On Wednesday we had an interview with Oz Linden, Director of Open Development at LL. The meeting was primarily to get answers about the new Third Party Viewer Policy additions. The live stream didn't go so well but we have the recording now! We encourage you to watch it to be informed of what the policy additions mean, how they effect you, the third party viewers you use and it's developers.
http://treet.tv/shows/specials/episodes/firestorm-07mar12
Wow, that was an amazing interview, a professional reporter honestly couldn't have done it any better. And good questions lead to good answers...so it was very informative! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteIt’s certainly interesting to listen to Linden Lab’s Director of Open Development (and watch how he manages to avoid corners). But if you want to know who really has a say at Linden Lab, you should look at these people: http://lindenlab.com/about/management
ReplyDeleteI like the set up of Phoenix viewer better than the linden one. the buttons just seem to be in the right places
ReplyDeleteWow, an hour and a half, and I didn't hear a single coherent answer come from Oz.
ReplyDeleteWhy is Oz dressed as a noob? They have access to everything in SL? I would think they would have the very best :P
ReplyDeleteMinerva, I found interesting what he said about testing: only their own viewers. This would be okey if one had some reason to claim »We are good per se, so we don’t have to be better than anybody else«, but I think this would be quite an audacious attitude in this case. At another point he conceded that the majority of residents were using TPVs. As this might have a reason other than »Our stupid and stubborn customers are averse to change and can’t see the colossal benefits of our wonderful product«, it might be no absurd idea to test the Linden viewer against the TPVs. Well, it seems they are either too conceited or too stingy or both to do that. Or they simply wear blinkers which is not unheard of in the corporate world.
ReplyDeletest-blogustine, it’s play and pay for them. But we do it. They only work there. One might think that making Lindens look like good ambassadors of themselves (all they use being top-notch) would be something for their PR and marketing people to take care of. Btw, the scenery where the interview took place was a secure Linden region, if I got that right. Did you notice how poorly designed the little stuff was that we could see? Well, maybe it’s the old »The cobbler has the worst shoes« thing.
If you want to read the take of a non-Lindenbasher Interview With Oz Linden
ReplyDeleteBock, if I could take things at face value like you do, I certainly would share your opinion. But I do have trust-issues here. Further developments might change that. At least I very much hope so.
DeleteRaymond, I think both Jessica and Oz at the end seemed to see collaborative efforts in the future, after a bit of additional trust-building. That made me very happy!
DeleteThis just means that the whole thing won’t blow up in anybody’s face with no music any time soon.
DeleteI prefer Bock's steady, accurate and drama-free take on things. Bashing incessantly for personal reasons is neither healthy nor helpful.
ReplyDelete»I prefer Bock's steady, accurate and drama-free take on things.«
DeleteQuite so. Applies here perfectly:
»Most of the brouhaha on this issue seems to me like the usual psychotic Linden-bashing and mostly comes from "the usual suspects", i.e the high-strung prima donnas.«
Haha Raymond, I may have to revalue the last piece you quoted, but in my experience there are some people who always take the position that anything and everything Linden Lab does is malicious and aimed at killing their own business by making it uncomfortable for the users.
DeleteWell you know .. if the shoe fits ...
ReplyDeleteOz answered questions like a true politician.
ReplyDelete:)
most annoying thing ever is to watch an incompetent dude play a chick avi and sound like a very uneducated in the wrong field interviewer
ReplyDeleteseriously, do what you do best and find others to do what they do best,,, listening to that was sooo fail
no wonder LL doesnt take you seriously
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ReplyDeleteI just tripped over an article by Paul Graham on the net: »What happened to Yahoo« — http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html
ReplyDeleteThe last paragraphs reflect Yahoo’s stance but are of general interest. In the context of Second Life and some remarks Scott Lawrence made in the interview they do ring a bell here:
»So which companies need to have a hacker-centric culture? Which companies are "in the software business" in this respect? As Yahoo discovered, the area covered by this rule is bigger than most people realize. The answer is: any company that needs to have good software.
Why would great programmers want to work for a company that didn't have a hacker-centric culture, as long as there were others that did? I can imagine two reasons: if they were paid a huge amount, or if the domain was interesting and none of the companies in it were hacker-centric. Otherwise you can't attract good programmers to work in a suit-centric culture. And without good programmers you won't get good software, no matter how many people you put on a task, or how many procedures you establish to ensure "quality."
