#dreamgrid — Public Fediverse posts

@OpenSim

So #SecondLife is working on introducing #PBR, also called #PeanutButter. And the #FirestormViewer is working on keeping up with it. There's a PBR-enabled alpha version now. This gives me to think.



One, there's that talk about higher hardware requirements. Now, Firestorm is actually still available in a 32-bit Windows version. Look back into the past. What were the last machines sold with pre-installed 32-bit Windows, and when was that?

That must have been in the late 2000s. And those machines were entry-level consumer laptops with on-board graphics. In other words, these computers were under-powered already when they were new. But there are actually people who visit #VirtualWorlds using 15-year-old or even older potato computers that run 32-bit Windows. That was all they could afford when they bought them, and they've never again been able to afford any computer. Maybe it's a German thing that the second-hand market is chock-full of used business laptops that are comparably cheap because there are so many of them.

Of course, in this use-case, toaster users have to turn down the graphics settings to a minimum. Advanced lighting is completely out of question, in fact, the shaders have to stay off entirely. The reason why so many Second Life buildings have shadows and gloss and all that painted onto their textures is so that they look pleasant to toaster users.

Now, the Firestorm devs say that when Firestorm introduces PBR support, it will probably remove the advanced lighting switch. Not only the shaders will have to be permanently on, but so will advanced lighting.

This doesn't necessarily mean that you'll have to replace your 32-bit, single-core Celeron M that can only use 3 of 4GB of installed RAM with a brand-new i9 and your on-board GMA 900 graphics with a GeForce RTX 4090 Ti. I mean, I've been able to use advanced lighting with a low-intermediate Radeon HD 7770 from 2012 until it died a week and a half ago. But your old clunker won't cut it anymore.



Two, chances are that some more third-party viewers will wither away because their development can't keep up with that in Second Life. Remember when the #SingularityViewer was one of the hottest viewers? Well, the last new stable version introduced #BakesOnMesh and #Animesh, and that was in 2020 already, while some other third-party viewers still don't support either at all. The last nightly was over two years old, too, before nightly downloads were recently removed. Its user base is reduced to #OpenSimulator users who are at home on grids that still run #OpenSim versions with #Windlight.



Speaking of which, three, this will once again show an advantage of Second Life's centralised structure over decentralised OpenSim: If you've only got one instance, you've also only got one server-side software version to worry about. Second Life introduced PBR all over in one go.

In OpenSim, you can't expect all hundreds of grids and attached sims to upgrade to the newest version all at once, even if an OpenSim version with PBR should come out. Sure, most places run on 0.9.2.2 nowadays which even counts as a stable release while others are trying out 0.9.2.3.

But there are still places that run older versions, even on the #Hypergrid. 0.9.2.1, 0.9.2.0, 0.9.1.1, all still with Windlight instead of #EEP, sometimes even older and without BoM scripting support. I think some are still stuck at 0.8.2.1. And here and there, I think, there are even a few with even older versions and no BoM support whatsoever.

Some grid owners live by that typical Windows user credo: install once, never upgrade. And they extend it to their grid. It doesn't help that OpenSim is cross-platform, and the vast majority of at least private grids is running on desktop Windows.

Others are fairly conservative. There are grids that seem like they've spent the past ten years under a rock. They've still got mesh disabled. As far as I know, that very switch has been removed from OpenSim quite a while ago, just like the one in viewers. Naturally, these grids run very old versions because the grid owner doesn't see any benefits in upgrading if new versions only introduce stuff they don't care for anyway or even remove something they've come to love. I wouldn't be too surprised if there were grids that still run OpenSim 0.7.3 while being connected to the Hypergrid.

Forks come on top of that. Some grids still run on forks from 0.7.x days. Not only are these forks no longer maintained, but they weren't really soft forks to begin with. The maintainers only took over from vanilla what they deemed useful or necessary, leaving ArribaSim which used to be popular in German-speaking countries with flaky BoM support, probably because parts of BoM collided with the performance optimisations which Arriba was famous for.

