AW Groupies

Purpose

Serious technical discussion about Linden Lab's Architecture Working Group (AWG). "AW Groupies" is an unofficial, Resident-operated group, though most (all?) members also participate in the AWG.

Invite only (apply in-world to Zha Ewry), but the criterion is simple. Show up and contribute to the AWG, at Zero Linden's office hours, or on the Wiki, or on SL-Dev or in the irc channel for the Python test client.

Activities

The main AWG meeting is held annually or semi-annually. We now meet up to 8 times a week in-world, counting AW Groupies meeting, Zero's office hours, Which's office hours, Enus's office hours, Whump's office hours and the pygop daily meetings.

Our main focus these days is on the Open Grid Protocol, the Open_Grid_Public_Beta and the pyogp Python test harness for protocol testing.

Also members are quite active on the wiki and in the SLDEV mailing list.

A public SVN repository is open to all AW Groupies members here:

• http://openmv.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/archwg/

Contact anyone with root on openmv.org for an account if you are in the AW Groupies group in-world.

Architecture Working Group meetings

• AWG I annual meeting transcript, participants' responses, etc
• AWG II annual meeting transcript, video, participants' responses, etc

In-World Meetings

AW Groupies meeting

Weekly meeting times are:

• Mondays -------

• Tuesdays ------ 9:30 AM SLT at Zha's IBM Island at ThorneBridgeTown (weekly AWG meeting)
• ------------------ FIRST TUESDAY of the month ONLY: 1 PM SLT at Zero Linden's office hours at Grasmere
• ------------------ Noon SLT Open Sim Meeting

• Wednesdays -- Suspended until further notice: 1:30 PM SLT @ Whump Linden's Office Hours (main meeting for public grid open beta)

• Thursdays ----- 11 AM SLT at Which Linden's office hours at Beaumont (often AWG-related these days)
• Fridays --------- 1 PM SLT Enus Linden's Office Hours (starring PyOGP and a cast of several bots)

Meetings are scheduled via the "SL AW Groupies" google calendar" (though the above schedule is generally more accurate).

• XML
• ICal
• Calendar ID: pdd5mpktklo89bgmfgi076mcc4@group.calendar.google.com
• Add to your Google Calendar

Meeting Agendas

Each meeting should have an agenda --- which will be distributed via

• google calendar entry
• in-world notice to the SL "AW Groupies" group
• the AW Groupies In-World Meeting Agenda wiki page

OpenSim meeting

• Tuesdays/Saturdays noon SLT, at Wright Plaza sim in OSGrid. Registration Page

Set client command line options to:

-loginuri http://osgrid.org:8002

-loginpage http://osgrid.org/loginscreen.php

-helperuri http://osgrid.org/

Chat Logs

Chat logs of the in-world meetings are published and accessible via the links below:

2007 meetings

• September: 28
• October: 1 5 9 --Zero's office 16
• November: 6 13 20

2008 meetings

• January: 08
• February: 19
• April: 08 22 29
• May: 20 27
• June: 03 10 17 24
• July: 01 08 15 22 29
• August: 05 12 19 26
• September 2 9 16 23 30
• October 7 14 14 --Zero's O.H. 28
• November 11 18
• December 9 16 23

2009 meetings

• January 6 13 20 27
• February 3 10 17 24
• March 3 10
• April 7 14 28
• June 2 16
• July 21
• September 15
• October 20

2010 meetings

• March 2 2

• MMOX chat logs -- in-world transcripts with non-SL/Opensim participants
• All Grid Interoperability chat logs
• All AW Groupies chat logs
• All Pyogp chat logs
• All Open Grid Public Beta Transcripts
• Zero Linden's Office Hour Transcripts
• Which Linden's Office Hour Transcripts
• Enus Linden Office Hour Transcripts
• Whump Linden Office Hour Transcripts
• OpenSim chat logs
• mono beta meeting discussion of het-grid

(if you post chat logs, you might want to use the sllog2wiki perl script to turn them into a more readable wiki table format ready to copy & paste into the chat log page)

Chat logs of AWGroupies meetings should be summarized on the wiki.

