instead of what needs to be done.

The result is a slow, plodding, inefficient, barely-operational product. I agree that sooner or later things are likely to be ironed out and corrected, but I don’t believe OpenSim has the 30+ years that was available to the Linux community. If OpenSim doesn’t get its act together now and produce a totally viable product within the next 6 months to a year, they stand a very real chance of being themselves turned into an “almost ran” by some very serious competition. In many ways OpenSim is in exactly the same boat as Linden Lab: if they hope to survive, they need to get their act together now and realize exactly what it is the end user is looking for.

What the end user is looking for is two things:

1) Being able to install an OS server on their own computer and serving an open sim mini-grid themselves, tied in to the HyperGrid, the same way they’d install any other software package (basically a turn key system, Wizard-install for both for initial install and for updates)

Or…

2) Low cost server companies such as Inworldz and Reaction Grid.

From what I’ve seen, OpenSim isn’t even close to #1, and isn’t all that cooperative with #2. That’s likely going to need to change if OpenSim doesn’t expect to go the same direction Linden Lab is heading– namely, failed obscurity. Because there is always that unknown big dog waiting right around the corner, prepared to do the job bigger, faster and cheaper. OpenSim may be a “community project”… but it faces the same market trends and threats faced by Second Life.

It would be one thing to program Opensimulator as a Second Life clone software with exact function being the final objective. It is another to program an open framework to where the code can be used in multitudes of different ways based on a modular core plugin system design such as Opensim development is currently being done.

Opensimulator is being programmed in a way that does reflect the values of many open source programs. Where the concepts of “framework” design is more important than any single solution to support future requirements. And quite often, that framework goes through multitudes of changes from the outset which produces the direction of the project. This is ever changing and very much time consuming proposition. We are talking about many years of effort.

There is already a vast amount of code in OS that is the brainchild of the individual contributors and companies alike that has never been seen nor produced from anything that may or may not exist in any proprietary server code base. They thought of what they believed is needed, and implemented it. This will most likely continue to be what the project consists of no matter what the outcome is. There is no individual outcome when taking a path of providing a framework to support a broad array of ideas and individual goals. The “framework” simply grows.

Here is what I see happening… Or better yet hope happens in the future.

1) Opensimulator will keep to the ideals and goals of providing an open world server framework in which many ideas and future projects will be spawned and witnessed. We have seen such happen already with a few groups, and they indeed reinvested their works back into modular function that can be used with Opensim core.

2) Opensimulator (In my opinion), will in some ways continue to work towards correcting the fundamental issues at hand. This will appear to some to be getting closer to being the alternative to Second Life. In which case, was only achieved to further the framework for the multitudes of changes that will take place in the beta phases of the development.

3) Final result if there would ever be such a notion (never really happens), would be that the open world server framework would in no way resemble anything known as of todays date. it would be a mere example of what might be achieved, and in no way directly reflect any currently known server either proprietary, or otherwise.

4) Client/Server will be a complete open source product that doesn’t directly reflect any known service or set of services as we view them today.

Just some thoughts… might be a bit over reaching as it may be concluded that the technology had been a mere stepping stone to what we will witness, and not exist in any known project that we now know or understand.

Currently we could call it anything we want, how about “Simulation Network of Technical Submissions” or (SNOTS) for short.