NextGen is even worse. It never had any support for BoM built in, not even any kind of fallback. I still know one grid that runs NextGen in spite of its gaping and actually exploited security holes. The reason is NextGen's killer feature, namely a nifty point-and-click Web interface. And your typical NextGen grid admin depends on this very point-and-click interface to be able to run a grid. Such grids can only be saved by either grafting NextGen's Web interface onto vanilla OpenSim or adding another admin who can administer OpenSim on the command line, and who'll effectively take all power away from the current admin. Until that happens, such grids are partially stuck at 0.8.0.0 at best.

So this means that Second Life-only viewers can be developed against exactly one Second Life version. As soon as they want to support OpenSim, they'll have to cover some five years worth of releases or more.

At least we're in the lucky situation of having a fairly new official stable release. For there haven't been any stable releases between 0.8.2.1 which introduced BoM basics and 0.9.2.1 which was the last version with Windlight. Before 0.9.2.1, the Hypergrid was split into a few grids that played it safe and stuck with the stable release and lots of grids that preferred development versions over hopelessly outdated versions. This is also why the "0.8.2.1" versions of #Ruth2 v4 and #Roth2 v2 exist.

OpenSim will introduce PBR, this one is certain. It will have to in order to stay compatible with Firestorm, its most important viewer (sorry, #CoolVLViewer fans). But there will be a long period in which lots of grids will not have PBR. And even when a stable release of OpenSim with PBR is out, and #DreamGrid has made the switch to a PBR version, there will remain lots of places without PBR.

Viewers that are compatible with OpenSim will have to remain compatible with non-PBR places in some way. If the Firestorm devs say that it's impossible to keep supporting non-PBR, just like they said it's impossible to support both Windlight and EEP, that'd create a rift through the Hypergrid. Users on PBR grids could no longer visit non-PBR places and vice versa. They'd need two viewers, one with PBR, one without. And even that is impossible because you can't rez your avatar somewhere on the Hypergrid while logging in. Unless you have sims on your home grid that run on a different OpenSim version, you're stuck in your half of the Hypergrid.

The Windlight/EEP issue was solved acceptably: At least Firestorm versions with EEP have a fallback mode that uses EEP to emulate Windlight, and it looks like OpenSim versions with EEP have their own fallback for older viewers. If PBR means a similarly hard cut, I hope that there will be a similar compatibility solution.

#Metaverse

Since a couple months ago, you can read it all over the place: "The #Metaverse is dead." Everyone agreed, because for 99% of all people out there, "Metaverse" refers to the series of 3-D #VirtualWorlds (to be) launched by #Meta, formerly #Facebook. And as far as I know, Zuckerberg actually tried to use "Metaverse" as the registered, trademarked, exclusive brand name for his worlds until he learned that he can't trademark something already used in a commercially published novel, namely Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson from 1991.

Thus, he settled for names like #HorizonWorlds which nobody knows nor cares about because everyone still speaks of Meta's worlds as "the Metaverse". And I guess people would continue to do so even if Snow Crash was turned into a massive Hollywood blockbuster with a budget of $400M that makes $4B in theatres within the first week.

What we can take away from this is that Mark Zuckerberg did, in fact, not invent the term "metaverse".

Oh, and just recently, Linden Labs started a massive PR campaign for #SL20B, the 20th birthday of #SecondLife which has also only recently started referring to itself as a "metaverse" to try and jump into the gap that the Horizons leave behind as Meta drops them like they're hot in favour of #ArtificialIntelligence.

Many have rubbed their eyes in disbelief. Didn't Second Life, like, shut down in, what, 2008 or 2009? Because the rampant news coverage about it died down back then. Yeah, but that was because it was no longer viable for commercial mainstream mass media to have virtual offices in Second Life after what few big corporations had joined it had left again. And when journalists stopped using their avatars (said avatars are still there, only unused), they didn't know what was happening in Second Life anymore. Besides, what was still happening in Second Life was only of interest for Second Life residents, but not for casual mass media consumers.

