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Second Life Tries To Backpedal On the GPL
GigsVT writes "The Second Life viewer has been available under the GPL for three years. Linden Lab, the maker of Second Life, recently released a 'third party viewer' policy that all but erases the freedoms granted under the GPL. It includes such draconian measures as 'You agree to update or delete at our request any data that you have received from Second Life or our servers and systems using a Third-Party Viewer,' 'You must not mask IP or MAC addresses' (reported to the server), 'you must have a published privacy policy explaining your practices regarding user data,' and 'You acknowledge and agree that we may require you to stop using or distributing a Third-Party Viewer for accessing Second Life if we determine that there is a violation.'"
things like second life make me afraid the movie idiocracy will come true...
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The items mentioned in the policy have NOTHING to do with the freedoms granted under the GPL. Draconican EULAs are par for the course in the online gaming world.
Read the last line before the Table of Contents: "If you do not comply, you are not allowed to use Second Life through a Third-Party Viewer, and in severe cases Linden Lab may terminate your access to Second Life entirely."
While I don't think what they're doing is good or smart, I suspect this would really only affect the GPLed clients accessing the Second Life servers run by Linden Labs and not client use on any private servers that are running. And Linden does have the right to manage the data they store on their servers as they see fit.
The beauty of the GPLed client is that users and developers can choose which servers to point their clients at--and pick the ones that have terms they agree wtih.
That's just not true. You have all the rights granted under the GPL. What you can't do is connect to their servers with a client that doesn't conform to their policies. That conforms to the GPL, and they don't have any choice in the matter anyway: people use modified SL viewers to grief and spam, and that's basically what they are trying to prohibit.
Even if you couldn't connect to their servers with a modified client at all, it would still be useful: Linden Labs also open sourced the server. So, if you like, you can connect with your client to your server, or anybody else's server who allows it.
Linden Labs didn't have to open source anything; they did the enlightened thing and open sourced both their client and their server code. One of the most popular viewer is now an open source viewer, with many more functions than their original viewer. And the grid of non-Linden Labs servers will probably grow to be bigger than their own, money-making grid some time this year or next year.
From the new policy
You must not circumvent our intended limitations on Second Life features. For example:
1. You must not circumvent the Second Life permissions system or any features that limit copying, transfer, or use of content within Second Life.
2. You must not alter content metadata like the Second Life creator name or the Second Life owner name.
These hit right to the core of Linden's Business model and are something that SL content creators have been screaming about. If people make things in SL and sell them to each other, Linden makes money. If people stop bothering (at least professionally, leaving only the amateurs) because of copying, then this trade does not happen and Linden makes no money (and ultimately has to shut down).
And everything to do with the terms of service for access to their game servers. Feel free to make any changes you want to the client. But if you break their terms of service they won't let you connect. Sounds fair to me.
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Are you sure? The linked policy says, "This Policy governs access to Second Life and our technical platform that supports Second Life by any Third-Party Viewer or any third-party software client that logs into our servers." It looks like it's only section 6 that applies to "a Developer with a Third-Party Viewer that you would like to list in our Viewer Directory"; the rest seems to be a condition on any client that accesses Linden's servers.
That being said, I'm not sure that this is as egregious as the summary makes it sound. It seems mostly to amount to, "if you use a client to connect to our servers, that client must abide by our policies." Which doesn't seem all that unreasonable (Linden have the right to place conditions of use on access to their servers, even if some of the conditions are kind of wack), and certainly doesn't "all but erases the freedoms granted under the GPL." First, there are plenty of modifications that could still be made without contravening Linden's terms of use; second, if you use their GPLed code to produce something that doesn't connect to their servers, you don't have to follow this policy at all. The only slightly dubious thing is that they do seem to want to restrict distribution of clients that could connect to their servers, even if they could also be used in other ways.
Linden Labs has not "backpedaled" on the GPL in any sense at all.
Linden generously donated a lot of code to GPL developers. They never promised to grant unlimited access to their servers.
There is really no cause for whining here. The community should be grateful to these guys.
The only slightly dubious thing is that they do seem to want to restrict distribution of clients that could connect to their servers, even if they could also be used in other ways.The only slightly dubious thing is that they do seem to want to restrict distribution of clients that could connect to their servers, even if they could also be used in other ways.
Well, that's the fun part. They released the code, so now they have absolutely no idea what builds connect to their servers. As long as it behaves like the original client from their POV, they have no way of telling, and should probably stop obsessing about it.
They need to do this because so much happens on the client side.
.NET code, you can change avatar scan distances and avatars in a scene, so with an individuals viewing distance also increased we see gross increases in bandwidth at the server side.
With the SL viewer and the Linden Lab servers, the relationship is somewhat like HTML javascript form verification with some but not complete server input cleansing. They have been expanding input checking at the server side but it is lagging behind.