Viewpoint Advocacy Groups

Viewpoint Advocacy Groups - groups to focus on specific requirements.

AWG-specific VAGs

• Core Grid Services, Protocols, and Structures VAG
• Event Scalability VAG
• Geometry and Physics VAG
• Live Performances VAG
• Quality Assurance VAG
• Scalability VAG

AWG-related VAGs

• Map_API_VAG
• Multi-Process Client VAG -- draft

Work-In-Progress

Work-in-progress wiki pages are architecture pages that are (as the name implies ;-)) work in progress. Once the group has reached consensus that a particular topic is "good-to-go" we'll graduate that page to the main AWG page.

General Concerns

• Scoping
• Glossary
• Use Cases

Communications

• Initial CAPS seed
• AWG initial flows
• AWG flows login

• Mudata
• Streamlet

Documenting current protocols

• Python test harness for OGP
  • Which Linden office hours 22 May 2008

AWG and citizen pages

• Current_login_protocols
• Current_Sim_Capabilities
• Example_protocol_code
• Hegemons_Login_Analysis#Very_simple_C.23__server
• Litesim grid interop
• Event Queue Get CAP

Linden Lab pages

• "Satellite's Eye" view of the Second Life architecture from a service disruption POV
• Message_System_and_Capabilities
• Viewer_Authentication
• Viewer_Architecture
• Protocol
• LLSD
• Certified_HTTP_Escrow
• ImprovedInstantMessage
• client command line parameters and stuff

libsecondlife reference pages

• Login page
• Protocol page
• packets index
• Movement

opensim reference pages

• opensim grid architecture diagram
• login diagram (same general sequence as current LL login)

Future Protocols

• Second_Life_Login_API_Strawman

deprecated in favor of:

• Open Grid Protocol
  • SLGOGP_Teleport_Strawman
• Ongoing next generation protocols documentation effort by Linden Lab

Possible future directions

• OpenID A decentralized single sign-on system
• Yardis A digital identity protocol

Asset Security and Trust

• Asset Handling in OGP
• Protecting content in an open grid
• OGP Trust Model

Scaling Issues

• Region Subdivision
• Reverse Proxies
• Resident Subdivision

Group IM

• Which Linden's message queue evaluation notes

Other

• Extended Capability Clients

Thinking-in-Progress

• Have a look and contribute to the brainstorming page.

• It's early days on the Multi-Process Client VAG -- draft, but we would highly appreciate input to help with design choices and direction.

Misc User Pages

• Have an AWG idea? Don't know where in the wiki it should be indexed? Make sure that folks can find it by adding it to the AW_Groupies_User_Pages Add: '[[Category:AW Groupies User Pages]]' to the end of your user page.

External Resources

Stuff of interest to or in connection with the AW Groupies or the Architecture Working Group:

• Developer Communication Tools (Linden Lab)
• SLDev Main Page
• Open_Grid_Public_Beta
• Pyogp {Linden Labs/ AWG Python-based protocols testing library)
• OpenMetaverse Home
  • libsecondlife (libsl) homepage
  • opensim homepage
  • openviewer homepage
• OSGrid: open/non-profit OpenSim based grid
• realxtend homepage
• IBM PR re: AWG

Second Life Viewers

Various viewers compatible with Second Life.

• Note: the "Derived 3rd-party clients" page includes a few non GPL viewers plus some hybrids. I'll try to come up with a better way to index this stuff. Saijanai Kuhn
• Yeah, that redirect of "Alternate_viewers" to "Downloads" is nuts, and the "Downloads" page itself seems to have to have a variety of things bundled together --- it needs splitting. But don't split it by license, that's precisely what I sought to eliminate in this section's re-org. It makes no sense to classify clients by license, since GPL'd clients don't necessarily have anything to do with Linden's code, just like BSD clients don't necessarily have anything to do with libomv. It does make sense to keep a list of Linden-derived clients though, since they're all more alike than not alike, and share both code and license encumbrance. Morgaine Dinova 01:28, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Viewers based on the Linden Lab GPL code (C++)

• Main Second Life viewer/client

The main (official) Second Life viewer, produced by Linden Lab with the help of patches submitted by the community, and available for Linux, Mac and Windows.