Nonetheless, Second Life continued to exist, and it does so until today. It even developed and advanced greatly. Today's avatars look nothing like those from 2007 when the hype was the biggest and from when the most images and videos seem to have survived. Oh, and they blow everything that Horizons has ever dared to demonstrate clean out of the water while consisting entirely of user-generated content.

What we can take away from this is that the Metaverse (no capital M here) is not dead, and that #HorizonWorldsIsNotTheMetaverse and has never been "The Metaverse".

However, between Snow Crash and the renaming of Facebook (the corporation) into Meta, the term "metaverse" was still used a lot, only it was used in places which next to nobody even knew, which are still largely unknown today. I'm talking about the worlds based on #OpenSimulator, a sort of free and open-source implementation of Second Life, and its community.

To give you a few examples: Alternate Metaverse counts as the fifth-biggest #OpenSim grid by active users and the sixth-largest by land area. It was launched in late 2019 under this name. That already was well before Zuck implied having invented 3-D virtual worlds. And the name wasn't chosen to cash in on Snow Crash, but because the word "metaverse" had been all around OpenSim for years already.

The Infinite Metaverse Alliance is from 2016, if not even older. And it has always been all about OpenSim with two grids of its own, one named Metaverse Depot.

#Metropolis, launched in 2008 was one of the first OpenSim grids, it was the first mostly German-speaking OpenSim grid, and when it was shut down for good almost a year ago, it was the third-oldest still existing grid. Its full name was "Metropolis Metaversum" for which there's proof from as early as 2010.

I'm tempted to say the earliest uses of the term "metaverse" in conjunction with OpenSim go back until even earlier in 2008 when OpenSim introduced the #Hypergrid which federated grids much like Fediverse instances are federated: For the first and so far only time in the history of virtual worlds, it became possible for avatars to travel between separate worlds with separate operators. Some said the Hypergrid was worth being referred to as a metaverse.

This was when it was increasingly attempted to define what a metaverse or the Metaverse is. Another idea was that "the Metaverse" refers to the entirety of all virtual worlds, regardless of whether they're connected or not. It would include 3-D worlds like Second Life, There or the various OpenSim grids, it would include 2½-D isometric worlds like Furcadia, it would include 2-D worlds and maybe even text-only worlds, and it would include out-right games like Minecraft or World of Warcraft, even if the worlds in the former are created procedurally. Basically, "metaverse" became the new "cyberspace".

And then there were those who had probably read Snow Crash and who knew what the Metaverse in that book is: a centralised, monolithic, corporate-owned walled garden. Essentially, that Metaverse was a vision of an Internet that had evolved into a 3-D world, but in 1991, the Internet largely consisted of corporate-owned walled gardens such as AOL and CompuServe itself, and Microsoft tried to establish its own one. That was three years before the World-Wide Web.

So while the requirement of being corporate-run and even a walled garden wasn't pursued further, "metaverse" was defined as being one single world. According to this definition, there isn't "the Metaverse", but there are many metaverses. Each OpenSim grid would be its own metaverse. No wonder not few grids actually refer to themselves as metaverses.

Sometimes, another criterium is added to the definition: It's only truly a metaverse when it's possible to move between separate locations (rooms, spaces, lands, call them whatever) by natural means. Usually, a virtual world has to be divided into smaller units, especially if these smaller units can be run by someone else than the creators/owners of the whole world. Now, this criterium means that these units have to at least be able to directly border on one another. An avatar standing near the border between two units must be able to look into the neighbouring unit. And in order to enter the neighbouring unit, the avatar must be able to walk or ride a vehicle that's actually moving instead of being a teleporter in disguise (I've seen both in OpenSim). Teleportation must not be a requirement out of basic technological limitations.

