OpenSim, You’re Losin’ Me, Punking is for Punks
If you are looking for general OpenSim information start with http://opensimulator.org before reading this post. Note the strong caution that ‘OpenSim is Alpha’ and against using OpenSim for business or any production application. Then give it a try. After that, if you like, return and read this post, which was my attempt to open an important discussion about OpenSim project governance and stability to the wider user audience many of whom where unaware of the important things happening in the public mailing lists and elsewhere surrounding the April 1st OpenSim prank approved by the core developers and applied to the trunk which ended up affecting several unintentionally. As you read, keep in mind feelings were very strong from all sides testifying to the incredible growth and popularity of OpenSim over the last year or so, which I like to hope this blog has helped with (despite this specific post).
Nerd Disclosure
Let me start by saying I have always hated practical jokes, which, of course, made me the subject of most of them growing up as a kid. I’m sure my cartoon-like buck teeth, two sets of head-gear, pop-bottle glasses, obsession with Star Wars and D&D and the felt derbie, which I was convinced was cool, didn’t help. Combine those experiences with countless horribly failed practical jokes I have observed kids today attempt on one another at camp and you might understand the rancor in this post, and I don’t mean the Gammorean-eating monster. Get ready.
A Bad, Bad Prank
Tis’ the season, or day at least for idiots to have fun at others’ expense. Two days ago a respected peer asked me if I wanted to punk someone. I declined. I still don’t know what will become of his victim.
I seriously hope my friend was not involved in the OpenSim practical joke patch. I learned about it when I read about one very respected, very hard-working OpenSim grid administrator tweet this:
dstrawberrygirl: April Fools joke in OpenSim code makes avatars appear stretched. Working on solution for RG. Not impressed.
You can follow her frustration and tweets at dstrawberrygirl along with others empathizing such as JeffLowe, oobscure, EricaDriver and many others. These are key members of the OpenSim user community that are well-known for their diligent OpenSim contributions, feedback, promotion, content creation, and insane attention to uptime on ReactionGrid, a great grid that my 8-year-old enjoys playing on with friends around the globe as well as hosting many k-12 groups and other educational and corporate meetups. I am sure there are others besides ReactionGrid that were affected.
dstrawberrygirl: lost an entire morning – now trying to figure out how to catch up, where to start…
This from a hard-working mom doing a lot of ReactionGrid support in her spare time. Contrast that with tweets and FB status like this one from Sean Dague:
I really think it should be renamed turn-off-the-computer-and-go-enjoy-the-outdoors-day, especially for those getting bent out of shape
I could not agree more that we virtual worlders need to get out of doors more. But the suggestion that OpenSim users spend too much time indoors coming from one of the leaders of the core OpenSim development community? Plus a bad pun referencing the avatar deformation caused by this ‘patch’? That got me really interested. I looked up the thread on the mailing list.
Skidz Tweak says on the mailing list:
This is just to funny
histerical!!
Now I was starting to get mad. EricaDriver, a Harvard grad, and creator of ThinkBalm who, despite her own learning curve to climb, tirelessly tries to convince stuffy executives that OpenSim and the “immersive internet” are worthy of their consideration shared her frustrations as well:
EricaDriver: Whoever pulled the April Fools prank in core OpenSim code turning all avatars into weird sticks: not funny. I use the technology for work.
She is absolutely right. But some in the OpenSim community ask, “Why so ‘bent out of shape’? Over just a few people being made sticks and others losing their mornings?” How about hundreds of dollars–at least–wasted on figuring this thing out. Not to mention a huge loss of credibility. All while some of the core developers laugh “hysterically” or worse, attempt to justify this unprofessionalism since it is ‘just volunteers’ as MW michaelwri22 at yahoo.co.uk does:
I understand that it has caused you problems and we are sorry for that but to be honest, its not a good idea to be running trunk in any production set up or for business use. Trunk is for development and can be broke at any time.
We do release “stable” tagged versions and we strongly suggest that anyone using OpenSim for business or production use sticks to those. They all have their problems but trunk just can’t be depended on to be working/stable or anything.
The only people who should be using trunk are developers, testers and people who want to try the very lastest changes.
All the developers work very hard for nothing in return so its a small thing for some of us to put a small pank in TRUNK once a year.
Again I do understand it has caused you some problems but we offer all our work free and as I said we strongly advise people to use the tagged versions.
I just won’t comment on that type of thinking. I cannot rationally. Can you imagine if the FireFox, Apache, MySQL, PostgeSQL teams shared that sentiment? He does make a decent point about not using trunk, but then again, using trunk is very common practice, even indirectly encouraged to fix ongoing bugs and make good tests of the core code base.
ReactionGrid has been one of the best contributors of bug reports and issues affecting real deployment. Without real grids willing to test the core code on a regular basis there would be none of these findings and submissions. Does MW really want to discourage that, for what? So the unpaid developers can enjoy a good laugh at their earlier adopters expense? Do I really have to explain why this thinking is just wrong and against the core mission of this or any open source project?
Here’s what Chris (strawberrygirl), replied, in part:
I will take full responsibility if there is a bug in opensim code that affects my clients that would have been prevented if I had used a stable branch, but I do actually trust you guys too – you do great work, I read every commit log (evidently not thoroughly enough) and I use my experience to make a call on whether a breaking change has been put in or not. In this situation, what would have been nice would have been a simple switch to return to normal. We saw the joke last night and yes, we fell about laughing, thinking it was a freaky occurrence on a highly-loaded sim, never for one moment realising this was going to strike all our servers today.
Now those are the words of a responsible contributor and user. Not excusing herself, but explaining well why this sort of ‘joke’ isn’t funny.
OpenSim Developers' April Fools Prank
This is more than just a practical joke
How did this ‘patch’ make it into the core code base? Sean writes
It was both. I had to revert the l33tspeak converter early though,
because the regex used would crash mono (l33t is funny, crash isn’t).
It appears to have made it into the core without any peer review and had to be reverted. This is not a one time thing. According to Adam Frisby
No, the 2008 prank was a ‘l33tspeak’ converter. Automatically converted chat and console output into l33tspeak.
So this is apparently an accepted tradition by some. A tradition that is crippling OpenSim adoption. It plays well into arguments made by people concerned about open source for security issues, a long standing, largely false position. Before you roll those eyes, what if this had not been an avatar deformation?
With Philip’s annoucement the timing could not be worse.
This prank happened just a few days after Second Life creator Philip blogged about his leading a group to create an open source SL viewer, which by itself could have been taken as an April Fool’s day joke, which it wasn’t. But Philip is giving the public direct commit rights, the same sort of rights that caused this ‘patch’ to have to be reverted rather than blocked before a commit.
Now client code is obviously less likely to make as big an impact as fast as the OpenSim prank did, but it doesn’t matter. People will argue it could happen. Some on the SL side are already cynical buzzing in comments that opening the client to direct commits will compromise the security and stability of their Second Life accounts and the general SL economy, mostly in comments of blog posts. Some prominent bloggers even posited a parallel between Philip’s open viewer project and OpenSim drawing attention to the two. We will assume Philip chooses to control commits and review them more closely than the OpenSim team has chosen to allow.
Let’s build trust, not sabotage it.
“But this was controlled and reviewed” you might say. So what. It is all about perception, even if the prank were released in the safest and most controlled of circumstances, which does not seem to be the case, it would still leave a very bad impression on anyone considering it.
