Heho, while being "one of those maxping´s" I am still part of the community and try to answer, see below.. :-) Btw - not a native english speaker myself, throw tomatoes for bad wording.
------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 15:48:32 +0000 From: Opensource Obscure <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Opensim-users] ReactionGrid offers behind the firewall solution before LL To: <[email protected]> Cc: realxtend <[email protected]> Message-ID: <29150850385862d31d831c2d976f4...@localhost> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" On Tue, 26 May 2009 10:58:26 +0300, Jani Pirkola <[email protected]> wrote: > Good news for Opensim, and congratulations to ReactionGrid! > http://www.maxping.org/business/news/reactiongrid-offers-behind-the-firewall -virtual-world-server.aspx I'd like to hear comments about this. Comments by Opensim developers who are not directly involved with ReactionGrid, if possible, would be even better. That would greatly help me in a better understanding of the whole situation, as actually I'm a bit concerned by this kind of news. Please, note that I don't mean to offend anyone at ReactionGrid (or Maxping) with this message - also note I'm not a native english speaker. 1. software: Opensim (as a software) is not complete yet. It doesn't offer all features that Second Life (as a software) offers. --> and hopefully that is still not a target.. Opensim is not a Second Life clone. But if you look at the "SL-compatible" market it seems to have the best position, esp. because it has advanced features SL does not have. That is basically why Jani did compare to SL. Compatible, each side with some advantages. 2. community: Opensim-based grids have a limited number of users. The Second Life grid has <put SL stats here> a relevant number of users. --> we are talking about a solution for a ISOLATED grid. A grid companys run behind there firewall, keeping governance. By that they could e.g. run courses containing company secrets. So the absolute user number is irrelevant. Even better: The "behind the Firewall" beta from Linden I have seen has no connection to other grids. With Opensim you can still open one "peering region" to welcome hypergrid visitors. Huge advantages for Opensim here. 3. service: Opensim-based solution providers are obviously still young and small. Linden Lab [even if you hated them] has many years of managing a full-featured, huge grid and providing related services (support, money exchange, inventory management, online trading..) --> most serious people don´t hate Linden Labs and fully respect what they did. But again, we are talking about running a grid on a company´s campus. So they would be there own service provider. However - some companies related to opensim are on the market for quite a while and since it´s open source all knowledge is freely available - you will always get someone to help you. That's why I fear that stating "Opensim is competing with Second Life", or "this Opensim-based solution is better than / was launched before than the Linden Lab one", or something like that, could have negative effects on how Opensim is perceived. Isn't this "First!" attitude potentially dangerous when we communicate and explain Opensim's development? What do you think about that? --> wether one like it or not , there will be a commercial competition. The first question would be: is competition a bad thing ? I (personally) believe it isn´t. Mankind is driven by competing, by curiosity and invention. In this very special case, Opensim has more advantages on the usecase wishlist than SL has today. If you want to have a community that has inworld battles, likes boating and carraces SL is doing much better today - no doubt. Cheers, Ralf _______________________________________________ Opensim-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users
