Re: [ogpx] one virtual world, or many?

[Infinity Linden <[e-mail]>]

yes. i agree with what you say here.

and.. i would go a little further

when i pick up a virtual banana in Levenhall/192/168/32 (in second
life), then pass through "customs" to get to OSGridTest/252/391/22 (on
OSGrid) and drop the banana, it should show up as a banana (and not a
pear) to other people who are are in the same area.

since second life and OSGrid share a number of assumptions about how
avatars and assets are defined, this isn't too radical a goal. and it
sort of informally defines a minimum interoperability "experience."

so just 'cause you can have a banana on both grids, it doesn't mean
that you can't do things that are region domain or region specific.
one grid might implement the "banana auction" service that the other
doesn't. one grid might implement the rule that bananas will always
glow green on alternate tuesdays. (and hopefully, the other won't.)

and ultimately this is the challenge. can all of us from the OpenSim
world and Linden and IBM and whomever else sit in the same room long
enough to get general agreement on how to share descriptions of
objects, avatars and protocol sufficient to allow for the general
migration of fruit from one person's simulator to another. i think we
can. and further, doing it in the IETF puts us in an environment where
if we say things like "hey! let's re-implement TFTP poorly two and a
half times!" we'll hopefully have people who will remind us of our
folly.

still further, we're all going to probably want to do slightly
different things in our worlds. one advantage that OpenSim brings to
this party is that it's source is open and if people have a business
reason for deploying a sim with the glowing green bananas option, they
can. and they might want to do things like attach meta-data that only
they can interpret to people's bananas. and that's okay.

and i think i'm about to very quickly run out of things to say about
glowing green bananas, so let me just say, i think at this point we're
really only trying to say, "we all agree we should work on protocols
that allow us to move avatars and assets between regions, possibly
limited by policy." but we have a little bit of runway left to
describe how it needs to be done.