This sort of thing fuels the cynics who say OpenSim, virtual worlds, even the whole open communty in general are just not ready to do anything serious and that “opensource = closed society” as Prokofy suggests, right or wrong.
If the core developers don’t take OpenSim seriously, how can anyone else–including core business and educational organizations?
You are Not God
Yep. Going to wax philisophical for a moment, buzz on by if you don’t have time. Make sure you read Frank’s summary at the end. And don’t worry. I’m not going to bash coders as much as some, but having been a coder for 25 years myself, I have shared one of coders’ biggest faults, God-syndrome.
Like malevolent Greek deities, has-been actors with T.V. shows, or popular kids looking for amusement at the expense of their subjects/fans/users/clients, these insiders become so disconnected from the experience of the people giving them their power that they actually abuse them. It is one of the greatest failures of humanity and easiest traps to fall into.
If you used it you wouldn’t do it.
Coders–especially the talented ones–too often don’t actually use what they are making enough. Same goes for technology ‘evangelists’ but that is another post entirely. Often we think something we have had a hand in creating is just too cool not to add and be liked. “Who cares if it takes three DVDs to install?” we justify, way to late in the process. “These are features” we joke as we run into usage design issues and usability barriers.
The flip side is that often the user/client actually does not know what they want until they see it, which is exactly why Agile developement is so popular these days. It puts the customer/stakeholder in the center with the developers exploring along with them rather than for them.
But too often we coders think we are entitled to doing things our own way for whatever reason, feeling underpaid, unappreciated, for fun, because it would be cool. Easter eggs, pranks, and devastating data-eating worms and created out of this mentality.
Truth is, we are under appreciated, people don’t care about the pain and suffering that goes into our code, they just want the result and they want it faster usually. We can fall into a trap of uncaring about the code or product because they don’t care about our contribution.
Open source is different
In open projects, the developers are The Man, we own the code, we control how it turns out. No sense fighting against the Man when you end up fighting against yourself. Pranks are fun and entertaining to some, but do them to your own copy of the code, not everyone’s–especially when real fledgling businesses involved, businesses we want to succeed, that just might tank because your entitled prank.
Above all, do not mess with people’s avatars.
I know it is like talking to the wind. But programmers need a reminder that avatar appearance is holy ground for many of their users.
On roasting a friend…
I learned this the hard way once, when while working on an adjustment to animation or clothing I had a friend jump on a pose stand, partially so I could get softer light, and partially for fun. I rotated her over the fire in my tiki hut. She didn’t burst into flames or anything, nor did her clothes but she exploded. “What you do to me you do to my avatar!!” she yelled and teleported away.
I had not done anything to her avatar, believe me, then or any time before. But even the hint of affecting it sent her into a tizzy. I learned you can’t roast a friend that day, even in fun. People care a lot about that avatar, more that business interests in virtual worlds are willing to admit, as Shenlei explains well [and no, it was not Shenlei that I roasted.]
They lose their heads easily.
Just a few days ago, a good friend lost his avatar head in SL:
Friend Loses Head
In his momentary panic at such a radical change to his avatar appearance he blamed my raising 10 meters of land and fixing the teleport pad to keep beginners from landing in the river for his predicament. It was actually a logical conclusion for him since that was all he could find that had changed, until another friend found the attachment on his hand causing it, something he picked up someplace else.
The point is, you mess with people’s avatars and they will resent it. Even if they seem good natured about it. Usually this is how practical jokes in general end up, hurt feelings, loss of trust, and a damaged relationship covered in feigned laughter. Is that what we want from the faithful community of OpenSim early adopters and testers?
Bad Publicity is Good Publicity?
Maybe. But why not just good publicity. I just cannot laugh off someone else’s misfortune, deformity, and lost time and money as they work their best to promote an effort I also believe in. I’ve already spent way too much time without attachments, attachments in the wrong place, suddenly being an unfixable ghost, and fighting broken sit targets–all things that have since been corrected partly to bug reports I and others have filed and which are appreciated. I am thankful for every thing every volunteer does and has done, but…
OpenSim, you’re losing me.
Why go to the trouble of helping further OpenSim if the developers have this sort of attitude about the users? Thankfully, I believe, it is the minority. Not having things work because people were trying to fix other things was almost bearable. And this prank might have worked better if there were not so many things plaguing avatar appearance. But instead of people immediately laughing and noticing, they needed reminding about April Fool’s Day and not to submit mantis reports.
Was I wrong about predicting, for fun in a tweet that OpenSim would lead 2009 as people move more to virtual meetings? Things like Second Life itself and Nebraska look much better now compared to what some frolicking OpenSim developers are doing.
I want to believe in OpenSim, I really do, but this just does not help. Frank W. Sweet, another well respected OpenSim user sums up this crisis for OpenSim better than I ever could:
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this “prank” was so grossly unprofessional that it has prompted a debate within Backintyme Publishing as to whether we should simply abandon Opensim entirely and go with a commercial product instead. If the prankster wanted to demolish Opensim’s credibility in the real world, I cannot think of a more effective method of doing so. “Sorry” is inadequate. If Opensim hopes to be taken seriously, such deliberate vandalism by a developer must never be allowed to happen again.
April 1, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Dang, that really sucks Mo.
I like OpenSim, such that we are considering selling our land in SL and just using OpenSim.
I hope they kind of grow up
April 1, 2009 at 1:40 pm
We appreciate humor. We really do. But one of our servers for an overseas client was set to a different timezone. So last night after ending a 2 hour tour of the grid for new clients we all turned into spiders on our Euro clients sims. No one coded a clever enough prank to ensure at least this happened on April 1 without local machines. We have dozens of clients now overseas so take into account that fact when re-pranking us with time related jokes. While we do want a chuckle we have clients we have convinced that OpenSim is a serious platform for serious work. This includes ThinkBalm, Microsoft, K-12 teachers around the world, HomeCamp automation users etc. All of these people love OpenSim and have events planned on any day of the week. To have gambled with these users events is simply not an appropriate prank. The reason isn’t because were old and grumpy (get off my virtual lawn!) it is because we’re trying to build business/use around OpenSim as many companies have used Apache to do so for websites. Once this platform is accepted more work will come to the OpenSim core devs who can then make this effort more and more a part of their income and or freetime. We love our core developers and we appreciate that we see far because we stand on the shoulders of giants at ReactionGrid. But we disagree politely with this particular decision and hope next year they go a little easier on us. Viva OpenSim! Great article Mo….
April 1, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Excellent commentary Mo. Thank you for stepping up and reminding us all what is important here.
April 1, 2009 at 2:41 pm
For business people like me who use virtual worlds to bring clients in for training or coaching- this could ruin a business deal. What seems like an innocent prank to some, could potentially derail a lot of hard work. Everyone in this environment knows how hard it is to convince the business community that there is a viable (and serious) application here-sad to see such thoughtless acts happen in such a great community.
April 1, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Seriously? This change was in trunk, not in any released version. If you are running out of our unstable source repository you better be looking at commit logs or be on IRC, because things change all the time.
The level of “outrage” has been really crazy. I hope you guys wrote nasty letters to CNET, Google, and Youtube today as well.
April 1, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Dear Mo:
I am saddened by this post and must point out that “tagged” releases from OpenSim are intended by be used whenever there is a desire to have continuity and stability.
