Re: [ogpx] OGPX WG draft charter, 2009-08-19 revision

[Carlo Wood <[e-mail]>]

I'm feeling a bit dizzy of all the terminology :p
And, I'm still not sure if I understand it: it's still unclear.

Perhaps we'll just have to use hard examples on this mailinglist
first to make things clear, and only then we can think about
ways to achieve the same clearness in more abstract terms.

---

1) Right now, there is 'Second Life', and there are several
   opensim worlds that are very very like Second Life. Never I
   am refering to or even thinking about WoW.

2) Right now, therefore, we can call those entirely separated
   administrative domains, different "worlds", as has been
   done in the past several years.

   We might want to change that terminology, but let me use
   "world" to refer the currently existing different worlds,
   where "Second Life" is one of them and -say- "opengrid X" is
   another.

3) These worlds are separated in EVERY way:
   - You cannot teleport bewteen them.
   - There is no notion of Landmarks that refer outside a given world.
   - You cannot send IM's to avatars in the other world.
   - You cannot access any asset (or inventory) of another world.

4) I thought that the OGPX effort had as goal to change this
   *complete* separation.

However, if we want to make these limitations vanish then they
cannot be used to DEFINE what (separate) world mean... Hence,
the term becomes undefined and unclear (in the future).

But-- there are things that define the "worlds" that do NOT
want to change:

* The administration is entirely different:
  - A TOS only applies to one world.
  - An Abuse Report only has effect within one virtual world.
  - A ban by such an administration only affects their own world.

I think that most ideal situation would be when it is entirely
and only the user that decides if they want to visit another world,
completely independent of which world that is (as they can now
by simply logging out, and logging in elsewhere).

This CAN be supported; but it would mean to both region domain
AND agent domain (in order to switch completely between administrations etc).

Of course, viewers could simply support a seemless logout and login
elsewhere, but we (the users) want support for this in the format
of LandMarks, so that it is relatively easy to invite someone to
that other place, in another world.

Trivially, however, two major annoyances arrise with such a simple sheme:

* The need to create a new account (avatar name / password)
* Complete loss of access to inventory:
  - loss of shape, skin, clothes and attachments during teleport
  - loss of everything else in the inventory

If I'm correct then the latter has everything to do with the
agent domain; thus, if someone would stay in the same agent domain
(ie, one run by Linden Lab), then one would not need to create a
new account, would not need to logout and re-login, would not
lose appearance or inventory.

The question remains now:

how will that affect the ideal solution? Because to the user those
worlds will suddenly appear to be a single world.

What if a griefer logins in with LL, teleports to opengrid X and
halts a sim there by running 10,000 scripts in attachments.

Whose TOS determines if that is allowed? I'd say opengrid X's tos.
And if opengrid X's TOS does not allow halting a sim, then where does
an Abuse Report go to? I'd say... still to opengrid X's administration.
And when they decide to ban this person, will it be possible to
ban that (LL) account from opengrid X?

These questions are not trivial, but of utmost importance (yes,
also for the protocol): any and all administrative issues should
be a case of the administration of the *region* one is in, and
never of the agent domain someone belongs to.

As a result, an agent domain shouldn't care less where someone
wants to go, because they are never responsible, and therefore
it should NOT be a matter of policy where someone can or cannot
teleport while keeping their inventory: it should simply be
possible, because the address is given in the LandMark.

-- 
Carlo Wood <[e-mail]>