Hacker culture often seems kind of irresponsible. That's why people proposing to destroy it use phrases like "adult supervision." That was the phrase they used at Yahoo. But there are worse things than seeming irresponsible. Losing, for example.«
Now that this embarrassing RLV thing has happened, I very much feel like also quoting what Paul Graham wrote farther up in this essay:
Delete»In technology, once you have bad programmers, you're doomed. I can't think of an instance where a company has sunk into technical mediocrity and recovered. Good programmers want to work with other good programmers. So once the quality of programmers at your company starts to drop, you enter a death spiral from which there is no recovery.«
lol , lindenlab can't seem to do anything good. as always.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused will I still be allowed to use Phoenix Viewer without having to switch to either V2 or FS (firestorm and viewer 2) because I already get confused on firestorm and on viewer 2 reason I like the Phoenix Viewer
ReplyDeleteI just came to think about one thing that was a topic in the interview, too: that users were averse to change. That’s not a proper way of putting it. It’s an insult. Sort of. Users normally welcome apparent improvement and are willing to learn to adopt it. V2/3 and Firestorm obviously didn’t offer any additional benefit from a user’s standpoint before mesh got rolled out. And not even that was good enough for those who didn’t care to wear elaborate mesh-outfits where several alphas are needed. So what with day-to-day use, many thought and may still think that it’s just change for change’s sake. Not an achievement which improves the user-experience. Maybe it wasn’t sold well enough. But I don’t think so. A really good product doesn’t need much advertising. It sells by word-of-mouth recommendation. And fast.
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ReplyDeletein fact, it seems that lindens started blocking phoenix (as well as other viewers using protocol of version 1). during the last 2 days i cannot save anything (scripts, notecards) into my inventory using phoenix, only the latest viewer works. clearing inventory cache doesn't help.
ReplyDeleteI think what should matter is, and this was never mentioned... what should matter is who is on SL grid.. not what viewer they use... i'm surprised this was never mentioned!
ReplyDeleteWhat matters is who is on what grid!
Not viewer..
To be honest,
ReplyDeleteI personally found the interview very informative, though I do watch and listen to politics virtually all the time, so one learns to read between the lines.
He was right in one thing he said, would not matter what LL did with SL, it would always be wrong, reading through most of the comments on here proves that.
Yes they are jealous that TPV are kicking thier asses, and yes many new things are hacks, and if LL wanted to be nasty they could say f*ck you all and pull plug on the lot and make you all use their viewer.
One must also remember, without LL and their servers, and all their hard work we would not have any TPV or SL at all, so they do deserve a lot of credit for that.
Are they sorry they made their code open source? HELL YEAH.
Will they reverse it? No.
Why they really doing what they doing?
100% pure business reasons
Think of it like a formula 1 race.
25+ cars, 12 to 14 teams, most have 2 drivers couple have 1.
you get your top 3 teams, in viewer terms, phoenix, firestorm LLv3.
Sometimes one of those teams get too far ahead, start to get things that break the rules slightly, and for a while they win more races, till other teams get jealous, a few put in reports complaining, next thing you get a stewards enquiry, and bang it gets outlawed, SL is no different, the new TPV 2.k is simply a way of keeping the playing field more level.
It will just mean jessica and her team will now have to be more inventive in the way things get put out, maybe pass certain idea's and code to unknown developers with a barebone setup, let them try stuff so not to come back on her team, think outside the box.
So shut up with the bitching and whining, it is what it is, now move forward and push the lines as far as you can without going too far.
ok next up for the soap box? lol
Hehehe I have to agree with Trixie on this. Without LL we'd be pretty well done for as far as the second life universe is concerned. They've allowed us to use TPVs, yes with ridiculous restrictions at times, but those TPVs have found ways to cope and create even better products.
ReplyDeleteOne of the biggest problem we're seeing now is that with Mesh, and so many people using older computers to support their SL habits, it's becoming increasingly difficult for them to do anything. I can't tell you how many people have mentioned their computers just crash and burn whenever they enable mesh on their viewer. Be it 2.0, Phoenix, Firestorm, Snowstorm (right?) or any other mesh-supporting TPV. It'd be nice to see from all developers, a viewer that is made for older systems with mesh support. That'd be quite the accomplishment! Then the conversion to mesh could be rolled out a bit more smoothly for everyone, and not just the people with good computers.