In order to move forward with development, trunk is only warranted to compile and certainly not to even run.
So, please use the tagged releases in the future if an april fools joke upsets you. And in particular, make sure you use a tagged release next April 1st, 2010.
Charles
April 1, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Sean, I do hope this doesn’t come off as a “nasty letter.” And yes, I think there are lessons to be learned on both sides. 1) Don’t run off of trunk code and 2) Don’t put pranks into the trunk. I really hope one of the lessons learned is not 3) Don’t trust the core OpenSim development team and process. It worries me that there is any level of justification for applying this prank to any of the source code at all. Changing content and titles and appearance for fun is a much different situation from changing every and all avatars in anyone using the core trunk source code.
April 1, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Wow so one of the reasons to use tagged versions is now officially because there could be an avatar prank? That sure sounds like a professional way to run things.
April 1, 2009 at 4:31 pm
gosh, i feel stupid for trusting that the developers would create a product that would actually cause some many people such grief. as a single person shop, i am the creative director, writer, and tech person. so when i have the opportunity to have my own virtual land in order to shoot a web comic, it really sucks that i lose an entire day of production because someone has decided to prank me.
here’s a real belly slapper, next year on the first of april all the telecoms will scramble every single one of our phone calls and translate all of our SMS messages into the doodads font.
April 1, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Nathan on an up note, we love this comic you are doing! http://nacreo.us/Nacreous_Music/The_New_Beginning.html
April 1, 2009 at 5:10 pm
This just in: I’ve been dropped from the OpenSim planet feed and presumably from further contributions, but I really hope not. I really love OpenSim and do want it to succeed. Why else face this grief for making this post? Honest.
April 1, 2009 at 5:44 pm
This posted from Teravus Ovares just in:
And that is exactly why practical jokes are never a good thing. They only work if someone is in the ‘far minority.’ It just so happens that some of OpenSim’s core supporters and proponents, many of whom exert important influence in the broader virtual worlds community, were among them.
I’m sure this won’t be as much a problem next year. That ’small’ minority just decided to look elsewhere.
April 1, 2009 at 5:57 pm
The people who did not think it was funny count too. You really taught those people a lesson not doing what you command is right with releases. We use whatever publically posted release is most stable for our users. You do not know of our testing procedures or results and so you cannot dictate to us what release we use.
I reiterate-We use whatever release is most stable for our end users. That is who we care about pleasing.That is who you listen to as a business.
As far as IRC it is not a prerequisite to use IRC to avoid pranks in software. Is there a best practices for software pranks I can be pointed to for guidance? Unlike other people we listen to our end users and respect there opinions, even those in the minority. Guess what, the minority voice counts too!
Luckily our end users are patient and understand that the community is still evolviing. To have removed Mohax for voicing his opinion is shameful as well. Dissent is good and is important to hear. Unless you incapable of dealing with an opposing voice that is.
Saddened
Kyle G
April 1, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Thank you so much for your kind words of support. I have been facing critisism from the majority of the OpenSim community today for my stance and it hurts.
Like it or not, the growing maturity of the OpenSim platform means that people are starting to take it seriously. Surely the most sincere form of praise can be that people consider your work to be of high enough value that they will consider running a business on it. We do not lie to customers, we tell them first that this is an alpha, bugs exist, crashes happen. Why lie? It would do us no benefit, but at the same time, why hide the fact that there is enormous potential here that can be realised right now, if you are willing to endure a little bumpiness.
Previous tagged revisions were not stable – 0.6.3 being a prime example that had appearance bugs. People care about appearance, hence that was an immediate fail for me. I therefore lost some faith in the branch process, adopting my own test regime, since none of the core devs use MSSQL. I opted to go with a revision close to the next tag because I saw a lot of bug fixes going in that could benefit the ReactionGrid community. Two weeks of testing on three isolated systems, plus a week of successful running on a live grid didn’t pick this up.
Had we found a bug, a serious issue in the code, something so bad that it had to be fixed I would have been in IRC like a shot, looking at code, trying to find a solution. I don’t want to just take a tag and run with it blind, I actually do want to help drive this project forward.
I do not have the time and resources to lurk on IRC 24×7, I try to sit around as much as I can. I take the “use trunk at your peril” as a warning to the newbies, those who do not test. I have never been directly affected by April 1st ever, this is new to me.
I am very disappointed your blog has been removed from the OpenSim planet feed, since you make a very valuable contribution to the community, a community that grows into new areas every day. I would not be using this platform if I didn’t believe in it. I sing its praises daily.
April 1, 2009 at 6:52 pm
As if the timing could not get worse for this prank and those still justifying it, looks like Linden Labs just might have felt the tide change and bolted for the lead. Here is Amanda Linden reminding everyone that Linden Labs is still very much in the behind-the-firewall market space, for a price. Still a lot of future ahead, and certainly OpenSim remains a great thing. But this is exactly why the time for pranks anywhere in the source code has passed. Change the Hippo icon or something, leave the code alone.
April 1, 2009 at 6:56 pm
As someone who has tested OpenSim trunk and filed bug reports before (on a very casual level — I’m a nobody in the grand scheme of things), I can’t think of a better way to ensure that I never do it again.
Yes, I understand that trunk may have bugs. I don’t expect them to be there due to malice or immature behavior.
Time for a fork and a professional dev team?
April 1, 2009 at 7:43 pm
And who is going to pay that professional Dev team, professional wages?
If people want to be able to demand things and demand they act in the way they believe they should then they have to pay for it.
And as no one is paying the opensim developers as far as I know, then I don’t think anyone can demand things from them.
April 1, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Teravus is right. This change was in OpenSim trunk, which people really should not be using in production systems (we’ll ignore the fact that the whole codebase is considered Alpha for now). This did not and would not make it into any release versions. That’s part of our process.
The fact is, the vast majority of work on OpenSim is done by unpaid volunteers – whenever you download a texture, sit on a prim or go hurtling off into the distance for no apparant reason (as a bug, not a joke), that’s very probably their code your using. And quite frankly, they do the best work because they’re doing it for the sheer love of it. They really deserve thanks for all the thousands of hours put in, rather than condemnation over a single issue. OpenSim would be nowhere near a useable state without them.
The April Fool’s joke was in completely good faith with the hope that everybody in the community would enjoy it. It was a funny and inventive change (in the best tradition of creative coding). As you’ve written, it happened last year and was always going to happen this year. All the core developers supported it.
It is unfortunate that some people have been caught out using this bleeding edge code in production systems and they do have my sympathy. Maybe there are indeed lessons for all of us here. But if we lose then human spark then OpenSim becomes another corporate project devoid of colour and humour. And that is sure to make it fail more than anything else.
April 1, 2009 at 7:59 pm
OpenSim User you are absolutely right. No one can demand anything from them and no one certainly is. But any successful open source has some level of governance and quality control upheld by the core committers. People who care about the future and direction of the OpenSim, even if some think they are the minority, should be free to express their disagreement without reprisal. After all we are the early adopters, the main bug trackers, even minor contributors ourselves.
April 1, 2009 at 8:14 pm
@justincc I completely agree with the need to keep things fun. I do wish I could find my happy place today. I really do.
