Re: [mmox] Creating walled gardens considered harmful

[Morgaine <[e-mail]>]

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.



I am very happy to see that, after dissecting what teleport actually means,
you found it easy to agree that its component parts are applicable to
everyone.  I hope that teleport as a concept is no longer a barrier.  That's
how we can make progress, one issue at a time.  No running back to the
corner of the ring.

Re OGP ... Linden goals were, by their own very frank and open admission,
originally focused on a somewhat narrow goal.  I hope that it's clear from
their BoF presentations that that view is history:  they have embraced a
broader future.  I was enormously impressed.  I am not impressed by
repetition of inflexible corner positions.

The fact that OGP is barely 10% defined (and only as an initial draft)
should make it plain that nothing substantial is hardwired into OGP:  it's
really just a rather nice framework for decoupled REST services.  That
framework can be used for pretty much every architecture under the VW sun,
including c-s, s-s, and c-c approaches.

While the original idea came from Linden Lab, that is no stumbling block:
every idea has to originate somewhere.  OGP has the great merit of being
all-embracing as a concept, once you see that certain ideas like *teleport*and
*client endpoint* are actually much more flexible than they might at first
appear.  *Client endpoints* on an OLIVE server could "easily" allow Second
Life clients to interoperate with OLIVE clients.

Everything is possible in this space, it just needs flexibility from
everybody concerned.  The flexibility of OGP is not an issue at all, since
it's mostly undefined. ;-)  [This is no joke.]

PS.  I have said it before but there is no harm in saying it again:  I have
no vested interest and certainly no fanboyism in OGP, nor in SL despite
living virtually in SL.  After a year and a half of talking and arguing
heatedly about it in AWG, I do see that OGP has the *potential* to deliver
interop between many totally diverse worlds, not just those of the SL
ecosystem.  We will have to put our thinking caps on to achieve that though.

I think we can do it.


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
>
>