Re: [mmox] One more time: The LESS model vs the Generic Client model

[Jon Watte <[e-mail]>]

Morgaine wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Jon Watte <[e-mail] 
> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>  
>
>     Actually, I have seen the Open Sim people propose and argue for
>     the "generic client" concept.
>
>
>
> Generic clients are completely inevitable

That is your opinion, but you seem to present it like scientific fact. 
There are some generic clients, for some worlds. If I understand you 
correctly, you believe that there will be one or more clients that will 
actually connect to most virtual worlds in existence. Am I understanding 
you correctly?

I think that generic clients that connect to many different kinds of 
virtual worlds are not only a bad idea. They are way too expensive 
considering that they solve only a pretty trivial problem (the problem, 
in the status quo, that you need to switch clients when switching 
worlds). Note that generic clients do not give you the mash-up 
capability of using objects that come from two separate worlds in a 
common space. Only one of the two options of "dictate the server 
execution environment" or "server <-> server interoperability" gives you 
that (unless you're aware of some model I'm not, but are holding back). 
That's a problem I think adds tremendous value, and moves the metaverse 
substantially forward.

> that they're already here in our midst

If I understand you correctly: You believe that a client that can only 
talk to Second Life derived virtual worlds is "generic"? That's what I'm 
hearing.
Do you also believe that the Metaverse.net client is "generic," because 
it can talk to all the difference virtual worlds built on the Metaverse 
platform?
Do you believe that the OLIVE client is "generic" because it can talk to 
all of the virtual worlds built on the OLIVE platform?
If you mean something else, please point me at concrete examples.

>
> But we are talking about clients involved in interoperating worlds, 
> not the total number of clients in existence.  Since worlds of 
> different types do not currently interoperate, talking about the 
> clients they use doesn't seem very relevant.  Looking at the

I think it is very relevant! It's simple economics:

Broad adoption of a standard only happens when it significantly improves 
the status quo, such that the engineering necessary to adhere to the 
standard costs less than the benefit of adhering to the standard. If the 
status quo means that you can visit different worlds, and the adoption 
of a standard means that you can visit different worlds, faster, but 
otherwise changes nothing, then the value of that standard is the value 
for the users in being able to switch between worlds faster.

My argument is that that's pretty low value, and thus will not incite 
broad adoption. My argument is also that if you're to build a generic 
client that reaches even 50% of all the virtual worlds out there, you 
have to either incorporate a large number of different protocols, OR you 
have to convince a large number of virtual world vendors to re-do their 
client/server communications stack to a common format. Both of those 
alternatives have a very high cost associated with them.

Note that I'm not talking about broad adoption among "Second Life Users" 
or even "World of Warcraft Users" (a group 10x the size of the former) 
-- I'm talking about adoption within governments, companies, 
non-profits, churches, countries and everyone else who is currently 
virtual world illiterate. Our job is to make sure that using virtual 
worlds makes sense for those people; that it can transform the way they 
live their lives and do their work for the better.

> You can view this as client proliferation (they're all different) or 
> as clients coallescing and tending towards a single generic client 
> (they're all based on a similar model), but however you view it, both 
> the genericity and the proliferation are here to stay. ;-)

Let me see if I understand you correctly:
You believe that the Second Life model is actually superior, and will 
prevail over all other virtual world models?
That's what the above sounds like you're saying to me, but I want to 
make sure I understand you clearly.
In my view, nobody but the Second Life / OpenSim sphere is trending 
towards a common generic client, and the reason that Second Life / 
OpenSim are "trending" towards that direction is that they all started 
out from the same place to begin with.

Sincerely,

jw