Changing the source code in any way is not the way to do that if you want to promote longevity and further adoption and testing. The scariest part about all of this continues to now be the fact that important, fantastic coders, the very masters of OpenSim are not seeing why putting a prank in any part of the source tree is just inappropriate for any serious open source project. I thought it was the minority before, but clearly the very core OpenSim team thinks everyone caught with this ‘prank’ deserved it for using the most current release of this ‘alpha’ software. Even when those same individuals repeat, dozens of times a year in IRC and elsewhere, “do you have the latest release” every time a bug is considered for submission.
Despite all the reminders we all make that this is ‘alpha’ software, people are going to use it and learn this lesson the hard way. That is fine and expected. But it does seem the lesson learned for today is, if you are serious about running a virtual world behind your firewall and don’t have the time to keep up on code commits, IRC and the rest, even hiring a fantastic OpenSim administrator keep you safe making the buy-something-else option look really good, right Amanda?
The longer this goes on, and the more developers weigh in, the more frustrated I am becoming. Time to think about something else, like helping newbies.
April 1, 2009 at 8:20 pm
I agree Mo, let us put this whole thing behind us and concentrate on other topics – I think there’s little ot be gained from pursuing it further.
I do actually see your point about the “upgrading to latest release” issue. As OpenSim does become more stable (forgetting about this issue for the moment), then hopefully it will become much less necessary to do that.
April 1, 2009 at 8:24 pm
…and as if haunted, Skidz (whom I admire and respect like all the others) makes this post with some feedback from people that frankly I am glad I didn’t read earlier.
April 1, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Fact is I am still running on latest stable 6.2 as 6.3 was very unstable and many either reverted or tried a trunk version as there is no 6.4 so far. So many people keep trying trunk out until they find something that runs kinda stable. They do this in an attempt to get rid of a bug that bothers them in the latest stable or because they just want to update to the latest version.
The prank isn’t misplaced but the 5 million bugs in opensim are prank enough. Don’t forget the huge amounts of time that go into it all just to run a grid or put a sim up just for testing.
People spend a lot of time to create their avatar so some might get upset they turn into a thin man or something. So if you got complaints I don’t think they are related to the “prank” but more to frustration regarding how hard it is to deal with the current bugs in the system.
April 1, 2009 at 8:30 pm
The gray text on this page, such as the indented quoted text, is nearly unreadable, even at 140 percent page zoom.
April 1, 2009 at 8:46 pm
I say lesson learned on both sides. ReactionGrid understands more clearly how the core developers view the trunk & we will weigh that in our decisions in the future. A tough love lesson but ok we get it and would like to consider it over as an issue. At no time were we angry with any of the developers who give so much time on this project. We had a dissenting opinion is all and thank MoHax for facilitating this discussion and hope no feelings are hurt anywhere. We truly appreciate the hard work put into this project and we hope the core developers who have their own projects for hosting, services, grids etc do well in their own business ventures.
April 1, 2009 at 8:54 pm
“And who is going to pay that professional Dev team, professional wages?”
Professionalism (and maturity) have nothing to do with wages, and if you think they do, you have a big problem.
April 1, 2009 at 8:59 pm
What is Nebraska?
April 1, 2009 at 9:17 pm
I agree that lessons have been learned on both sides and the whole issue most likely could have been handled better. But everyone has to understand that opensim is a community project and the developers do it because its fun. Most of them aren’t trying to build businesses off it. They just enjoy creating it and making it freely available to everyone and having a bit of fun along the way. And this was meant to be a joke that only got seen by developers and testers. This is what I was trying to get across in the email that Mo hax attacked me over. And what other developers have repeated.
Teravus told all of core about this joke and we thought it was a bit of harmless fun. Maybe we miss judged in some ways and could have handled some things differently but if we made a mistake then thats all it was. Not a reason for everyone to attack us so much and forget all the work we have done. That is what has hurt so much and made us fight back.
It really isn’t easy to find coders for opensource projects, but luckly opensim has got a great group of people.
I founded opensim and for a number of months it was mainly myself and one or two others working on it, until it got to a point where it started to get usable and other people started to show interest. But we need to keep that interest for all the developers else there won’t be a opensim project.
As Justin said if we try to become a corporate project devoid of colour and humour then we won’t get the developers who want to spend their free time working on such a thankless thing. Its the community that makes this project fun to work on and I regret that a big part of that community seems to have spent the day fighting each other.
But I do have to say one of the lessons I have learned is how ungrateful people can come across as. I have put in over 2000 hours of my free time into opensim code over the last two years. And the other developers have put in thousands more. Without all that work there wouldn’t be any businesses or projects trying to use opensim. There would be no code to fork.
Personally I’m seriously considering if I want to do any more work on opensim after this experience.
April 1, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Mo
If I may add some thought leadership to the discussion! There is an upside to this circumstance. Never has it been more evident, that in virtual worlds, whether you are doing the coding or participating — as a user or business or government or social activity, there is a core requirement of understanding that this is a “place” where “people are and will always be at the center” A huge difference from generations 1 and 2.
This all may seem challenging at the moment but these human interactions are what will make the 3D Internet stand strong in both open source and closed source domains. This very discussion between users and creators will give new strength to OpenSim, SL and many other virtual worlds giving the entire 3D Internet solid ground from which it can grow and mature.
OpenSim is not the only place where judgement may have been altered by April 1st (e.g.NASCAR), but it has provided some very good and healthy discussion on the common areas that are shared and synergistic between users and developers/coders. The divide is becoming a smaller gap and in the future may even close. Something for all of us to think about.
For all involved keep up the great effort and forge ahead positively with every lesson learned.
April 1, 2009 at 10:02 pm
MW: everyone is grateful for the work.
At some point, though, you’ll need to decide whether this is an amateur project that no one should take seriously, or a professional project with professional standards. “Hey, it’s alpha” only goes so far.
It doesn’t have to stop being fun. It does need to grow up a bit.
Or not. It’s entirely up to the devs. If it’s going to continue operating on the level of “hey, this is just a few of us screwing around having fun”, that’s great. Just don’t expect anyone to ever count on it, or trust it, or use it for anything important.
In any case, the devs should let the users know which way they’re planning to go.
April 1, 2009 at 10:04 pm
MW, not once have I suggested for one second that your contributions and the contributions of all the amazing people who help has not been appreciated. Would sending you money help? Man I so would send some if I had it. How about I finally implement all the missing gestures with animations and voice?
It just so happens all of my virtual worlds involvement, from mentoring to building to contributing is volunteer, my day job has nothing to do with it. Sure I script stuff here and there in SL for clothing Linden, but I’d bet I’m in the thousand range on the volunteer time as well. But that isn’t the issue.
I appreciate your creation every day when I use it and I never want to sound like just because it exists I am entitled to it, like the “non-contributing zeros” described in this Everything’s amazing, nobody’s happy video around 2:17. We can never take this community and its wonderful contribution for granted. Like in the video, every second that we are in any OpenSim we should be running around saying, “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! This is so amazing.”
By the same token, the developers can never forget that we hang on every bit of code that falls from your fingertips as soon as it does, partly because we want the best stuff, partly because we are sincerely trying to help in our way by finding and reporting bugs.
By the way, I never “attacked” you, MW, just the notion that you presented, and others agreed with, that because you do so very much for this project out of love that somehow that would make putting a fun prank in the core source code trunk ok. That is the basis of my disagreement shared by many others. I agree with making it fun although this is yet another experience in a long list of those I’ve seen over the years of different practical jokes going horrible wrong, even when the intentions are the purest.
