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Opensimulator is FREE but not a "free-for-all" **
I have noticed there are a number of people who use the Opensimulator server software but they do not fully understand the true concept of it's OPEN nature.
In real life, I have been contributing to FREE and Open sourced software for well over a decade and I rely on it for most of my day to day computing tasks. I have a full working knowledge of what open source is and the level of freedom it gives to the people who use it. Free software gives you the ability to see the source code, change it, make it better, share your changes with friends and some open source licenses will allow you to SELL your modified code. There are many versions of Opensim such as the OSgrid builds, Arriba, Sasquatch, Isthmus or Halcyon and there is nothing stopping YOU from making your own version. You cannot do this with closed sourced software legally. This is the extent to which Opensimulator is OPEN.
Opensimulator is FREE! Free as in Freedom. You are FREE to use the software in any way that you feel is morally or socially acceptable and there is no defined method on how you should use the software. I see people all the time saying things to the effect of: "You should let everyone in your sim." or "You have no right to block bad people or grids." or "You should give everything away free because that is what Opensim was made for." If any of those statements are true then PROVE IT! Go on http://opensimulator.org and show me where it says this. I can assure you that I have completely read the BSD license and it is SHORTER than this article I am writing right now. Nowhere does the license say anything on how you should use the software because that act alone would nullify the freedoms that the Opensimulator developers have given you. You will not find (and probably never will find) any documentation enforcing edicts on how they think you should use this software. They do however have guides on getting the most out of it's features, it is an invaluable resource.
What does all of this mean? FREEDOM FOR ALL but NOT a free-for-all. You have the right to impose RULES on your sims and Opensim software gives grid operators powerful OSSL code to deal with interlopers and troublemakers. Nobody should walk all over you and tell you how to run your grid, when it is your servers, your money and your resources. YOU ARE IN CONTROL. Grid operators have the ability to block any viewer they want, it is built right in. You define how your grid operates and are under no obligation to obey anyone who hates you for using these features. Some may say "Because a feature exists does not mean you should use it." and they would be WRONG because these settings would not be included if the Opensimulator developers did not intend for people to use them.
I challenge anyone who disagrees with this article to visit http://opensimulator.org and show me any documentation which refutes anything I have said. I will only accept submissions from the aforementioned url because it is the OFFICIAL website for the Opensimulator project and they are the supreme authority governing it's use.
Feel free to share this article when needed.
Peace & Love
Spax
** A free-for-all is a situation in which several people or groups are trying to get something for themselves and there are no controls on how they do it.
I have noticed there are a number of people who use the Opensimulator server software but they do not fully understand the true concept of it's OPEN nature.
In real life, I have been contributing to FREE and Open sourced software for well over a decade and I rely on it for most of my day to day computing tasks. I have a full working knowledge of what open source is and the level of freedom it gives to the people who use it. Free software gives you the ability to see the source code, change it, make it better, share your changes with friends and some open source licenses will allow you to SELL your modified code. There are many versions of Opensim such as the OSgrid builds, Arriba, Sasquatch, Isthmus or Halcyon and there is nothing stopping YOU from making your own version. You cannot do this with closed sourced software legally. This is the extent to which Opensimulator is OPEN.
Opensimulator is FREE! Free as in Freedom. You are FREE to use the software in any way that you feel is morally or socially acceptable and there is no defined method on how you should use the software. I see people all the time saying things to the effect of: "You should let everyone in your sim." or "You have no right to block bad people or grids." or "You should give everything away free because that is what Opensim was made for." If any of those statements are true then PROVE IT! Go on http://opensimulator.org and show me where it says this. I can assure you that I have completely read the BSD license and it is SHORTER than this article I am writing right now. Nowhere does the license say anything on how you should use the software because that act alone would nullify the freedoms that the Opensimulator developers have given you. You will not find (and probably never will find) any documentation enforcing edicts on how they think you should use this software. They do however have guides on getting the most out of it's features, it is an invaluable resource.
What does all of this mean? FREEDOM FOR ALL but NOT a free-for-all. You have the right to impose RULES on your sims and Opensim software gives grid operators powerful OSSL code to deal with interlopers and troublemakers. Nobody should walk all over you and tell you how to run your grid, when it is your servers, your money and your resources. YOU ARE IN CONTROL. Grid operators have the ability to block any viewer they want, it is built right in. You define how your grid operates and are under no obligation to obey anyone who hates you for using these features. Some may say "Because a feature exists does not mean you should use it." and they would be WRONG because these settings would not be included if the Opensimulator developers did not intend for people to use them.
I challenge anyone who disagrees with this article to visit http://opensimulator.org and show me any documentation which refutes anything I have said. I will only accept submissions from the aforementioned url because it is the OFFICIAL website for the Opensimulator project and they are the supreme authority governing it's use.
