Fifteen Years Ago: The Emeraldgate Scandal

 

Fifteen years ago early this month, Second Life's most popular then was collapsing, and the one that would replace it would be born as a result of it's demise.  In early and mid 2010, the Emerald third-party viewer had been the most popular one. But in August came a Directed Denial Of Service attack that was caused by computers using the viewer at the time, resulting in what came to be known as the Emeraldgate scandal. On September 1, 2010, Team Emerald announced it would soon be folding. Two days later, on September 3, former Emeraldgate member Jessica Lyon announced she had formed a new team and had made a new viewer "from the ashes of Emerald," Team Phoenix and it's Phoenix viewer. 

 

A few years later, the Phoenix viewer would be retired and replaced by the Firestorm viewer, the team having renamed itself Firestorm as well. Over the years, the team has faced a number of challenges large and small. And eventually Jessica would step down from managing on a daily basis. But Team Firestorm continues on. 

For more information, read the 2018 article on the subject, and an interview with then Firestorm team member Tonya Souther.

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

 

Thirteen Years Ago: The Emeraldgate Scandal

 

Thirteen years ago, Second Life's most popular then was collapsing, and the one that would replace it would be born as a result of it's demise.  In early and mid 2010, the Emerald third-party viewer had been the most popular one. But in August came a Directed Denial Of Service attack that was caused by computers using the viewer at the time, resulting in what came to be known as the Emeraldgate scandal. It would be thirteen years ago tomorrow, September 1, 2010, in which Team Emerald announced it would soon be folding. Two days later, on September 3, former Emeralgate member Jessica Lyon announced she had formed a new team and had made a new viewer "from the ashes of Emerald," Team Phoenix and it's Phoenix viewer. A few years later, the Phoenix viewer would be retired and replaced by the Firestorm viewer, the team having renamed itself Firestorm as well. 

For more information, read the 2018 article on the subject, and an interview with then Firestorm team member Tonya Souther.

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

Emeraldgate And Start of Team Phoenix, Ten Years Ago

It was ten years ago this month that the most popular third-party viewer used by Second Life residents at the time was blocked by Linden Lab as a result of a scandal, and soon after three of the more noteable members of the viewer team were either banned or vanished from the virtual world. But many of the team had already split away and formed a new team and a new viewer, one that would go on to become the most popular viewer. This was Emeraldgate, which would be the end of Modular Systems and the Emerald viewer, and the start of Team Phoenix and the Phoenix viewer, which would eventually become Team Firestorm.

Jessica Lyon, the leader of Firestorm would have a message on their website on their anniversary, September 3.

Ten years ago to this day, the Phoenix Firestorm Project was formed. The Phoenix was born a decade ago. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10! How crazy is that? In human years, 10 years is long, but in Phoenix years… well, this bird is OLD!

The Firestorm Project is powered by people who are altruistic through and through. While we started this venture with just a handful of altruists, over the years our team has grown remarkably. Today we have over 80 amazing people from all walks of life behind us in what we do, and we do many things.

While our team has grown overall, we have also, sadly, lost many good folks along the way—some who were with us from day one. We miss them. I miss them. Whatever the reason for their departure, I thank them for their altruism and time with us. You know who you are … thank you.

Further details of what happened can be found in this 2018 article. In an interview a few weeks later, Firestorm member Tonya Souther would offer what it was like from the inside while Emeraldgate and the breakup of Modular Systems was happening.

Jessica would go on to say Firestorm's anniversary party was delayed, but would take place on Sunday October 18. The event will have three live performances: Savannah Rain, Maximillion Kleene, and Keeba Tammas and the Tiny Maniacs. There will also be gifts available. Stay tuned for further details.

Source: Firestorm

Bixyl Shuftan

Happy Birthday Firestorm - Interview With Tonya Souther

On Saturday September 14, Team Firestorm celebrated their ninth anniversary. Besides their captain Jessica Lyon, there was another team leader present: Tonya Souther, whom is in charge of updating Firestorm's Apple computer viewer. Cyfir (Cyfiremmerich) was there at the party, and had a few words with her.

Read Cyfir's article in Events.