That said, I did take being dropped from the OpenSim planet and losing a few Facebook friends personal. I really hope that is not how this team plays.
So do we get a prank in the source code next year or not?
Maybe we could mess with the moon or something. Maybe we just let the gird owners do their own practical jokes depending on where they are.
April 1, 2009 at 10:05 pm
If you are actually offended by this shit you are retarded. It’s just a video game, and if you actually treat this as more than a video game then you have your priorities messed up.
April 1, 2009 at 10:12 pm
I happened to get caught by this nonsense. I’m effectively a retired developer from years back, now looking to lend a hand on technology I think is important.
So…. facing a steep learning curve, I was ready to absorb some pain when in the middle of it all I get pulled back in order to correct this mess.
If this is the way open source is done, I fear for all such projects. It opens us up to everything from wasted time to wasted money to attacks from open source enemies.
I’ll keep plugging away – for the most part the people involved seem sincerely commited to a good product – and sometimes even the most talented take a turn down ’stupid avenue’ for a few blocks. (I know that address myself, shame to say).
r_clint
April 1, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Folks for the profanity in some of others’ comment posts, but not editing anything. I was hoping it wouldn’t come that that. Perhaps some will actually look into this discussion and why it is relevant more than cowardly posting defacing profanity.
April 1, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Okay, just saw Sean Dague’s post over at Planet OpenSim.
We’ve been prototyping an education project based on OpenSim, hoping to do a large-scale rollout next academic year (thinking that OpenSim would very likely be in good shape by then, based on the progress we’ve seen). A primary reason for going with OpenSim rather than SL was that we thought we’d be able to keep the sort of people who find humor in purple penises out.
No, Sean, you don’t owe me shit, that’s true.
I do owe my users shit, though. In fact, I owe them a professional platform, and it doesn’t look like OpenSim is going to be it. That’s done. We’ll look into Project Wonderland or Croquet instead.
But hey, keep having fun, and I mean that without any rancor or ill-will. I’ve enjoyed playing with OpenSim, and will keep tinkering it on my own as a hobby.
I’m just not going to give it to my users.
April 1, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Yes, for clarity and fairness, here is a link to Sean’s post
April 1, 2009 at 11:17 pm
i posted this on Sean’s and it fits here as well (imo):
well people like to strut bravado and getting upset is how it manifests. if your biggest problem in life is having your avatar temporarily stretched, well you have an incredible life
channel your energy towards those issues that should make you angry (and mobilize) such as hunger, the treatment of girls in many countries, war, etc.
for OpenSim and April Fool’s day, take the chance to smile and forget some woes for just a moment . . .
April 1, 2009 at 11:24 pm
While OpenSim’s founders may not have been the griefers of SecondLife, libsecondlife has always tolerated griefers in its midst, and it has been impossible, given the opensource openness shtick, to discourage them. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Opensource contains within it basically a criminal essence, which stems from the idea that you can make everything free and yet still command work out of people.
When something is free, you get what you pay for. Now you see it. This kind of infantile nature was visible miles away even before this project began, and has been replicated in all its offshoots, and lecturing and haranguing about it won’t change it. Maybe this experience will help you question if not the opensource religion, at least the opensource culture.
The silliest thing about this thread is the idea that this experience and discussing it incites “opensource enemies”. Opensource enemies don’t even have to exist, it generates its own saboteurs all on its own.
April 2, 2009 at 12:02 am
@Ener thanks for the comment but it doesn’t appear you read the thread, which is also ok since it has gotten pretty long, for better or worse. Being changed into a silly avatar was really not the problem. It was those grids and individuals that had to spend hours in some cases to undo the prank, even though they admit it is their own fault for having allowed it to go in. The core issue is should pranks every be allowed in core source code, trunk or otherwise.
@Prokofy thanks for the comment. Yes I hear you calling me naive. I may well be. Once upon a time I really strongly supported the GPL. That’s ok. I do believe open source has an important place. I’m just beginning to think the best ‘open’ projects are those that under the covers are really so corporate sponsored they are almost pseudo-open. Clearly the OpenSim project has not hit that level yet. I’ll have to look closer at successful projects like FireFox, Inkscape, and others to compare. Then again, maybe I’ll just script a better surfboard and forget about this mess.
April 2, 2009 at 2:00 am
@Sue Here is the link explaining Nebraska which goes with this timely announcement from Linden Labs today, and is not a prank.
April 2, 2009 at 3:06 am
This is just another reason why I will always keep my business on LL servers.
Criminal element certainly, I still don’t see why so many (even though its not really SO MANY) trust OS and pour so much time & effort into FAIL.
April 2, 2009 at 5:23 am
What happens when a “joke” like this slips into the main code base and is fully released?
What other “jokes” are hiding in the code, that may even be in the releases, un-intentional or otherwise?
At least this has made it clear to me what Opensim is, and is not.
April 2, 2009 at 5:26 am
Oh dear..So OpenSim looses some humorless people along the way. Prokofy gets some ammo for her war on ‘technocommunism’. And the OpenSim devs keep on making this unbelieveably awesome presentation/social tool/VR engine for us all to use. To be fair..OpenSim is pretty much useable for what i do right now, but as long as these guys don’t get put off by all the stabbing, it can only get better..Thank You all the OpenSim Devs, you are too cool.
April 2, 2009 at 6:56 am
Not quite Monk, those OpenSim Devs, whom we all appreciate and respect continue to remain callous, aloof even insulting about the situation they have caused for many people contributing and growing usage of OpenSim, like the well respected SLOODLE project, which went under because of this:
Words of apology and “can’t we all just get along” ring very hollow to those facing this situation that hear, “get ready for next year” and “serves you right” along with them. No one should run against trunk. The bigger problem now is clearly the team’s “I don’t owe you shit” (and that is a quote) and unwillingness to work with the requests and needs of its core users.
April 2, 2009 at 7:19 am
ReactionGrid has already volunteered 1 full simulator for SLOODLE in OpenSim. We are offering tech support and space should you Maureen need more than we provided so far. Please let us help you keep Sloodle in OpenSim. Let me know how I can help!
April 2, 2009 at 7:41 am
There is no need to tell more – Mo Hax is really wrong here.
April 2, 2009 at 7:43 am
Opensource, I replied to Monk and will continue to reply to any comments until they stop.
April 2, 2009 at 8:32 am
@Mo. I find it upsetting that you choose to call me “callous, aloof and insulting” (along with other core developrs), but if that is your interpretation of the mailing list messages and other responses then that is your right. However, I hardly find it surprising that statements phrased in this way end up upsetting people rather than encouraging constructive debate. I’m sure this was not your intention.
And while I do not dismiss some of the genuine concerns out there, I think one also has to be careful of quote mailing list responses without corroboration. For instance, no one in the community had ever heard of Maureen Damery before this messages was posted. That’s not to say that such messages are not genuine, but it seems that there is an element of trolling (or you could call it April fooling) in some of the responses on the list.
And I would also find it good if you were to quote positive mailing list responses as well as negative ones. From my recollection the positive ones have considerably outweighed the negative and are from a broader range of individuals.
April 2, 2009 at 8:43 am
“However, I hardly find it surprising that statements phrased in this way end up upsetting people rather than encouraging constructive debate.”
Compared to, e.g., “I don’t owe you shit”?