On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Charles Krinke<[e-mail]> wrote:
> Dear Infinity:
>
> Thank you for your considered answer. I think our hearts are all headed in
> the same place. For some reason, all this discussion of names has my head
> spinning.
>
> But, ... that aside, as I look at interop between different grids (or
> virtual worlds, if you wish), I see these as analogous to transitting
> customs between countries.
>
> That is, there will be some things that will connect back to ones home or
> originating country and some things that are intrinsic to the country one is
> visiting, to try to draw an analogy.
>
> The things connecting back to ones home country (or grid, if we prefer),
> will most likely be the avatar, inventory and attachments, or at least part
> of the inventory and all of the avatar and attachments.
>
> The things intrinsic to the country one is visiting will most likely be the
> rules dealing with transactions such as buying and selling objects,
> permissions of editing, and ability to visit certain parts of the visiting
> country.
>
> To me, as long as that is a reciprocal relationship, that is, a visit from a
> SecondLife grid to an OpenSim is a mirror image of permissions to a visit
> from an OpenSim grid citizen to a SecondLife grid, then I think my
> enthusiasm is still "full speed ahead regardless of whether we call a pear a
> banana or not".
>
> Charles
>
> ________________________________
> From: Meadhbh Siobhan <[e-mail]>
> To: Charles Krinke <[e-mail]>
> Cc: [e-mail]
> Sent: Monday, August 31, 2009 11:38:00 AM
> Subject: Re: [ogpx] one virtual world, or many?
>
> charles,
>
> we're not defining interop with respect to any currently defined platform.
>
> the SL platform is going to need a lot of re-tooling to implement the
> protocols we're supporting, and since opensim was originally based no
> the SL legacy protocols, my guess is that it also will need some
> retooling.
>
> we have, however, deployed patches to opensim to implement a previous
> version of OGP, so we know it's not impossible.
>
> your knowledge of OpenSim deployment patterns is of great interest to
> me personally; mostly because OpenSim tends to experiment a lot more
> than SL. and honestly... the OSGrid deployment pattern of "some
> centralized, some federated" services is one of the things i think all
> the people working on OGP are interested in.
>
> so i think to answer your question precisely, i'd have to invoke Zen
> and say "mu!"
>
> that is, i think it's not _completely_ related. we're not defining the
> protocol in terms of the current structure of OpenSim, but i think all
> of us are interested in making it possible to use OGP/VWRAP to define
> a protocol that is equally useful to Linden as it is to you at OSGrid
> and zha, et al at IBM as it is to anyone interested in open virtual
> worlds.
>
> so rather than saying "yeah, we're going to support this specific mode
> of OpenSim," it's probably more appropriate to say, "we're very
> interested in the operational experiences of people who have used
> OpenSim in both stand-alone and UGAIM mode. since it's an open
> standard, we invite Teravus, Adam, JHurliman and yourself to tell us
> what's easy to do in OpenSim and what's hard to do, and after we get
> through the chartering process, there's likely to be several more
> rounds of discussions about what people think can and can't be easily
> implemented and deployed."
>
> but at the end of the day, i think there's going to be code changes
> for both OpenSim, Linden and all the viewers.
>
> -cheers
> -meadhbh
>
> On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Charles Krinke<[e-mail]> wrote:
>> I'm confused with all that is going on and need to ask my two main
>> questions
>> again.
>>
>> "Are we considering interop with virtual worlds running OpenSim which do
>> not
>> run agent domains but rather a similar, but not quite identical notion we
>> call UGAIM (User, Grid, Asset, Inventory, Messaging) servers?"
>>
>> "Are we considering a full handoff? That is, a user on an OpenSim grid may
>> teleport to a SecondLife grid and retain its connection to the OpenSim
>> UGAIM, in an analogous fashion that a user has been demonstrated to
>> teleport
>> from the Betagrid to OSGrid using OGP last year?"
>>
>> Charles
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: Meadhbh Siobhan <[e-mail]>
>> To: Kari Lippert <[e-mail]>
>> Cc: [e-mail]; [e-mail]
>> Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2009 11:50:46 AM
>> Subject: Re: [ogpx] one virtual world, or many?
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 11:20 AM, Kari Lippert<[e-mail]>
>> wrote:
>>> The network/internet analogy is great. I vote base hit.... and would
>>> like to emphasize that, given current usage of the words, the answer
>>> to
>>>
>>>>     Are we connecting two virtual worlds or is the result a single
>>>>     virtual world?
>>>
>>> is yes, sort of.
>>>
>>> As I understand it, VWRAP is designed to connect/allow
>>> interoperability between two or more independent/distinct/individual
>>> virtual environments/regions/worlds into what appears to the user as a
>>> single environment/region/world/universe. This single
>>> environment/region/world/universe is in fact multiple
>>> independent/distinct/individual virtual environments/regions/worlds
>>> whose boundaries could be administrative or technological but the
>>> distinction matters not.
>>>
>>> Is that right?
>>>
>>> Kari
>>>
>>
>> this is an interesting use case, but not what OGPX/VWRAP was proposed
>> to address.
>>
>> MMOX remains as a venue for the discussion of integrating technically
>> diverse virtual worlds.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 11:40 AM, Dave CROCKER<[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>> Folks,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Pre-game.
