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Members of Linux Australia get up too all kinds of good stuff! Second Life is a fast growing Metaverse that's an amazing place to be and very FOSS friendly.
This site is here so that people can see what the Linux Australia members are doing in-world as well as a resource for Linux users interested in Second Life.
We support the upcoming linux.conf.au 2011!
This site is here so that people can see what the Linux Australia members are doing in-world as well as a resource for Linux users interested in Second Life.
We support the upcoming linux.conf.au 2011!
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Is being mute better than a voice without freedom?
Wednesday, June 27. 2007
Linux users of Second Life seeing voice currently being supported in all but their Viewer, are posed with that question.Reading through a job logged in March in the SL JIRA issue tracker titled 'Support Voice on Linux', two things become clear;
1) Linden Lab have licensed Vivox to provide propriety code for Voice.
2) If they ever do support the Linux viewer it will be with a closed 'binary blob'.
To me this seems a real shame. Linden Lab have gone to great lengths to make sure that the technologies they choose to build Second Life are standards based, and as open and transparent as possible.
Recently Sardonyx Linden in a post to the SL Blog thanked the open source community for the work they've done bugfixing the SL Viewer. Linden Lab have gone so far as to GPL the SL viewer including the excellent 'WindLight' code. The Vivox code seems to contrast this attitude starkly.
Vivox appear to have only had limited exposure, their technology being used most notable in another MMOG called 'EVE Online' which doesn't support Linux at all.
I'd love to know why Linden Lab selected Vivox over numerous other open alternatives, as it seems to me that it will only be a matter of time until this code, which is not GPL2 friendly has to be removed and replaced.
What are your thoughts?
WindLight code GPL'ed by Linden Lab
Sunday, June 17. 2007
The WindLight advanced atmospheric rendering technology that Linden Lab purchased in May has been made available as part of the SL Viewer source code, which is released under the GPL.This will be welcome news to Freedom Lovers as it's yet further proof of Linden Lab's commitment to Open Source values, while at the same time pursuing dramatic improvements of the SL experience.
WindLight provides astonishingly realistic and beautiful atmospheric and natural lighting effects in real time which takes the SL experience and "cranks it up a notch".
WindLight is not currently available in the pre-compiled SL viewer, but Zen Linden in a posting to the official SL blog provides links on how to get the current source code which has WindLight and compile it.
While Voice chat in the SL Viewer is not currently supported in linux, WindLight is probably a better feature to have if one had to choose between them.