Yeah, that was constructive, all right.
Anyway, I’m out. I have to start looking at alternative platforms for next year, and coming up with a way to explain to my superiors (who were leery of FOSS in the first place) why my earlier advocacy of Opensim was wrong. I hope you get a good chuckle out of it.
April 2, 2009 at 9:09 am
I wish you all the best for you and your project in the future, “OpenSim Server Admin”. There certainly are other virtual environment platforms other than OpenSim and if you find one that better suits your needs and concerns then it would be wise to take it up.
April 2, 2009 at 9:10 am
@justincc Generalizing that all OpenSim devs was clearly a mistake. I do see regret expressed but no change in direction is all. I see your caring in Ter’s and MW’s response to skidz “Don’t let the door kick you in the butt on your way out!”
Did the position about adding planned pranks to any of the source code at all change? If so I apologize for not properly capturing that. The only response I gleaned was “be prepared next year”.
I promised myself I would not persue this, but then more and more comments come to this blog that I feel obligated to learn about, including yours. Thank you. In the process and in response to Monk, this morning, out of fairness, I took the time to read every single message in the list and elsewhere to check my understanding and personal conclusions. I read comments like skidz, who is an excellent coder who makes amazing things, and Sean’s reference to “I don’t owe you shit!” and the funny but callous pictures of deformed avatars with “Does my ass look too big?” I chuckled, but at the same time realized this might be a systemic culture problem with the project itself. Perhaps that conclusion was premature, but I really did make it in good faith.
Here is the link to the SLOODLE email, which I hope is just a troll and not the truth, perhaps the address, which I did not copy, is the troll’s means of convincing me and others that there is truth to it. I will try to confirm that claim. If this is a troll, why encourage them by continuing this ‘fun’ practice of pranks in source code?
With the best of respect for those trying to keep things tame, I must completely agree with Frank who’s posts are infrequent, dignified and perfectly convey the point I simply wanted others to be aware of, not for personal gain, but out of sincere concern for people making important decisions about OpenSim, users and developers. Here is the link to Frank’s conclusion as included below:
I understand that conclusion will saddened the development team as well as me. But I must admit I agree with it more now than ever.
April 2, 2009 at 9:19 am
jokes are usually funny–pranks are often not. I think messing with code contributions for a opensource community is not a joke and really damages the spirit of trust. So this type of prank is not at all constructive or supportive. I would have hope that clever people would have a greater imagination to deliver a funny joke when so many people have a desire for a good laugh.
April 2, 2009 at 10:17 am
[...] See a screenshot and Mo Hax post about the prank. [...]
April 2, 2009 at 1:03 pm
OMG,
You people are so, so sad.
If you cannot see the beauty of an idea that can only happen in a virtual world, you should not even be there.
April 2, 2009 at 3:16 pm
What?
There are still people who think putting malware into opensource code is a good thing?
Personally I don’t give a flying **** what open source people, or opensim people think is a “good thing”.
If software harms me, it is *BAD*…
EXACTLY the same as if propriety software harms me (but at least then I have someone to follow up with and potentially get damages from).
April 2, 2009 at 3:49 pm
@Gnar Hunh? I don’t understand your point. All of us are certainly very sad indeed lately, but not because any of us “cannot see the beauty of an idea that can only happen in a virtual world.” Which idea? Which virtual world for that matter? Oh nevermind.
April 2, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I have red though a lot of web pages on this now, what it boils down to is:
It was un-intended, opensim didn’t think through the real ramifications of their actions.
The result is going to be the same, each person making up their own mind on whether or not to use this software that may contain un-wanted “features” (to put it in the best terms possible).
April 2, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Wow what a great conversation you have sparked, Mo. Clearly a lot of people care about this topic. I want to put my two cents in, which is this: I am a business person, not a technologist. I don’t even know what a trunk is. I use several immersive technologies for my work — OpenSim is just one of them. I use these technologies for meetings, training sessions, consulting sessions, brainstorming events, creating machinima, and doing tours. All professional activities. Why? Because they offer so much richness, compared to other kinds of communication and collaboration technology, and even compared to in-person meetings (in some cases). So being faced with a work-stopping prank like this one made me worry, not smile. Hopefully, we’ve all learned a lesson. And the silver lining is that immersive technologies clearly have crossed the barrier from being just a toy to becoming serious work tools. For that, let’s celebrate.
April 2, 2009 at 6:19 pm
@Erica – Thanks for the well thought out comment. I do want to make it clear that the April Fool was only put in the unstable “developer’s” copy of the code a couple of weeks before April 1st. An ‘ordinary’ user like you would never encounter it since it would never get into a release version. So it was only meant for developers and testers who know that the joke is coming (as Mo says, we did one last year too).
We like to do something fun for all our hard work on April 1st – it’s one of the rare opportunities to blow off steam for all the people who put in endless hours of unpaid time to the project. And it’s always removed from the “workbook” code before the day has finished. It was never meant as a “prank” on any innocent party.
Unfortunately, Chris had taken a recent copy of the “developer’s workbook” code for use in her grid. She did do her due diligence and put it through testing, but unfortunately she was not aware of our tradition of doing an April joke for other developers and testers.
I am actually quite saddened by Chris’ experience and I take absolutely no pleasure in it, and I know nobody else does either. I think that she’s a great developer and I’d like to see her grid be a big success (as I’d like to see other OpenSim grids succeed).
I think that what this shows is that we need to keep improving our release process so that people aren’t tempted to use “development” code. As Chris says, the only reason she was using unstable code was because the 0.6.3 release contained a bad appearance bug. If this wasn’t the case then she would not have been caught out.
I’m sorry to keep banging on about this, but there seems to be a lot of misperception out there and I’m having a hard time figuring out whether some of it is wilful or not.
April 2, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Yes Justin we need to get people to not use development code for sure. And we also need to get the core developer team to consider not applying such code to any portion of the public source tree, which includes the trunk.
April 2, 2009 at 9:34 pm
I first want to thank the OpenSim team for their development work. You have created an amazing tool that thus far holds much promise for transforming business, government, and education.
I currently spend quite a bit of my spare time in ReactionGrid and SecondLife developing collaboration tools for business and education. I also work with clients within these environments, frequently helping them to forego costs of meeting physically by instead meeting virtually. It takes a considerable amount of effort to convince them to take the first few steps into using this technique and technology. Their decision ultimately depends on their level of trust in me and in the technology. There is a considerable amount of bad information, misconceptions, and exaggerations regarding virtual environments that I must always fight against and overcome in developing this trust. Other virtual world advocates, particularly many educators I know, fight this battle frequently, whether it be convincing clients, education administrators, or educational grant foundations.
I am deeply afraid that this entire incident has dealt a blow to the credibility & trustworthiness of the OpenSim effort. OpenSim is still in my mind a serious virtual technology contender, especially for the education sector. I see some of the work being done with K-12 students on ReactionGrid and at Greenbush and really get excited about the future of education for this and future generations. Unfortunately, perception is 99% reality.
Reality: OpenSim had a “prank” occur which originated from the core developers and that negatively impacted many users. How can we invest time and money in a technology that may contain planned unexpected pranks that disrupt.