Interview With Tonya Souther of Team Firestorm

It was a week ago Sunday that Team Firestorm celebrated it's anniversary. One member of the team whom was around since the start is Tonya Souther, whom is in charge of development of the Firestorm's Macintosh computer viewer. The Newser recently interviewed her about how she came to Second Life, the end of Team Emerald and the beginnings of Team Phoenix (now Team Firestorm) from her point of view, and some of the challenges the team has faced since.

Read the interview in People.

Tonya Souther On Latest News of SL 2.0

Tonya Souther, the head of Firestorm's Apple Client team, recently had a few things to say about Ebbe Linden's recent talk about SL 2.0, or "Next Gen" as Linden Lab prefers to call it. Of their plans to not make the new virtual world open source, "possibly never," Tonya expressed her disappointment on her blog.

"... it doesn't speak well for their openness to NIH ('not invented here') ideas on the new platform. Basically, they're saying 'we know what's best for you, so shut up and eat your Brussels sprouts'. We've been here before. Remember Viewer 2? Yeah, me too. There's a reason that Firestorm has the overwhelming majority of users on Second Life, and Viewer 3 (the descendant of Viewer 2) is in third place: LL's viewer does not fail to suck. Users told LL all about that, loud and long - and LL didn't back off and didn't listen."

Toyna went on to say she could understand why Linden Lab was keeping their viewer closed - gaining control of their platform. Not being in control of it with Second Life  put them in "a very unenviable position for a business." But given their track record of listening to their customers with their first virtual world, how well does this bode for their viewer for the new one?

"... there has to be a happy medium there somewhere. I'm disappointed they're not even trying to find it."

For Tonya Souther's in it's entirety, click here.

Reactions to the News of SL 2.0

It's been a week since Ebbe Linden casually announced during a third-party viewer developers meeting that Linden Lab had another virtual world under development, one with next-generation technology. Word quickly spread not just across Second Life, but across forums, bulletin boards, social media, blogs, and other places Second Life users had a presence. Far more has been spoken than we have time to write about, but here are some reactions.


Jessica Lyon, the head of Team Firestorm, was at the meeting where Ebbe made his remarks. Later on the Firestorm Blog, she stated what she knew so far:

The new platform will not be open source, at least not at first, and so no third-party viewers.

Linden Lab will continue and maintain Second Life for as long as they consider it profitable. Second Life will be continued to be improved, but on a smaller scale.

The new platform will be made "in the spirit of Second Life," and will focus on content creators.

The new platform is still in it's very early stages. She guessed (correctly) that no beta would be around for at least a year.

One detail Jessica was unsure about was objects and items people have in their inventories and on their sims. The Lab had originally stated that they didn't want to limit the new Grid with backwards compatibility with items from the old one. But she felt this wasn't stated with 100% certainly. So maybe one's content, so maybe some content would be allowed over she reasoned.

Jessica appealed to Second Life residents not to stop renting land or making purchases, but to keep on doing so. She also appealed to residents to come up with ways to make Second Life a better place, "Your opinion matters more than ever! Think of one thing, whether a feature, fix, improvement, or whatever ... We are looking for a magic bullet silver bullet to give Oz that can be introduced to SL to make it bigger and better than ever before!"

For Jessica's post, "Second Life Needs You," in full, click here: http://www.firestormviewer.org/second-life-needs-you/

Whitburn Blackburn of the 'SLikely fashion blog was anxious and worried about not just about the Lab having the best interest of it's customers at heart, especially longtime users whom have invested much in the old Second Life, but that in trying to change from one Grid to another for another it will end up stumbling "along with two nonviable platforms to an eventual descent into mediocrity." If the Lab fails, "it may well be time to move completely back to real life and spent my money on other things."

For Whitburn's "The End of SL?," click here: http://whitburnblackburn.wordpress.com/2014/06/24/95-the-end-of-second-life/

Prokofy Neva had quite a few things to say on the issue in his "Second Thoughts" blog. Some moves he felt were good, such as not making the new Grid open-source. He wasn't impressed with Oz Linden as the choice to head the part of the Lab in charge of maintaining "Legacy SL," calling him "the main open-source cult guru ... watch the JIRA close again." But the main point was "What can you take with you to the next world?" What will happen with those whom have invested years and thousands of dollars into Second Life? Prokofy felt the Lindens had an obligation to compensate them for their losses in some manner, "no company wants to have a compensation policy, but they must, and large land-owners should compel them to as they are losing big."