Feel free to share this article when needed.
Peace & Love
Spax
** A free-for-all is a situation in which several people or groups are trying to get something for themselves and there are no controls on how they do it.
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The great thing about this "live & let live" attitude, is it means we can EVEN encompass the grinches.
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I agree, though many in this world seem to want to impose their ideas, beliefs and other annoying bullshit on the rest of the earth, but claim to be all about freedom and free speech, but you can't have a car or a gas stove, because they imposed and said so.
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Couldn't I say it better, bravo! Certain control freaks who want to govern and appropriate the opensim should write this down behind their ears. The ones who want to grab and control everything. I think everyone knows who is meant! Thanks for the valuable contribution, good words! ♥
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It is exactly what i say all the years. But no one belife and mobing me for my posts. Nice to see i am not alone with this opinion. Its good sayd and exactly so as you say all 4 thumbs up. I will coppy and post this also. Thanks
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I dare say that OpenSim would look different if it had actually managed to be adopted by and established in the Free, Libre, Open-Source Software scene, if FLOSS aficionados had become either the majority or a very vocal and influential minority amongst the OpenSim users. Those people also tend to be very creative. I wouldn't even be surprised if the OpenSim we had today was much different from what we actually have because a bunch of people had sat down and rewritten the whole thing a) in a language that's more fit for server applications which means b) without old Windows-only cruft and c) in a code style more apt for open-source software.
As it stands, however, the FLOSS scene is blissfully unaware of the very existence of OpenSim. Instead, OpenSim's main target audience are largely the very same people who, when the Ubuntu craze was running at full steam in 2007, pirated Windows Vista to have the newest, hottest shit on their machines which were already chock-full of pirated Windows software. I'd go as far as saying that many of them have never had a single piece of FLOSS on any of their computers, save for OpenSim-related stuff (viewer, personal grid server), maybe the Second Life viewer and, depending on which Windows version they have, the Linux subsystem. Not even Firefox.
Needless to say that they don't know anything about software licenses. And they don't care. They don't care for free licenses such as Creative Commons, the GPL, the BSD licenses, the Apache license etc., and they don't care for the EULAs of commercial, proprietary, non-free software either. They won't care for licenses until they'll get dragged to court and convicted for breaking said licenses left and right. Which most likely won't happen unless someone reports them to Microsoft or Adobe.
So instead of people who live and breathe FLOSS, we mostly have people who don't even know what open-source or Free Software means. For them, Free Software means free as in free beer which in turns means free-of-charge for them personally. Even Photoshop CS6 counts as Free Software for them if they can get a pirated copy for free. This also means they don't care for actual Free Software. Why use GIMP if you've got sources for free-of-charge copies of Photoshop CS6? Why use LibreOffice if you can get a pirated copy of Microsoft Office for free?
Why support OpenSim's own creators and use their creations under free licenses if you can get shit-tons of copybotted professionally-made premium luxury payware from Second Life for free? Or even fire up Hydrastorm and bot your own stuff? "I want all the best shit, I want it now, and I want it for free! That's my idea of 'free'!" And if you admit using legal content where something illegal is available, you risk being ridiculed or outright attacked.
In practice, OpenSim is free as in pirated MS Office and Photoshop CS6 installed on Wine. Wine because it has become harder to pirate Windows, so if you don't want to pay for your OS, you use Linux. OpenSim because Second Life is too expensive; it isn't chock-full of freebie stores offering the best of the best, and the Lindens won't let you get away with botting all your stuff instead of paying for it.
People who don't know anything about and don't care even a bit for software licenses also neither know about nor care for whether or not the sources of something are publicly available. They don't give a fuck as long as they can get the stuff for free. Hence, they don't know what open-source means, and they don't care. And lacking this knowledge, they'll never understand what the "Open" in "OpenSimulator" stands for and has been standing for ever since it came to exist.
Links:
GNU Foundation on Free Software: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
Wikipedia on Free Software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
Open Source Initiative on Open Source: https://opensource.org/docs/osd
Red Hat on Open Source: https://opensource.com/resources/what-open-source
Wikipedia on Open Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
Wikipedia on open-source software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
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As it stands, however, the FLOSS scene is blissfully unaware of the very existence of OpenSim. Instead, OpenSim's main target audience are largely the very same people who, when the Ubuntu craze was running at full steam in 2007, pirated Windows Vista to have the newest, hottest shit on their machines which were already chock-full of pirated Windows software. I'd go as far as saying that many of them have never had a single piece of FLOSS on any of their computers, save for OpenSim-related stuff (viewer, personal grid server), maybe the Second Life viewer and, depending on which Windows version they have, the Linux subsystem. Not even Firefox.
