Re: [mmox] Creating walled gardens considered harmful

[Morgaine <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 5:51 PM, Jon Watte <[e-mail]> wrote:

>

If you could articulate what you specifically mean by the statement
> "post-BoF" I believe I could adjust the discussion to match.
>
>

Thank you. :-)

I'm hoping that the BoF marked a turning point in MMOX discussions.

In the months leading up to the BoF, I think it's fair to say that the same
invariant positions were re-stated repeatedly, over and over, culminating
with those positions being presented formally (and very nicely and
effectively) at the BoF.

I would like to think that post-BoF, now that everyone has pinned their
colours to the various corners of the ring, everyone will instead gather in
the centre and help in the job of problem analysis, dealing with issues one
at a time in an engineering manner.

It is only after we have dismantled the problem space into its many
necessary components that we'll be able to start synthesizing solutions out
of them that can lead to useful interop for all.  Restating one's allegiance
to a corner (a single approach) will not accomplish that, and doing so *ad
infinitum* just ensures total failure.

This applies to all of us.

I'm seeking that we narrow the scope of discussions from huge monolithic
corner positions to individual components of the problem space, as we did to
agree on *teleport*.  One step at a time we can converge on engineering
solutions, whereas the corner positions are forever irreconcilable.


Morgaine.









On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 5:51 PM, Jon Watte <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Morgaine wrote:
>
>> The above 3 things have to happen whatever the world architecture,
>> otherwise the real goal of interop /from the point of view of the user/ has
>> not been achieved:  *to create a mashup in which the user's avatar is now in
>> a new world setting and visible to new people*.
>>
>>
> I agree, and if the OGP model was designed to solve those problems in an
> otherwise context-free manner, it might be a good starting point for a
> standard that many virtual worlds could adopt. But then, why define
> something new, when extending something like XRDS seems simpler and more
> straightforward, in the larger scope of existing standards re-use?
>
>  Please be specific, post-BoF.
>>
>>
> If you could articulate what you specifically mean by the statement
> "post-BoF" I believe I could adjust the discussion to match.
> I don't believe any particular approach was decided in the meeting -- the
> biggest argument was one of "why don't we define what problem we're going to
> solve, for whom," but even that didn't get full consensus. If you believe
> the meeting actually decided on a specific course of action, I would be
> interested in reading about that.
>
> Something I want to avoid is defining a standard that doesn't matter to
> most virtual world technologies.
>
> For example, XMPP is a well-defined, open standard for IM-style text chat.
> However, the adoption and use of XMPP, even though Google Talk may use it,
> is still probably below 1% of the total IM market, compared to AIM, Yahoo
> and MSN (plus enterprise-specific solutions). I don't think a standard is a
> success until it is actually adopted and implemented by a majority of actors
> in the market, no matter how flexible, useful or open it is. Thus, I think
> concerns about the bang-for-buck for the potential implementors is crucial,
> because that drives adoption, which drives success.
>
> Which leads us back to the problem that we very poor representation of many
> of the technologies in the market in this group. Personally, I have spent
> significant time analyzing many of the different technologies for
> commonality and differences (Darkstar, Croquet, Multiverse, Quake,
> Half-life, Unreal, EverQuest, WoW, etc). However, in the end, even if I
> formulate a proposal by synthesizing all of that analysis, I can't speak for
> any of the other actors, and if they don't care and don't adopt, then
> whatever standard is likely to be about as relevant as XMPP is to AIM, MSN
> and Yahoo. That would be bad.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> jw
>
>