• Snowglobe

A new version of the Second Life client in a public repository where Linden Lab permits direct committing from select community members alongside daily Linden work. There is also a new build system to keep this version continuously building when new submissions are received, with new builds available to everyone. This version will become available as an alternative Linden download alongside the main SL client, once it is sufficiently stable.

• Derived 3rd-party clients (currently links to a mixed "Downloads" page, to be fixed)

A large list of clients (not necessarily 3D) developed in the free and open-source community using GPL code from the above two official viewers.

Viewers based on the libomv/libsl code (C#)

• Idealist

IdealistViewer is a new cross-platform viewer based on the Irrlicht engine, PrimMesher, and LibOpenmetaverse. It can either use the Second Life protocols as provided by LibOpenmetaverse or the MXP protocol. Since it uses the Irrlicht engine it can simultaneously display prim/sculptie content and objects and animated meshes/avatars from a wide variety of sources such as Collada, .OBJ, DirectX, and Blitz3D files. It is not derived from the LL GPL viewer and is made available under BSD style licensing. It is designed to work with OpenSimulator but may also work with Second Life. It is written in the C# language.

• LookingGlass

LookingGlass viewer is a modular viewer with pluggable communication and rendering engines. Initial communication plugin uses LibOpenMetaverse and the initial rendering plugin uses PrimMesher and Ogre. It is written in C# and BSD licensed. Home site at http://lookingglassviewer.org/ .

Viewers based on other libraries (python, C, etc)

• Pyogp

Pyogp is an open source project between Linden Lab and the Architecture Working Group (AWG) to support testing the (Open Grid Protocol (OGP). Written in Python, Pyogp will consist initially of a client library and test functionality to enable testing OGP-enabled virtual worlds such as Second Life and compatible OpenSim implementations. These components will expand as the effort matures. Pyogp is released under the Apache v2 license.

Mailing Lists

• List of Linden Lab mailing lists
  • SLDEV Main mailing list for SL developers
  • gridnauts Mailing list for participants in Open Grid Public Beta
  • PyOGP Mailing List for Python-based client library and test harness for the Open Grid Protocols
• libsecondlife
• opensim
• openviewer

IRC

• irc://irc.efnet.net/#opensl
• irc://irc.efnet.net/#opensl-jira (real time updates of entries to jira.secondlife.com)
• irc://irc.efnet.net/#opensl-svn (updates of the the public SVN)
• irc://irc.freenode.net/#opensim * irc://irc.freenode.net/#opensim-dev
• irc://irc.efnet.net/#libomv * irc://irc.efnet.net/#libomv-dev
• irc://irc.freenode.net/#openviewer * irc://irc.freenode.net/#openviewer-dev
• irc://irc.freenode.net/#realxtend (Finnish language but can handle English if needed)
• irc://irc.freenode.net/#pyogp (Python test harness/pyogp Second LIfe library irc)
• irc://irc.freenode.net/#gridnauts (Open Grid Public Beta irc)

Forums

• realXtend google forum

Capabilities

• Capabilities theory and practice
• Zook's Triangle index -- short list of interesting articles about naming and capabilties
• Capability-based Systems by Henry Levy --online copy of 1984 book on early implementations of capabilities systems
• E language home E language home mirror E wiki --computer language dedicated to handling distributed trust issues
  • Capability Computation
  • irc://irc.freenode.net/#erights
  • E language mailing list
• mailing list for capability systems
• blog and thesis on caps in virtual worlds Martin Scheffler
• Cap-based MUD by Kevin Reid --written in E
• discussion of ancient (Commodore 64!) video game that used capabilities

Misc

• non-unique region names within the confines of a single grid, yay or nay ?
• discussion of new Map API and related issues
• Open Source Portal --index to all things Open Source for Linden Lab

Members

Founder Zha Ewry

Saijanai Kuhn

Tao Takashi

Tillie Ariantho

Dr Scofield

Burhop Piccard

Vicero Lambert

Morgaine Dinova

Silicon Plunkett

Dale Innis