User:Oz Linden/Office Hours Archive 2010-06-24

List of Attendees

• Ardy Lay
• Dale Glass
• Oz Linden

Transcript

[13:00]	Ardy Lay:	Hello Oz
[13:00]	Dale Glass:	rehi Oz
[13:00]	Oz Linden:	hi folks
[13:01]	Oz Linden:	been to SL7B yet? there's some pretty cool stuff there
[13:01]	Oz Linden:	amazing what people can build
[13:02]	Dale Glass:	not yet actually
[13:02]	Ardy Lay:	I have tried a few times. Keep hitting full regions and TD that makes navigating awkward.
[13:03]	Oz Linden:	be sure you check this one out... http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SL7B%20Absurdity/66/106/22
[13:03]	Oz Linden:	very cool psychedelic build
[13:03]	Oz Linden:	sort of a 3D kaleidescope that you sit in the middle of
[13:04]	Dale Glass:	sounds cool, will check it out later
[13:04]	Dale Glass:	ok, is there an agenda for this meeting?
[13:04]	Oz Linden:	I don't really have one today
[13:04]	Oz Linden:	There are a few new things coming out as open source from LL in the next week or so...
[13:05]	Oz Linden:	the first one will be a mysql performance benchmarking system
[13:05]	Oz Linden:	not viewer related, but very useful if you want to regression test real queries against your databases
[13:06]	Dale Glass:	cool, that sounds useful
[13:07]	Dale Glass:	I work with postgres mostly, but I think the people at work could be interested. And maybe contribute back even, we're a very open source company :-)
[13:07]	Oz Linden:	... and there's the new extension to the Open Source in-world land
[13:07]	Oz Linden:	I'll be copying the announcement to the opensource-dev list, but it should also appear on the mysql dev lists
[13:08]	Oz Linden:	apparently that test system has been instrumental in making important changes to the various SL data systems
[13:09]	Ardy Lay:	I think it has been mentioned in a blog post or two.
[13:10]	Dale Glass:	ok, will definitely take a look at that
[13:11]	Dale Glass:	ok, perhaps we could get back to our previous topic, then?
[13:11]	Oz Linden:	sure...
[13:11]	Oz Linden:	Dale and I were discussing setting up open source infrastructure for in-world resources like scripts, Ardy
[13:12]	Ardy Lay:	Okay
[13:12]	Oz Linden:	There are any number of common script tasks that people are constantly having to either re-invent or try to buy
[13:13]	Oz Linden:	(there's my leaf dropper, dropping things on you, Dale)
[13:14]	Dale Glass:	I'd like to have such a thing to be public, btw. I mean have more exposure than it'd get here
[13:14]	Dale Glass:	For instance, could there be a way for those things to find their way to the library?
[13:14]	Oz Linden:	for what definition of 'here' ?
[13:14]	Dale Glass:	this sim
[13:14]	Dale Glass:	I mean, it's kind of a specific and not that much visited place
[13:15]	Oz Linden:	That's a great thought... I don't know who/how the Library gets populated, but it certainly seems like a good idea
[13:15]	Ardy Lay:	Alexandria Linden, I think
[13:16]	Ardy Lay:	That may just be a function account that diesn't really have a person attached to it.
[13:16]	Oz Linden:	Well, I was thinking that for the script and other text resources, we should create wiki documentation as well as the actual source control repository
[13:17]	Oz Linden:	if we did that, it would be easy to get the content of the wiki included in the in-world search (as well as google and other search engines externally)
[13:17]	Oz Linden:	Alexa Linden, maybe?
[13:18]	Ardy Lay:	I think Torley has added stuff to the library recently.
[13:18]	Oz Linden:	Ahhh, yes, Alexandria ... Library...
[13:18]	Oz Linden:	it's not a person, but I can track down who's behind it
[13:18]	Oz Linden:	Hi Ella
[13:19]	Dale Glass:	Oh, and this is somewhat longer term, but related to that there are a couple things I'd like to have, because currently SL introduces some complications
[13:20]	Oz Linden:	?
[13:20]	Dale Glass:	First it would be very nice to be able to have a license property for objects. I'm not sure how hard would it be to get that added
[13:20]	Oz Linden:	non-trivial, I suspect
[13:20]	Oz Linden:	but who knows
[13:20]	Dale Glass:	It relates to the second thing: Currently the TPV has this: "You must not use or provide any functionality that Linden Lab’s viewers do not have for exporting content from Second Life unless the functionality verifies that the content to be exported was created by the Second Life user who is using the Third-Party Viewer."
[13:21]	Dale Glass:	however I do intend to release content I'm absolutely fine with being exported and imported back
[13:22]	Dale Glass:	having some sort of mark on the object indicating I'm fine with export would be very useful to avoid misunderstandings
[13:22]	Oz Linden:	Well, the short term easy way to do that is to publish it in a way that allows each user to make a copy that they own
[13:22]	Oz Linden:	then the viewers are not violating the terms if they allow export
[13:23]	Ardy Lay:	Hmm.. All this exporting and reimporting makes more assets but maybe that's not an issue.
[13:23]	Dale Glass:	true, but SL isn't the only grid around, and even if keeping to SL it can be useful to do such things. For instance, I'd like to use bots to modify content. This could be seen as something that imports and exports content