If I could use a simplified example: The server sends to the viewer all avatars in a scene. A scene is a viewable distance which is 64 meters to 512 meters governed by the slider in your graphics preferences. The avatar scanner distance is hard-coded to a max of 16 avatars in the viewer. The scanner distance default is 96m. But some minor fiddling in the
Moving from that to the buzzwords of DRM and copyright laws(DMCA etc), the server sends the hash keys to the viewer of server assets(textures etc). It is somewhat trivial to match these keys to what it in RAM in form of a texture.
Simply put the Second Life viewer can be modified to be an indexer of Digital Works created by both Linden Labs and users.
This means LL has lost control of content, and it is content that gives Second Life a competitive advantage in 3D perpetual world games.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
They aren't backpedaling on the GPL at all. The code is still GPLed, and you can use it however you want, according to that license.
They do limit your ability to access their servers, and to list you in their pages as a recognized 3rd-party viewer - they have certain requirements for both, and they have now clarified those requirements. But that has nothing to do with the GPL, it's an entirely separate issue.
tl;dr: It's like Wordpress (the software) is GPLed, but Wordpress.com (the website with hosted blogs) won't let you write a blog on their website that links to malware etc.
This is like saying that Firefox is backpeddling on open source because Mozilla.org is free to block you if you spam their forums.
However, I hear that because of the new policy, Emerald is closing shop. Anything that gets rid of those "giving access to our change history would mean someone could release binaries of our changes before we do!!" assholes is a good thing.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
There are still people thanks to the ever growing community of furries with giant penises.
Linden have the right to place conditions of use on access to their servers, even if some of the conditions are kind of wack
Exactly. What is it with some people's sense of entitlement these days? Back before I was chasing kids off my lawn, if a company offered a service we took a look at the conditions that service was offered under, evaluated whether or not it met our needs, and if we didn't like it we took our business elsewhere. Kids these days stamp their feet and start whining on websites that they don't get what they want.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
The only slightly dubious thing is that they do seem to want to restrict distribution of clients that could connect to their servers, even if they could also be used in other ways.
This part was "slightly dubious?"
You acknowledge and agree that we may require you to stop using or distributing a Third-Party Viewer for accessing Second Life if we determine that there is a violation.
This is exactly an attempt to erase the freedoms granted under the GPL.
I think the problem and the reason nobody seems to get the problem is that the story submitter, GigsVT, wanted to include more excerpts than just the worst one, and the worst one was the one that deserved the most scathing criticism, and the most scathing criticism is what got the headline. Imagine that.
So what do we have here? Let's see:
It's confusing when there's more than one thing, and all of those things are not the exact same thing, isn't it?
Mod parent down.
Also...
You must not mask IP or MAC addresses (reported to the server)
This is like DRM: It only negatively affects those who want to conform to the rules, and does nothing to stifle those it calls attention to. The worst part is that "mask" is a completely informal term.
Changing your MAC address is routine networking for many people whose network admins tie their access credentials to their MAC addresses.
Someone might want to protect their privacy while cybersexing (snicker) or someone may even want to leak important information to the public using Second Life (I do have a fantasy to modify the open source Quake 3 engine to trickle out a stream of data out in the least significant bits of player movement. Can you imagine the Chinese trying to figure that one out?)
These aren't just obscure corner cases or open source zealotry, these are things I personally expect to have from open source software. I switched from AOL instant messenger to an open source IM client because I wanted an IM client I could retrofit with my own crude privacy software. Years later I am using sophisticated OTR, and I have TOR at my disposal if I feel the need to "mask" my IP. I realize this isn't a GPL violation, but distributing the client under the GPL and then telling me I can't protect my privacy (while not violating any other terms of service, mind you; remember this anti-"masking" restriction is only something that affects people who want to obey the rules, not those who wish to cheat them) is a bit like giving me an "open source cellular handset" and then telling me exactly what audio codec I'm allowed to use for voice conversations so spy software can analyze my calls for content, you know, unless I build my own cellular network.
Unfortunately, no. The sources can no longer be licensed under GPL, because Linden's new policy conflicts with GPLv2's clause 6:
"You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein."
This is literal wording taken from the GPLv2 license, and is further reinforced in the GPLv2 FAQ.
Linden Lab is imposing massive further restrictions on developer recipients of their code, making it completely impossible for them to distribute the code without accepting those restrictions. This restriction of the ability to distribute code is not permitted by the GPL (of any version).
GPL cannot be used to grant fewer freedoms than the GPL specifies. That's a core term of the license.
The freedom to develop and distribute cannot be impeded while you license under the GPL.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
There is another angle to this that wasn't realized earlier.
This new policy makes Second Life incompatible with CC-SA and GPLed content within the world as well.
It places a new restriction on the export of content that is incompatible with the terms of CC-SA and GPL.
"You must not use or provide any functionality that Linden Lab’s viewers do not have for exporting content from Second Life unless the functionality verifies that the content to be exported was created by the Second Life user who is using the Third-Party Viewer."
So you can only export what you have uploaded, not what you have received from someone else. This makes Secondlife incompatible with GPL and CC-SA content within the world.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.