Three Tidbits ... (Updated)

I have a few tidbits which I want to share or which I want to get off my mind:


First: A few people have pointed me to the Linden 1.19.1 Office Hour where the issue about my patches was raised. I've read it, but there's nothing much I care to say about it. The Lindens (or more precisely some Lindens) mahave their views, I have mine -- and they differ.

However, since the issue was mentioned in the office hour and because through a pointer from someone, I did notice that VWR-374 (asstachments) is marked as closed and fixed on the Jira. I did not see it in the release notes but for sure it is there in the source code. And given what Brad Linden says about the patch in the office hour, I must admit that I can't help but point you with considerable smugness to the source code (see line 169/170).


Second™ thing on my mind is a comment made by Prokofy last week. He was asking about my view of Open Source (see the comments to the Moment of Truth post, somewhere in the middle). I've often seen Prokofy as being quite insightful and ironically the longer I have been in this, the more I tend to agree with him, even on views which I found utterly ridiculous when I first heard them (oh, and btw, I found his coverage of VW08 excellent, especially the parts about OpenSim).

But regarding his comment and Open Source: I now think there's Open Source (truely cooperative ventures, which are for lack of a better word, democratically organized) and there's open source which merely means that the source code is available to the public. To mistake one for the other has been the root of many of my frustrations with this little adventure and I guess I am not alone there. I would be tempted to blame some of it on the Lindens for talking like Open Source and acting like open source, but there is nobody to blame except myself, because I failed to do what I thought I learned long ago, that is, to look at what people do rather than to listen what people say.

As Proky says in his comment: Coders are free to come to a project and they are free to leave. He's right there and also in saying "It [LL] is a proprietary group that isn't showing its hand." Nothing of this is new, but sometimes there is a difference between seeing and hearing something and taking it to heart. I have no problem with a commercial operation (I'm running a commercial closed source business myself), nor do I have a problem with idealistically inspired ventures. My only problem with commerce is, when it's sold under the guise of idealism. But as I said, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Did I mention that I find Prokofy insightful? Oh I guess yes :-). He correctly picked up my vibrations about the screen estate of "Your world. Your imagination" vs. "Linden Lab and IBM" and "CSI:NY". It took me a while to figure it out myself (the biggest blind spots are always about oneself), but their website is not about what I think they should be, but it is simply what they do which, like avatars, reflects what they are.

I now remember something which I had forgotten. The first time I really questioned my involvement with SL was last autumn, when I saw the CSI:NY covering the whole screen and more importantly, when hearing that their OnRez viewer had closed source improvements based on the open source version. While I have no problem with spending free time on an idealistic venture (let's say something like OpenSim, although that doesn't work for a variety of unrelated reasons), I have absolutely no intention to work for CBN (or now IBM) for free ... hourly rates or flat rate pricing per project upon request, thank you for your interest.

As long as I saw Linden Lab as an idealistic venture, I did not mind if they cashed in a few fruits which fell from my tree. It's not so much that I need to be paid for what I did here, because my business always had provided me with more than I need. This is similar to Prokofy not needing to get paid for writing his blog or newspaper, because these activities (blogging and OS coding) are quite similar, in that they have their return in intangibles, whatever these may be for the individual person.

Prok says: "Ultimately, you have not persuaded me that somehow opensourcing and crowdsourcing people's labour for free is preferable to proprietary code managed by companies that take into account many other considerations than whether you find something interesting."

I fully agree, nobody could persuade me about that either. It is not preferable. It's merely different. As I said, my own business runs on proprietary closed source and so do many successful ventures. Equally successful ventures run on Open Source and voluntarism. I'm running Firefox on Microsoft XP here, I'm not using Open Source operating systems, neither am I using commercial browsers. It's not how they are made, but which result I prefer.

Mixing both approaches also works sometime (there is a project called Wine which does it with great success), but it requires skillful management and communication, two traits which Linden Lab is distinctly lacking. To me, Open Source isn't an ideology (although I admit that there are people for whom it is one). It's just a means of organization and if there is involvement bordering to self exploitation, it is because people are getting something else back, something which mostly can't be paid for with money anyway, like a sense of community, interesting exchange, the opportunity to do something you enjoy (many open source programmers have a different daytime job, so it gives them a chance to do some meaningful coding). Once the rent is paid, it does not matter if you get those intangibles from going to a bowling club two times a week, or to a rabbit breeder club, or if you work with others on a software project which you find appealing.

My rent is paid, but getting intangibles from catering patches to Linden Lab™ has become increasingly hard, so I'm putting an end to that part of the involvement.


Now third™ but not last, the following may come as a surprise to you. You can believe me, it came as much of a surprise to myself: Despite of what I said and thought I would do last week, and despite what I say above, the idea of looking at the recent memory leak kept bugging me (it seems that I still enjoy solving puzzles or I guess I'm just a pervert coder).

Last Friday I had downloaded the source code because I was looking for the asstachment fix (see above). Somehow one thing led to the other and before I knew I was looking at leak dumps. I swear I didn't intend to do it, really it was just an accident :-)

Well, I guess I don't need to mention the outcome *grins broadly*. Then, because a result like this is too good to go unused, especially for a guy with an ego as big as mine, more things led to one another ...

I'll spare you the details, but unless something goes very very wrong, you can expect the fruits of Friday night to appear at an Open Source (capital letters) outlet near you pretty soon (Update: see the comments for a first download link).