April 2, 2009 at 10:50 pm
It seems like a lot of people defending the prank are missing the point. Yes people should not be using trunk versions for production. In fact there are dangers one has to accept even using the official release versions when one is dealing with alpha level tech. Trunk versions are not supposed to be used for production because they can have bugs that cannot be readily remedied, not because they are supposed to be accepted as fair game for intentional implementation of performance problems, and particularly not when it is done simply to amuse people (as opposed to intentionally stress testing the platform).
Intentional bugging for self-amusement really shouldn’t be done to ANY version. Regardless of the fact that it is free and supported by lots of hard work from volunteers, people have a reasonable expectation that those dedicated volunteers’ efforts can be relied upon to protect the community as a whole and the overall stability of the product to the best of their ability in ALL versions, not go the opposite direction for a day for a few chuckles just because the version is not meant for production. If those dedicated volunteers that form the core of development essentially are saying that that expectation is not reasonable, what kind of message does that send to the rest of the community?
April 3, 2009 at 2:07 am
I have to thank the bloggers and the opensim coders for this. It has been an interesting read and a great laugh. Good to see with all the problems that you put up with all year you can still take some time out to have a bit of fun. Something that is forgotten regularly in the VR worlds as we become more drawn in to the emersion. This so much out does the L33t converter.
As for those that paid for their experience in opensim, Go annoy the person you paid , not the devs that will always try that little bit extra to make the experience unique.
NOW I cant wait for Easter to go looking for the eggs :-p
April 3, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Going to shut down comments on this thread now. Please continue it on the OpenSim mailing list linked several times above if you feel inclined.
April 3, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Well, apparently not, the lists have also been closed to unmoderated participation:
So I guess I will leave this open since it is one of the last uncensored forums around right now. Please, please refrain from profanity and griefing. I do hope the archives remain in tact as linked from above but I cannot guarantee that obviously. I did have several who wished to view them unable to because they had to accept an additional certificate. If that happens to you ask around, it should be ok to accept that certificate as an exception.
April 3, 2009 at 4:17 pm
I would have to say this situation is a -1 trunk or not.
April 3, 2009 at 7:40 pm
We were not using trunk. We were using the “recommended version 8849″ from OSGrid because it was required for connection to OSGrid. We were still running standalone style because we were not ready – still in “proof of concept”. That concept is proven wrong now. We must now find a new VW base that is not SL and not Opensim.
April 3, 2009 at 10:11 pm
I absolutely love this new text added to http://opensimulator.org’s download page:
That certainly helps address one half of the core issue. We can only hope the dev team will silently choose against pranks next year, or anytime, but I get the impression they want the paranoia to continue because it serves a very important purpose: it causes people to fear the trunk, but also inadvertently the whole thing, but then again, “it is alpha software” they repeat over and over, which could really be interpreted as “no, we are not ready for business, yet.”
I also received an email from Ter further explaining why this blog will remained unlinked from any official OpenSim sites. Thank you Ter, although I disagree with both closing the mailing lists and changing any of the linked blogs.
On a better note, looking foward to ReactionGrid’s attempt at a 200 user event attempt spread across RG with HyperGridding, a chat bridge, and media streaming. Very ambitious, wishing them the best.
April 3, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Charles makes good sense to me, but the lists became closed and moderated anyway:
April 3, 2009 at 11:16 pm
The lists were closed because one individual in particular, who obviously is still in a rather irrational state, has posted threats of FBI and legal action against individual core developers. The MIT BSD license does seem to protect them from any of that and personally threats of law suits seem very extreme given the circumstances, despite regrets about the outcome. I look forward to the lists eventually being opened again as Sean indicates will happen shortly.
April 4, 2009 at 8:54 am
Moderating of the mailing lists was the last thing any of us wanted. In the end we felt we had to, for a short period as lots of people were asking us to. They didn’t want all that ending up in their mail boxes and having to sort through it to find the posts they were interested in. I certainly hope this moderation lasts as short as is possible. It most likely won’t be lifted until monday, but we all hope it doesn’t last any longer than that.
As for if there will be any more april 1st jokes, well I can’t promise that there won’t be as no single developer has that power. Opensim has a very decentralised “management system”. But I’m sure we will at the very least learn a number of lessons from this.
And yes opensim still is alpha code and yes in my view that does mean its not really ready for business yet. Anyone using it in a production setting should be extremely careful and have good knowledge of opensim and how it works (most likely as far as having knowledge of the code) or have people at hand who do. And they certainly should only use tagged releases
Another thing to note is the goal of the opensim core project isn’t to provide a enterprise solution that meets businesses needs out of the box. Most of us I believe (its very hard to talk for all of the core developers as we all have different ideas) see something more like the linux system.
Where opensim is the core/kernel and then there are distributions based around that to meet various needs. Some of these most likely will be commercial based. Our aim in the opensim project is to build a generic virtual worlds platform along with a reference application (this reference application is what most people think of when they think about opensim). But we hope people/businesses use that platform to build lots of different applications on. And personally I hope there are a number of commercial distributions of a opensim based solution that can offer the enterprise level support that the project itself just can’t offer.
And finally yes we really do want people who aren’t testing it or really want to be on the edge of the wave, to stay out of trunk. We actually need that to be able to continue to develop at such a fast pace. As for some things its becoming harder and harder to fix when people are using trunk like it sometimes is currently. Sometimes we are going to have to take steps back and break certain features for a while so we can fix them properly.
Leaving the question of if we should have handled things differently or not aside for a moment. Sometimes in core we might have to do weird things like deform a avatar to be able to test and debug new features. This “joke/prank” did test a new piece of code, which is a procedural animation generator. Now I’m not trying to say that was the purpose of this whole thing. But just trying to explain that trunk does have to be a development version that we can do lots of things in that should never get near any version that is being used for serious work.
We are a very young project and like everyone will make mistakes along the way, stick by us and we will get there in the end. If the community breaks out into civil war then we will never get there.
April 4, 2009 at 9:03 am
Sorry made a typing mistake in my above post. When I said “Sometimes in core we might have to do weird things like deform a avatar to be able to test and debug new features.” I actually meant in trunk, not core. so it should have been
“Sometimes in trunk we might have to do weird things like deform a avatar to be able to test and debug new features.”
April 4, 2009 at 9:25 am
Thanks again MW for your clarifications and creation.
April 7, 2009 at 3:40 pm
People should avoid building fetishistic relationships with free code because the result can be seen in this comment section: Fetishist tend to get really upset when their object mailfunctions. It’s not only grotesque to have the audacity to project their offrail psychology onto the hard work of volunteers, it also poisons the community when hatred that belongs somewhere else blows up into someones face.
Keep that s*** within the circumference of your middleclass lawns.
And yes, you guessed right, I found it funny. Because it *was* funny.
April 8, 2009 at 6:05 am
PS:
Mo, you know what the difference is between Amy Winehouse and you? She has so much talent, charisma, presence that nobody really cares how many times she messes up. I think for people to stop supporting her she would have to shoot someone in the street in broad daylight.
You on the other hand are just a name that was taking a ride on the emotional rush of playing prosecuter. You wanted to be “da man” be the center of attention _no matter what_. Well now that the rush is over, I hope it will begin to sink in slowly that in this scenario, *you* were the problem. You messed up. And unlike Amy Winehouse, I don’t think people love you enough or even care about or know you to even consider giving a second chance. Nobody needs toxic narcissists and their cronies who use moral reasoning as a Trojan horse to inject their poison into a nice community. Shame on you and shame on all who gave you fuel.