Now, imagine a virtual world that's IRC or Discord ported to 3-D just like the Metaverse in Snow Crash is AOL ported to 3-D, a world that only consists of separate, enclosed chatrooms which are built in-world as virtual conference rooms which you enter by logging into them and leave by logging out again. It probably doesn't have any windows. It definitely doesn't have a door working as such; either there is no door, or the door is decoration, or the door is the logout button, but there's nothing outside that door. If your avatar runs into that door, provided your avatar can walk and isn't bound to a chair at the conference table (yes, there are virtual worlds in which avatars can't walk around), it'll log out of that conference room and back into a kind of lobby. By the above criterium, this cannot be a metaverse.

However, if the door actually opens, and your avatar can look and walk through it into a hallway, from there into the lobby and even leave the building, then we're getting closer to a metaverse, probably even more so if the conference room is actually a separate virtual location operated by someone else than the lobby and the hallways.

Second Life fulfills this definition. You can walk around the mainland for hours, constantly crossing from one sim into another, all rented and designed by different residents, even though they all run on the same server cluster under Linden Labs' control. Sure, you can teleport, but that's only necessary if there's no other way to get somewhere. That might be because your current location and/or your destination is too remote, i.e. isolated by empty regions with no sims running in them which can't be crossed, or out of convenience because your destination is too far away.

OpenSim grids fulfill it, too, while the Hypergrid doesn't. The Hypergrid requires teleportation because it connects separate worlds and not different places within the same world. Otherwise, it's like Second Life while sometimes taking the "separate places with separate owners" part even further: Between renting land on grids and running a whole grid of your own, you can host your own sims and have them attached to certain existing grids. As a visitor, it might actually happen that you walk not only from one sim to another, but onto someone else's machine.

Still, if you look around, if you look at the various platforms that have "metaverse" painted on them, whether they're operational or only vague concepts, each one of their creators has a different definition of what a metaverse or the Metaverse is, always corresponding on what they plan their worlds to be like. Corporations that place all their bets on #VirtualReality claim that "pancake" worlds which can be accessed through conventional devices with 2-D screens like Second Life or the OpenSim grids can't be metaverses. Those who want to include the real life and #AugmentedReality or #MixedReality claim that this is part of the very definition of "metaverse" so that they can also deny VR-only platforms such as #VRchat or #RecRoom any metaverse status. At the same time, even companies that offer nothing more than e.g. concerts in virtual reality claim that their secluded concert venues make up a metaverse, too.

Corporate definitions of "metaverse" almost always amount to, "A metaverse is what we call a metaverse; all metaverse definitions by our competitors are false, they don't have/work on true metaverses." Exceptions are limited to Meta ("We're inventing the Metaverse from scratch. Wait, what do you mean, we can't trademark that word?") and Linden Labs ("We've had a metaverse before any of you even had computers. And our very own Philip Rosedale has actually read Snow Crash. Your arguments are invalid.").

Sometimes the definition of "metaverse" even goes hand-in-hand with a declaration of what makes a virtual world, and what's necessary to build and operate one. Cryptobros, for example, insist that the Metaverse/metaverses/virtual worlds can impossibly function without a blockchain, a cryptocurrency and NFTs. Others who invest in AI currently state that virtual worlds won't and can't be possible without AI. Second Life has been proving them all wrong by successfully and continually running a virtual world without a blockchain, without crypto, without NFTs and without AI for two decades now, but they build their business model on their customers either never having even heard of Second Life or believing it was shut down before summer 2009.

The IEEE even has a scientific paper on the definition of "metaverse". No, really.

This leads us to a set of criteria for the Metaverse or a metaverse that may or may not be valid.

The first one is that it's 3-D. This is easy to agree upon unless pre-3-D worlds protest against that definition.