Anyway, that's a bit off topic. Point is - Trixie got it down. Bashing on LL might motivate them to improve, but it's purely business related. Because it is a business, which we've been given *free* access to explore. You don't pay to play, you pay to buy, sell, and upload items of your creation which is pretty fair. Or you pay for a bit more - which also means being heard when you have complaints no matter how ridiculous.
It's still a business in the end. And one that's open source, willing to give others the opportunity to create new, and different means of approaching the game within limitations some could argue are for the security of its residence.
On that, I'll admit I haven't watched the interview. But will as soon as I'm able.
Cheers
I fell asleep during the interview, yes it was that boring. I listened to 15 minutes of absolutely useless info and then the sound dropped so I turned it off. They didn't actually hire Oz for PR did they?
ReplyDeleteI would just like to say I only have one problem with the new second life viewer, its incredibly laggy compared to Phoenix and Firestorm, I am not talking a little difference, I am talking about having a slow stuttery SL experience with the LL Secondlife viewer. If that is what they want for all viewers I will be so done with SL.
For security reasons, Lindens are not allowed to use a TPV to log into any Linden account. They are also not allowed to use a TPV on any computer that is ever used to log into a Linden account, even to log in as a non-Linden alt. I know this from a conversation with a current LL employee.
ReplyDeleteThe history of Emerald has left Linden Lab wary of running code built by outside parties, and justifiably so. That said, they should find a safe way for their viewer development team to test the popular TPVs.
The good business side is that someone over there must realize that we are not all watching broadcast television, listening to AM/FM radios, playing 33rpm albums,and hanging with our friends at huge Atari parties. All those things still work and have there following of people who invested (money, time. appreciation,) into them.(averse to change mis-understanding..) There IS going to be a newer,shinier, better financed upstart in free open 3D play, and by leaving an open source for coders to build and create with, you encourage these coders, for free, to assign the emotional atachments that will make great coders "averse to change" and give linden Labs an embedded, committed,army of programers who feel a sense of ownership in the progress of Second Life. I think doing things to discourage registered, well intentioned, programming groups, like the alternate viewer developers, could be a huge mistake for the future viability of this evolving platform called Second Life. Thank you for my 2 minutes on the box:)
ReplyDeleteLL needs to get out of the business of making a viewer. They're terrible at it. They need to focus on their service business of providing the Second Life grid in a usable, stable way to all residents and start listening to resident concerns.
ReplyDeleteAnd most importantly, stop springing surprises we never asked for on us. Sick of their surprise features that are complete garbage.
But really, LL needs to just abandon viewer development entirely. They obviously don't know how to make a viewer. Their 'marketshare' and little comments by Oz in the interview make this glaringly obvious.
@Hazardcat comment. 1.5.2.1185 the last Phoenix version compatible with non SSE2 Processors I believe. Although My understanding about Mesh is it "needs" SSE2 to function, So my back up E-Machine with AMD Athlon physically could not run Mesh based Viewer but with 1.6 gig processor and 2 gig's of ram with settings on low could run sl if I did not have a better computer, so as I duno if Mesh is only a SSE2 for shure, maybe there could be a non SSE2 update to the 1.5 client, even though this is off topic Hazardcat made a good point that made me wana post a comment. Although I would stay away from the TPV / LL debate as LL will do what LL will do like Microsoft and Windows Vista.
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DeleteI'm still chuckling over Oz's comments regarding LL's TPV policy changes in which their primary focus is "shared experience."
DeleteLL scores an epic fail in this regard because they totally borked shared experience with the introduction of mesh which requires a mesh enabled viewer. If you are not using a mesh enabled viewer (for whatever reason) -- and many people aren't -- your shared experience is craptacularly not shared and every mesh object, including those worn by avatars, is a visually inacurate and distorted mess of blobs.
Just pointing out the hypocrisy of their "shared experience" babble re: the new TPV policy.
I can't believe they take themselves serously.
I've been active in SL for almost five years and observing LL "run a business" is like watching a Three Stooges movie.