>>>>
>>>> Confusion and disagreement that includes the term "virtual world" is
>>>> proving
>>>> tenacious, in spite of extensive and substantive discussion.  Typically,
>>>> something this persistent means either that some concept(s) lack shared
>>>> definition or that competing technical paradigms are present.
>>>>
>>>> As was noted many message ago, there's a good chance that much of the
>>>> disagreement is really about the meaning of the term.  That is, that
>>>> apparent
>>>> disagreements about such things as scope of work is really about scope
>>>> of
>>>> this one term.  That, at least, is my own reading of the discussions.  I
>>>> think people are using the term differently.  If we can get to the point
>>>> of
>>>> using it the same
>>>> way, my sense is that we will find that disagreements about actual work
>>>> to
>>>> be done, and its use, are rather small.
>>>>
>>>> In other words, I think the persistence of debate that keeps using that
>>>> term
>>>> "virtual world" means we have to resolve it before we can make serious
>>>> progress. These sorts of things never seem to go away without explicit
>>>> resolution.  While much of the earlier attempts to resolve this look
>>>> like
>>>> they helped quite a bit, it seems clear that a bit more effort is
>>>> needed.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The wind-up.
>>>>
>>>> Since the crux of the challenge keeps coming back to what
>>>> interoperability
>>>> will
>>>> or will not be provided -- with at least one additional point about
>>>> whether
>>>> the
>>>> current work must be used internal to a service or only used /between/
>>>> services
>>>> -- permit me a moment of theft from Internet history and constructs.  I
>>>> think it
>>>> can be applicable here:
>>>>
>>>>   Network vs. Internetwork.
>>>>
>>>>   "A" virtual world vs. Multiple virtual worlds.
>>>>
>>>> But hold on.  I'm not necessarily going to suggest mapping the two sets
>>>> as
>>>> one-to-one directly...
>>>>
>>>> Originally, a network was a discrete technical set.  X.25.  NCP.  XNS.
>>>> Netware.
>>>> Whatever.  Both technology and administration had the same boundary.
>>>>  Your
>>>> network might use one technology and mine might use another.  But even
>>>> if
>>>> they
>>>> used the same technology, one was mine and the other was yours.  So I
>>>> tend
>>>> to
>>>> view interaction across administrative boundaries as far more
>>>> interesting
>>>> to
>>>> internetworking than whether different technologies are used:
>>>>
>>>>   <http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1775.html>
>>>>
>>>> The term Internet has come to mean a single, unified, global service.
>>>>  It
>>>> crosses administrative boundaries.  Does IBM internally operate a
>>>> 'network'
>>>> or
>>>> an 'internetwork'?  Either choice is reasonable, depending on what is
>>>> the
>>>> focus. I think we don't need to resolve the equivalent question here.
>>>>
>>>> There is universal agreement that there is a single global service,
>>>> comprising many independent smaller services, and that that single,
>>>> larger
>>>> thing is "The" Internet.
>>>>
>>>> What we tend to forget is that there probably are other Internets that
>>>> don't
>>>> (directly) interoperate with the global one.  They are off "The
>>>> Internet"
>>>> grid
>>>> and are on their own.  They are likely also "an" Internet.  These days,
>>>> they
>>>> might be running TCP/IP, but they don't have to.  For example:
>>>>
>>>>   <http://www.dtnrg.org/wiki>
>>>>
>>>> Some uses of "virtual world" appear to mean an administrative boundary
>>>> and
>>>> others appear to mean a technical boundary. This is the sort of thing we
>>>> need to resolve.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The pitch.
>>>>
>>>> I suggest ignoring technical differences within an administrative domain
>>>> and
>>>> even across different administrative domains.  Simply, VWrap is used to
>>>> connect together administrative domains running simulations.
>>>>
>>>>     I'm running one simulation and you are running another.  We use
>>>>     VWrap to interoperate.
>>>>
>>>>     Are we connecting two virtual worlds or is the result a single
>>>>     virtual world?
>>>>
>>>> Some other folk might not interoperate with our unified service.  They
>>>> are
>>>> running their own thing.  Are they running a different virtual world or,
>>>> perhaps, a different set of multiple virtual worlds?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The swing.
>>>>
>>>> I suggest that:
>>>>
>>>>     Any set of independent administrative domains that interoperate
>>>>     together, using VWrap, creates a /single/ virtual world.
>>>>
>>>>     Each independent administrative domain is running /part/ of that
>>>> single
>>>>     virtual world.  (The part might be one Region, or Agent, or it might
>>>> be
>>>>     many of both or any combination.)
>>>>
>>>>     Hence, I am suggesting that an integrated VWrap environment has a
>>>>     comparable quality to an integrated internet environment that we
>>>> call
>>>>     "The" Internet.  One service.
>>>>
>>>> If you are running a simulation that is not part of an integrated,
>>>> interoperable
>>>> VWrap environment, you are in a different virtual world.
>>>>
>>>>     If you are part of an interoperable VWrap service, you are in a
>>>>     single virtual world.
>>>>
>>>> It doesn't matter what you run internally.  What matters is integration
>>>> to
>>>> the
>>>> interoperable service using VWrap.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Base hit or strikeout?
>>>>
>>>> d/
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>>  Dave Crocker
>>>>  Brandenburg InternetWorking
>>>>  bbiw.net
>>>>
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>>>>
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