Persistence is another criterium. The world must not only exist on your end-user device and start up when you join it and shut down again when you leave. This is generally fulfilled. Generally because many OpenSim users run their own grids based on the #DreamGrid distribution on Windows computers at home. Some do leave them running 24/7, others only start them up when they're at home and awake. And then there are those who only own one functional computer which therefore serves as both the machine they run their viewer on and their grid server. Now, the typical Windows user starts up their machine when they need it and shuts it down when they're done. So there are actually public grids that are only online when their grid owners are, even if that's only two or three hours a day. But this only applies to a limited number of grids and not OpenSim as a whole. That said, even grid servers in data centres running larger public grids have to be restarted every once in a while.

Thirdly, some make a functioning economy an absolute requirement for a virtual world to call itself a metaverse. Second Life has one that works so well that Linden Labs makes more money per user and month than Meta, all without privacy breaches. It helps that nearly all in-world content is made by users, and Linden Labs doesn't take offering free content in larger quantities kindly.

Its younger open-source sibling, OpenSim, however, which has been referred to as a metaverse or multiple metaverses would fail this definition. It's technically impossible to implement an in-world economy both with "monopoly money" and with virtual currencies that can be exchanged with real money, either grid-independently (Gloebit, Podex) or grid-specific (like #Kitely or #WolfTerritoriesGrid handle it). But the vast majority of grids has chosen not to include any method of payment for anything. OpenSim in general doesn't even need an economy because most grids by far are run by hobbyists in their spare time. And openly for-profit grids are not only suspicious, but usually not very long-lived. In the meantime, OSgrid, the first, oldest and largest of all grids, celebrates its 16th birthday next month (I guess), and it's non-commercial and running on donations.

By the way, OpenSim also took over Second Life's set of item permissions. But since so many avatars in OpenSim have access to admin mode ("god mode") which can override them, they're symbolic at best and useless at worst.

Immersion is a point that's being debated. However, this lastly depends not only on the underlying technology, but also on how in-world places are designed. Immersion is something that I personally am very very interested in. But most OpenSim users neither know what it is, nor do they care, especially not if it stands in the way of convenience. For example, building an in-door club with no doors to the outside saves the sim owner the effort of a) cutting a hole into the walls of the building and b) scripting and configuring a door. Sim owners tend to believe that if they wouldn't use such a door, nobody would. But a building with no doors is not very credible and realistic, and having to teleport to get into it and back out is not very immersive.

If we're talking about "the Metaverse" instead of single virtual worlds as metaverses, decentralisation is of course important. Now, by this definition, everything else from Second Life to #Roblox to #Fortnite to Horizon Worlds is just a bunch of centralised walled gardens and not even close to being part of the Metaverse. The few exceptions are all not corporate-owned; they include the #HighFidelity fork #Vircadia, the Vircadia fork #Overte and OpenSim's Hypergrid. The latter is made up from hundreds, if not thousands of separate grids, and very very rarely do even two have the same owner. On top of that, there isn't even an "official grid" run by the developers; lead dev Ubit Umarov only owns one standard region that's externally attached to OSgrid.

On the other hand, OpenSim entirely runs on one and the same software product. Even if various versions and even a number of forks are in use, it's only one platform and not several. And besides, how can the Hypergrid be "the Metaverse" if only a tiny minority of the grids that make it up pass the "metaverse litmus test" themselves because they don't have an economy?

Not even Vircadia could comply with this definition. It's decentralised, and it's commercial. Also, it's said to be fully compatible with Overte, so we already have two different virtual world platforms interacting. But for one, Overte is still a Vircadia fork, a soft fork even, so they aren't as different as Second Life and #ThirdRoom, and Overte messes with the economy requirement by being decidedly non-commercial at platform level already.

But seriously, debating such details is kind of futile as long as it's even unclear if it's "a metaverse/multiple metaverses" or "the Metaverse". So no, nobody has the privilege of having that one single "official" definition of "metaverse".

About half a year ago, after #ElonMusk had announced his #TwitterTakeover for the first time, and the first #TwitterMigration to #Mastodon had started, I've already asked myself (and my readers) what'd be if Elon Musk hypothetically bought out Second Life.