[13:23]	Oz Linden:	If I buy something, even for L$0, and it comes with full perms, then it's mine and my viewer can make offline copies or take it to other grids or whatever and all is ok w/ the TPV
[13:24]	Dale Glass:	actually no, the TPV says "created by the Second Life user who is using the Third-Party Viewer"
[13:24]	Dale Glass:	so as it is, export is only allowed for the creator of the object
[13:25]	Dale Glass:	http://secondlife.com/corporate/tpv.php #priv2 (2.b)
[13:25]	Oz Linden:	Hmmm...
[13:25]	Oz Linden:	/me is rereading that part of the TPV
[13:27]	Ardy Lay:	Yeah, ToS has something similar in it about moving content to another grid. We need a way to state, per item, that moving/exporting it permitted. That's how I understand it anyway.
[13:28]	Oz Linden:	well, that clause would not apply to scripts ...
[13:28]	Dale Glass:	for the time being my idea is to add cards containing the text of the License, which I *hope* a Linden notices before they ban somebody
[13:28]	Oz Linden:	... because it says "must not use or provide any functionality that Linden Lab’s viewers do not have for exporting content"
[13:28]	Ardy Lay:	Scripts can have the license statement within themselves.
[13:28]	Oz Linden:	and the Linden viewers do provide the ability to export any script that you have access to
[13:29]	Dale Glass:	but would be much better to have a specific field, that way it can be interpreted by automated clients
[13:29]	Dale Glass:	eg, "export everything that is okay to export from my inventory" type of functionality
[13:29]	Oz Linden:	Good point, Ardy. If we set up a repo for them, we should probably require that just for clarity
[13:30]	Ardy Lay:	Oz, I would request that the repository be seeded with samples of the various license statements.
[13:30]	Oz Linden:	I see the point you're making, but it may not be an easy problem to solve from a technology perspective.
[13:31]	Oz Linden:	The problem is that what you really want is a license in a form that a program can interpret to determine what rights any given user has
[13:32]	Ardy Lay:	"Magic string" comment as the first lin in the script?
[13:32]	Oz Linden:	but the general form of that license expression is an extremely tricky business
[13:32]	Oz Linden:	shouts: I think Dale is thinking beyond scripts, though - Avatars, gestures, etc...
[13:33]	Dale Glass:	I think that would be fairly easy, actually. You could add an UUID to the object, which would point to a notecard. You could provide a list of commonly used ones in the library, and the user could optionally specify their own
[13:33]	Oz Linden:	/me has to untrain his fingers to avoid shouting
[13:33]	Dale Glass:	the LL provided ones wouldn't change, so they could be recognized by UUID without having to load the text itself
[13:33]	Oz Linden:	but what of the ones that were not well known? how should the viewer interpret them?
[13:34]	Dale Glass:	present to the user and ask, since it's in text form
[13:34]	Oz Linden:	Well, a lawyer would say that most readers are not qualified to read a license and make a judgement
[13:34]	Dale Glass:	for SL purposes you could have a "Basic SL interpretation", for instance consisting of copy/mod/trans/export flags
[13:35]	Oz Linden:	/me has metaphorical bruises from lawyers on this point
[13:35]	Oz Linden:	but you already have those attributes on any object
[13:35]	Oz Linden:	nothing new needed
[13:35]	Dale Glass:	except for export for now
[13:36]	Dale Glass:	I'd add also a GPL-like "permissions shouldn't be diminished". Meaning, if I release it full perms with that bit set, the next user can't remove permissions
[13:37]	Ardy Lay:	No real way to make any newly defined markup apply to existing content without the creator doing it.
[13:37]	Dale Glass:	that'd probably make some other people happy too, because complaints about freebies being sold are quite common
[13:38]	Ardy Lay:	Yeah, I hear those complaints.
[13:38]	Oz Linden:	In new-Linden orientation, I was warned against people selling me stuff I could find in the Library
[13:39]	Ardy Lay:	Hehe.. Don't purchase beachballs and torches.
[13:40]	Oz Linden:	This is a very interesting topic, Dale.
[13:40]	Dale Glass:	also another thing that came up in a discussion about this
[13:41]	Dale Glass:	creative commons licenses have an attribution clause
[13:41]	Oz Linden:	It's probably worth trying to write up a problem statement on IPR Sharing
[13:41]	Oz Linden:	yes, like BSD ... copy this all you like but you have to leave my name on it
[13:42]	Dale Glass:	there's a small problem that comes up with multiple grids: if I import a piece of CC-BY content, it's created by me, so it could be taken as the wrong attribution. For OpenSim we had this vague mention of an "original creator" metadata field, that could be even not from SL
[13:43]	Oz Linden:	Why would that ever be different from Creator?
[13:43]	Dale Glass:	well, let's say I release a CC-BY licensed beach ball here
[13:43]	Dale Glass:	Ardy takes it and imports on OSGrid. Now its creator is Ardy Lay
[13:44]	Oz Linden:	that's what I meant... why would that grid re-write creator?