Needless to say that they don't know anything about software licenses. And they don't care. They don't care for free licenses such as Creative Commons, the GPL, the BSD licenses, the Apache license etc., and they don't care for the EULAs of commercial, proprietary, non-free software either. They won't care for licenses until they'll get dragged to court and convicted for breaking said licenses left and right. Which most likely won't happen unless someone reports them to Microsoft or Adobe.
So instead of people who live and breathe FLOSS, we mostly have people who don't even know what open-source or Free Software means. For them, Free Software means free as in free beer which in turns means free-of-charge for them personally. Even Photoshop CS6 counts as Free Software for them if they can get a pirated copy for free. This also means they don't care for actual Free Software. Why use GIMP if you've got sources for free-of-charge copies of Photoshop CS6? Why use LibreOffice if you can get a pirated copy of Microsoft Office for free?
Why support OpenSim's own creators and use their creations under free licenses if you can get shit-tons of copybotted professionally-made premium luxury payware from Second Life for free? Or even fire up Hydrastorm and bot your own stuff? "I want all the best shit, I want it now, and I want it for free! That's my idea of 'free'!" And if you admit using legal content where something illegal is available, you risk being ridiculed or outright attacked.
In practice, OpenSim is free as in pirated MS Office and Photoshop CS6 installed on Wine. Wine because it has become harder to pirate Windows, so if you don't want to pay for your OS, you use Linux. OpenSim because Second Life is too expensive; it isn't chock-full of freebie stores offering the best of the best, and the Lindens won't let you get away with botting all your stuff instead of paying for it.
People who don't know anything about and don't care even a bit for software licenses also neither know about nor care for whether or not the sources of something are publicly available. They don't give a fuck as long as they can get the stuff for free. Hence, they don't know what open-source means, and they don't care. And lacking this knowledge, they'll never understand what the "Open" in "OpenSimulator" stands for and has been standing for ever since it came to exist.
Links:
GNU Foundation on Free Software: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
Wikipedia on Free Software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
Open Source Initiative on Open Source: https://opensource.org/docs/osd
Red Hat on Open Source: https://opensource.com/resources/what-open-source
Wikipedia on Open Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
Wikipedia on open-source software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
What an EPIC answer! I should have said Opensim is free as in Freedom not free as in BEER. As far as running pirated MS software in WINE, there are plenty of BETTER alternatives you can run on Linux for FREE. I got rid of Windows right around the time that Shits-da (I mean Vista) came out and I have been better for it. I felt the need to share this article because I see naysayers pushing their views on how they think people should run their simulators and I could not resist the urge to set the record straight. PEACE!
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I am still using Macromedia Studio 8 (Before Adobe absorbed and destroyed it) in WINE. Mostly for Fireworks but I still make video elements in Flash and HTML in Dreamweaver. Wine lets you enjoy longevity from your old Windows programs; long after their planned end of life... Also, it is a necessary evil for some of my audio plugins that I use in REAPER for music production. Cheers.
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It is my understanding that there is a small team of volunteers working on opensimulator, fixing the code is not a full-time job for them, they give their time freely to maintain the project. Kitely has taken the code and applied their own patches to it, because of the BSD licence, they are not required to share their fixes. @Pagane it could take more time for bugs to be found and patched but as you stated, anyone is free to look at the code and fix it for themselves.
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Not using the GPL license for opensim was a big mistake. The most robust open source projects use GPL.
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I agree: The GPL is designed to prevent the proprietary commercialization of Open Source code and encourages developers to contribute to development of the software; the BSD license places minimal restrictions on this behavior so anyone can take the code and do whatever they want with it without having to contribute anything back to the project.
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The proprietary, non-free, closed-source, commercial payware macOS was mostly cobbled together from free, open-source FreeBSD. Should give you to think.
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YES... Microsoft has ALSO stolen ideas from Linux then PATENTED them... if they tried to sue, many of those patents would be invalidated because the Linux community can prove they invented it. It is a shame that these big monopolies profit off of open source and try to do what they can to shut them down. Remember when Steve Ballmer was spreading FUD about Linux? At that same time right under his nose, Linux (in the form of Android) was gaining traction in the MOBILE arena. The harder he squeezed the more FLOSS slipped through his fingers. HA HA.
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Absolute true! But Open source also means that anyone is free to find vulnerabilities. That doesn't make him an enemy of civilization... Does it?
Do you ALL have to shout in unison that some Priscilla is your fault? Truth is that there is a big hole in Opensim's defenses and that there are MASSIVE incorrect settings histeria! And you all continue to duplicate problems. Don't take the focus off the problem....
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Do you ALL have to shout in unison that some Priscilla is your fault? Truth is that there is a big hole in Opensim's defenses and that there are MASSIVE incorrect settings histeria! And you all continue to duplicate problems. Don't take the focus off the problem....
great story you wrote there .. lost time ... but the main thing is that you are feeling better now
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