Now that he has actually taken over #Twitter, and we see the actual aftermath, I think I can reiterate the question and think about it once more, especially with regards to a just as hypothetical mass migration from #SecondLife to #OpenSimulator.


Theory: The transition will be smoother than from Twitter to Mastodon.

Likely reality: Yes. Mastodon is vastly different from Twitter, but #OpenSim is a literal SL offshoot and developed around SL's viewer API. You've actually even got some content on both sides (let's not talk about how most of it got to OpenSim). And you can most likely keep using the same viewer, especially since the most popular SL viewer, Firestorm, is also the most popular OpenSim viewer. In fact, none of the popular viewers has enough developing capacity to deviate far from SL, and as long as this is the case, OpenSim will stay very close to SL.

Okay, you have to choose a grid, just like you have to choose a Mastodon instance. Reuniting with your friends may be slightly more difficult because you have to meet in-world, regardless of who is on which grid. But most grids are on the Hypergrid anyway, so chances are slim that you accidentally end up on a closed one.

And relocating to another grid if you don't like the one you've ended up on isn't much of a problem either. It isn't too uncommon for OpenSim users to have alts with the same identity on a multitude of grids. Some even keep their old avatars (or make new ones) as spares.

By the way, I don't think that people will rather move to someplace entirely different. What's so tempting about OpenSim is how similar it is to SL. You don't have to get used to something entirely new. And no other virtual world allows for the same level of creativity. Okay, Roblox and voxel miners like Minecraft or Minetest allow for quite some creativity, but graphics-wise, they're a far cry from SL and OpenSim.


Theory: Everyone will pile onto the biggest grid, #OSgrid, taking it for the entirety of OpenSim.

Likely reality: Some will, but not everyone.

A lot of people will head straight for #Kitely after being told before their migration that it has more in common with SL than non-commercial OSgrid, including something very similar to the Marketplace. Others will quickly move from OSgrid to other grids after learning how cheap land is there whereas OSgrid doesn't offer sim rentals at all. Which Kitely does as well, by the way. But there will also be those who want to get away from SL's commercialism.

Generally, most public grids which allow for new users to join in some way will see some growth, also because there's often someone who is in both SL and OpenSim and invites their SL friends over to their own home grid.


Speaking of which:

Theory: Such a huge influx of new users will end OpenSim's deserted feeling that comes from its low population density.

Likely reality: Nope. By far most of these new users will get themselves at least one sim of their own, especially after learning how dirt-cheap land is on the Hypergrid. You can get big varsims for cheaper than mere parcels in SL (and you can't get varsims in SL at all). You can build bigger in OpenSim that you've dared to dream in SL. And so people will. You can consider yourself lucky if the landmass doesn't grow more quickly than the population.

In fact, I expect thousands of new users migrating from OSgrid, their first new home, straight to their own home-hosted #DreamGrid so they can be their own Lindens.

Already now, if you don't have at least one sim of your own, people start wondering why.

Besides, if you really want a population density even remotely similar to that on SL, you'll need more users than SL has right now. The Hypergrid has multiple times the landmass of SL that needs to be populated. OSgrid alone has more land than SL.


Related point:

Theory: More people = bigger parties.

Likely reality: Nope again. More people = more land = more clubs = more parties of roughly the same size. Also, more people = more performers and more DJs.

I'm not sure, however, whether we'll generally get busier clubs because the number of DJs grows faster or more deserted clubs due to there being too many of them. We've technically got too many clubs and event locations already now.


Theory: Some grids will advertise themselves to SL refugees as stand-alone SL alternatives to profit from the situation.

Likely reality: Yes, some will, but not as successfully as they want to. They'll avoid mentioning that they're based on OpenSim and instead try to pose as scratch-made, stand-alone walled gardens. Not a smart move when everyone and their grandmother is explicitly looking for a new home in OpenSim explicitly. Not to mention the lack of any credibility when potential SL refugees recognise much of the stuff on in-world pictures from SL.