If you are still in denial about this, don’t worry you have all the time to realize, because you’re pretty much dead at least to those members of the community who see right through your brittle rhetoric. And those members are the important ones.
BTW, is there a way to turn off the spell check here? I’d like to decide myself if I want to use one or not. A software which interrupts my flow by screaming at me by marking my words red is bugged. April 1st is over after all.
April 8, 2009 at 9:36 am
I thought it was hilarious. Then again, I actually have a functioning sense of humor. The drama llamas running around whining about taking their ball and going home – or, best of all, claiming to have reported the OpenSim developers to the police and the FBI for “criminal malicious timebomb code” – were even funnier than the stick figure prank itself.
And Axaes, if you’re that horrified by technology trying to prevent you from coming across as illiterate, go to the Advanced section in your Firefox preferences, click on the General tab, and uncheck “Check my spelling as I type”.
April 11, 2009 at 12:17 pm
OpenSim is developed by people who believe in the premise of a free, modifiable simulator technology which is at present, compatible with the Second Life viewer and associated resources.
They do this at no cost, for fun.
Someone who wants to build an enterprise on top of that does so at their own risk.
By no means should the OpenSim developers ‘feel bad’ because someone who wants to make money with a free product whines that they put something in for fun.
By no means should the OpenSim developers stop having fun.
The true fools in this endeavor are those who are attempting to procure funding by running alpha software and don’t bother to test releases prior to putting them into production or prior to their funding meetings. It doesn’t surprise me that someone who doesn’t invest the time to prepare for their funding presentation is also lacking in the facilities required to appreciate the humor in this, and is also lacking in the facilities required to follow the proper and recommended procedures for installing ’stable’ OpenSim.
I applaud Teravus, JustinCC, and the many others who have made OpenSim into a viable possibility and if anything, I hope this sort of exploration continues, expands, and becomes more prevalent in OpenSim.
You are of course free to disagree, and I will have to insist from now on that your avatar meets dress code requirements and that your every word in the virtual arena is 100% professional.
April 11, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Been away on vacation. This topic is very old at this point. But leaving all comments–including the personal attacks and further venting–unedited and open.
Personally, despite the jabs, I don’t care to participate in this thread any longer and believe it has well served its purpose, which contrary to some have accused, was not completely self-serving. No one who blogs (or posts comments for that matter) can really claim they are free of self-interest. Those who know me best know I was sincerely trying to broaden the scope of participation in this important dialog, which I believe we have accomplished. As my comments on Erica’s FB posts would confirm, I really was looking for any blog post from anyone to open the dialog beyond the mailing list and not finding one attempted this one. The comments and actions speak for themselves at this point, from all involved. Thank you.
April 12, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Having been away from OpenSim for a while, I was just trying to get caught up on things when I came across this. I guess I’d have to say that the developers are right, and so is Mo.
It is true that nobody should be using trunk code for anything important unless they are willing to test it themselves and have the ability to fix anything which may go wrong, and even more importantly, they need to keep up on what the developers are talking about on the lists and on IRC, because you really don’t know what might be in that code. I remember the “1337 5p33k” prank from last year, I thought it was pretty funny, but then I was just running it to test and have fun.
Also, Mo is right to point out the responsibility of the developers to consider all the ramifications of what they do. They do warn, and have always warned people about the hazards of running trunk code, but perhaps they should add an additional warning whenever they add something like this, because some people might miss the chat, might be in a hurry, for whatever reason might get caught in a predicament by whatever change has been made. And maybe they shouldn’t prank people’s avatars… some people just have no sense of humor when it comes to their avatars!
Finally, to all who would discourage others because of this incident, you’re not helping anything. It’s better to keep quiet than to stir up strife.
April 14, 2009 at 1:59 pm
[...] See a screenshot and Mo Hax post about the prank. [...]
April 14, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Related to the ‘what you do to me you do to my avatar’ thing Nick Yee’s Stanford research about avatar personal space referenced in Glenn Linden’s post about Engagement in Second Life might explain why people care so much about that silly avatar.
May 16, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Bravo, Mo. Good for you. You are spot on with this realization:
“Like malevolent Greek deities, has-been actors with T.V. shows, or popular kids looking for amusement at the expense of their subjects/fans/users/clients, these insiders become so disconnected from the experience of the people giving them their power that they actually abuse them. It is one of the greatest failures of humanity and easiest traps to fall into.”
It’s not about one prank; it’s about the entire culture of opensource which is just *awful*. Ftorid sums it up — hedonistic abusiveness at the expense of others, no consideration.
As Dostoevsky put it, “Without God, anything goes.” There you have it.
The evil nastiness you are being subjected from these supposed freedom-loving opensourceniks like Axaes Xandal just takes my breath away. The insular, nasty oppressiveness! I always find fresh indication of my basic hunch that opensource = closed society.
May 19, 2009 at 3:20 am
Hehe. Prokofy , you really are a bitter and twisted old man. You do not use OpenSim, you were caused no embarresment by the April 1st joke that was hidden in the Trunk (Unstable) version of the server. So I find it hilarious you have to return here to demonize OpenSource. Can you not find any new supporters? Hey Mo, do you hate all OpenSource coders and users too? Or is just the Old Gipper, doing his super-conservative name screaming. LOL!! And leave Axaes alone Prok. She has more moral substance in her little finger, than you have in your whole body. You do not even know her. And yes, I should not feed the trolls, but Prokofy does not know she is a troll,
August 27, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Wait, Profoky Neva is a man?! Do we have proof?:-) He’d effortlessly win any Bitch-Award if there was such a thing, I _give_ him that. Wow. These are some awsome Bitch-qualities. I would have never imagined she is male. Sorry, he.
Anyway, Profoky, no need to get your gear up (SCNR), I’m no one important, just a user. Interesting projection BTW. How do G-d loving and decent people such as yourself, you know, these obscure communist hunting, homo bashing and free market praying fossiles actually deal with the reality that their bubble of grand delusion has eclipsed its zenith?
There’s gotta be a better response to deal with the loss of your virtual First Life than just attempting to defame those who are different.
You think I’m nasty and evil? Really? Well I can be if I have to. If someone deserves it, I’ll tear their inside out if it’s the only means to teach them a lesson.
How ironic though, that what I said to Mo even more perfectly fits onto you. No surprise you find it threatening.
August 27, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Come on people have some civility, at least a smidgen. Do you really think people are learning any lessons by attacking them? My post was taken as an attack when it was meant to be more an expose and open forum for those needing it–especially those who were being snubbed and silenced in the mailing list forums. I am SO glad this is behind us. Right?
August 28, 2009 at 7:14 am
You probably have a negative semiotic understanding of Bitch. A Bitch really is a presence which defends what’s hers vigorously. Now just because Profoky defends things that are wrong, and equally to your rhetoric her vibrant and yet hopelessly outdated agenda transcends through the thin mask of civility, I meant no insult when I called her a Bitch.
Don’t get wrong, as a Bitch I respect her (note two way meaning here), she’s AMAZING. I thought since the demise of Usenet as it fell to the worlds insane in the mid 90s, all grand Bitches have died out. And she isn’t even trying to be a Bitch, as the legion of pseudos. It’s all natural for her.
However, as the hollow “conservative” phelpsy sockpuppet deeply plugged into the Matrix of what naive people call the American dream I do pity her.