[13:44]	Dale Glass:	or, things like textures, or photos from flickr under such licenses. The real creator may well not exist in SL at all
[13:44]	Ardy Lay:	Importer == creator of asset and inventory item != to designer and original creator. It becomes misleading.
[13:44]	Oz Linden:	just because I import something doesn't mean I created it
[13:45]	Dale Glass:	that's the thing, yeah, SL combines those both things in one field
[13:46]	Oz Linden:	Sounds like a good issue for VWRAP
[13:47]	Ardy Lay:	I have seen a few things I created in SL show up as created by someone else in SL. I have to assume that person exported then imported it. Even the prim names are the same as on the one I created. It's misleading.
[13:48]	Oz Linden:	If I were going to create a new field, it seems to me that the one to create is "Importer" rather than "original-creator" ; admittedly mostly a labeling difference (but I have a long rant on the importance of good names)
[13:49]	Ardy Lay:	Creator is a UUID field. If the creator does not exist on the target system, what do you put there to make the righ name show up?
[13:50]	Oz Linden:	Ahh... yet another "name vs locator" problem...
[13:51]	Ardy Lay:	Then you get into situation where the creator's name in the source system isn't really significant to the creator himself.
[13:51]	Oz Linden:	maybe just "unknown", but maybe the answer is to annotate creator with the asset service from which you can get the attributes of the owner
[13:51]	Ardy Lay:	He would prefer to be able to define his own attribution.
[13:52]	Ardy Lay:	Hehe, it does get complicated just thinking about all the situation that could arise.
[13:52]	Dale Glass:	Oh, before I forget: On the subject of a library of open content, you might want to talk to Eddy Striker (John Hurliman) and otakup0pe Neumann (Jonathan Freedman). They seem to be working on such a project for OpenSim
[13:53]	Dale Glass:	They're also in IRC on freenode, in #vwrap for instance
[13:53]	Oz Linden:	Yes, it does, and while I adore knotty problems like this, I'd hate to hold up getting useful content into residents hands while we work it all out
[13:53]	Oz Linden:	I am about full up with IRC channels, but I'll engage with them on the vwrap mailing list
[13:53]	Ardy Lay:	It's also possible that a creator does NOT want thier creations relocated to another grid but provides that service themselves if the resident can identify themseves as having properly purchased it on SL.
[13:56]	Ardy Lay:	In that way the creator is controlling which grids thier content can appear on. Some have expressed this interest.
[13:56]	Ardy Lay:	I don't really see that as LL's issue but you may have ideas there too.
[13:57]	Oz Linden:	I think the real issue there ends up being whether or not it's possible to ensure that an object stays unique across grids
[13:57]	Dale Glass:	I think that could be fairly easily handled by just having no export permission and having the creator manage it
[13:57]	Oz Linden:	if I sell you a widget, you should be able to move it to another grid, but not if you also have a copy on this one
[13:58]	Oz Linden:	how is 'no export' different from 'no copy' ?
[13:58]	Dale Glass:	copy is copying inside SL
[13:58]	Ardy Lay:	Hmm... The items we were discussing when that came up are +mod +copy -trans in SL.
[13:59]	Oz Linden:	what difference does it make in practice, I mean
[13:59]	Oz Linden:	like the bridge I bought this morning :-)
[14:00]	Ardy Lay:	The creator expressed the desire to allow a cerified purchaser to use the item on another grid while retaining use of it in SL, thus +copy.
[14:00]	Ardy Lay:	-cerified +verified
[14:01]	Ardy Lay:	So I see it as the creator has to do the import filtering to that other grid by verifying purchases and redelivering to the new destination.
[14:01]	Oz Linden:	I'm not sure what the audit/enforcement would look like in that case unless you assume common asset servers across grids (which has many nice propoerties, of course)
[14:02]	Oz Linden:	Our time is up for now... I need to go do some other things before I leave. I'll post a transcript of this session for sure. Good stuff.
[14:02]	Ardy Lay:	I have yet to see permissions controls on OpenSim that actually work. Not sure what's missing there.
[14:03]	Dale Glass:	nah, it does work
[14:03]	Oz Linden:	I'd like us to think about what we can do based on the current permission schemes and mechanisms.
[14:03]	Dale Glass:	OpenSim by default installs with permissions disabled. You have to turn that on
[14:04]	Ardy Lay:	Dale, oh. That's interesting. All I could find was a non-funtional stub module.
[14:04]	Oz Linden:	How can we build a base of open source in-world content, and what conventions can we use within the current framework to implement it?
[14:04]	Oz Linden:	If there are exceptions or qualifications that need to be created for the TPV, well.... that's why they pay me the big bucks
[14:05]	Ardy Lay:	Hmm... I was wondering about making an XML object library.
[14:06]	Oz Linden:	Thank you all for a thought-provoking discussion... gotta go wrap up my day and ride home.
[14:06]	Oz Linden:	See you soon.
[14:06]	Dale Glass:	later!
[14:06]	Ardy Lay:	Thanks Oz

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