Even for those who manage to end up on such a grid, it won't be a total #WalledGarden. It'll most likely still have Hypergrid access. And regardless of whether or not it does, nothing will keep you from moving elsewhere anytime.


Theory: More creativity in OpenSim for OpenSim.

Likely reality: Yes, but not to such a big degree. Those who make a living off SL will stay there or quit altogether if their number of customers plummets. You can't make a living off OpenSim where the majority of users refuses to use any in-world currency altogether.

Many others will, of course, stay fully commercial and head straight for Kitely, maybe even only offer their products to Kitely residents. Needless to say that those who still don't know where "Never buy in OpenSim" came from will be enraged and try their best to "liberate" all that content by copybotting it (or buying and then god-moding it) and putting it into freebie stores.

Hilarity will ensue when SL refugees go straight to Kitely and put their products on the Kitely Market, just to discover that the exact same stuff with the exact same names is already available all over the Hypergrid as full-perm "freebies".

Chances are, however, that we'll actually get quite a number of new talented freebie creators who have previously offered their products in SL for money. But they haven't done so because "that's what you do," nor because they're capitalist shills, but because they may still remember Arcadia Asylum/Aley Resident/Aley Arai being banned multiple times for undermining Linden Lab's revenue stream by offering lots of free content. They didn't want this to happen to them, so they reluctantly charged money for their products to appease Linden Lab. In OpenSim, not even commercial grids will ban you for making #freebies, and the majority of grids isn't commercial to begin with.

Also, I expect some original SL creations to be upgraded with OpenSim-exclusive technology by their own creators. Former SL boats powered by the marvellous SFsail, anyone?


Theory: Well-known SL regions will re-emerge on the Hypergrid.

Likely reality: Yep. It'll be quite an endeavour, seeing as you can't export OARs from SL. But you can at least take the assets with you. I mean, if you're going to burn your bridges to SL soon anyway, you may just as well take to SL with a copybot viewer and export at least your stuff so you don't have to rebuild everything from scratch. I know someone who did exactly that.

When SL region owners learn about varsims, they may even rebuild their old place not like it used to be, but bigger.


Theory: Attempts at redefining the content ratings taken over from SL to all G-rated will be pushed back.

Likely reality: Yes, because thousands of SL converts who are used to only General being at least halfway child-friendly will first be confused and then very opposed.


Theory: OpenSim will finally arrive in the media limelight.

Likely reality: Probably not, even though Mastodon did.

There will be more talk about OpenSim. But what talk there already is about SL happens in a bubble that's largely invisible for the outside world. Many journalists still believe SL shut down in 2009 because they haven't heard anything from it ever since. If Elon Musk bought SL, most people will see that as beating a dead horse. And it's unlikely that there'll be significantly more talk about OpenSim than there is now about SL with many more users.

Also, there may still be an advertising team amongst Linden Lab's many employees. Meanwhile, OpenSim probably doesn't have more than that one spare-time core developer; everything else comes from the community or is third-party in other ways.


Theory: Someone will then try to buy out OpenSim.

Reality: Won't happen. OpenSim is #FLOSS and maintained by enthusiasts in their spare time. There isn't even a foundation behind it, much less a company that could be bought out.

It's simply pretty much impossible. If such a thing was possible, #Linux would have been bought out already. Or #GNU. Or #BSD. Or #Mozilla. Or #Apache. Or #XMPP. Or #Mastodon, while we're at it.

Not only is it impossible, but it's also useless. In general, #OpenSource software can be forked. Remember what happened when Oracle announced to take over Sun Microsystems and #MySQL and #OpenOffice along with it? #MariaDB and #LibreOffice happened.

Finally, there isn't much to get out of OpenSim. You won't get a grid, you won't get potentially valuable in-world assets either (haha, right, in a largely non-commercial network of #VirtualWorlds), you won't even get a viewer. All you'll get is a convoluted pile of .NET/Mono code that's destined to stick to Second Life like tar.

#WhatIfScenario #Metaverse