Read Prokofy's post in full here: http://3dblogger.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2014/06/linden-lab-must-compensate-land-owners-and-content-sellers-of-legacy-sl-before-transition-to-new-wor.html

Ciaran Laval talked about Ebbe Linden's own answer to the increasing questions on his post in the official forums, then went on, "People seem to be reading between lines that don't exist ... if Linden Lab wanted to force-migrate people to their new world, a lot of people wouldn't go because their virtual world love is Second LIfe. ... it would be extremely foolish of Linden Lab to close Second LIfe, in the next few years, and to be fair to Linden Lab, there are absolutely no signs whatsoever that they intend to close Second Life."

To see Ciaran's post "We Will Continue to Invest in SL" in full: http://sl.governormarley.com/?p=4045

Tonya Souther, Team Firestorm's head of the Apple viewer developers, made a comparison with the Osborne Computer Company, of which after the CEO announced better computers were on the way, the sales of their existing ones took a dive and eventually the business went under. Tonya felt the announcement, calculated or not, put Second Life at "risk of triggering the Osborne Effect. ... the only thing that could make it worse is the user community bailing prematurely."

Tonya felt Linden Lab's release dates for the new Grid were optimistic, "I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't really viable until Christmas 2017. Until that happens, LL will need money. Guess where they're going to get it? They have no other source of income. ...LL will continue to support, and ... enhance SL. ... They're hiring a bunch of people to take on a big challenge that will take years to pay off, and whether it will pay off at all is very much an open question." She would go on, "I'm not aware of any company that made the transition from open source to closed source and survived. ... keeping (the new grid) closed source would be a big 'f**k you' to a large part of the user community, and community is what LL has to have above all."

"No, the sky's not falling yet. It could though ... fortunately there's lots of time between now and then."

For Tonya's post, "The New SL Announcement" in full: http://secondden.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-new-sl-announcement-is-not-end-of.html

EOTB: Server Side Apperance Appears This Week, Maybe Today

In the Linden Blog this week, it was announced Project Shunshine, also known as Server-Side Baking, would be rolled out onto the Grid.

This week, the server component of Project Sunshine will go live across the entire grid! This means that all the improvements we discussed in our previous post will be available to everyone in Second Life.

It’s important to remember that you need to be using an up-to-date Viewer to enjoy these improvements. If you’re still using an outdated Viewer, the server-side changes rolling out now will cause you to see some avatars as broken or incomplete. As of this week, all avatars will be using the new system and will appear broken to you if you don't update. 

Besides the official viewers, there are several third-party viewers that have been updated to handle server-side baking, such as Firestorm, Singularity, and Cool VL. For those who use a viewer not updated to handle the new way textures are loaded, in the words of Firestorm's Tonya Souther it's the "Last Call." As she sees it, if one's computer can't handle the newer viewers, it's time to get a new machine or bid Second Life goodbye for a while.

According to someone in a group chat I was in last night, Server-Side could come early as today:

A Reminder for Everyone...    SSA -Day Tomorrow.. ServerSide Appearence  Arrives Tomorrow! 
Tomorrow LL rolls out Server Side Appearance.  Anyone using an outdated viewer will have problems seeing other avatars at Arinultra  and anywhere else in Second Life.  All those WITH current SSA enabled viewers should notice a huge improvement.  This will pretty much put an end to all those endless gray, blurry, or cloudy "wardrobe malfunctions."   Up-to-date Viewers are Required such as Firestorm, Singularity or others, including the basic LL platform.

So the day some of us have been anticipating, or dreading, has finally arrived.

Sources: Linden Blog, The Tigress' Den

Bixyl Shuftan

Phoenix Viewer Support to End Dec 31st. (Full Article)

By Bixyl Shuftan

On Monday Dec 17th, Jessica Lyon announced on the Phoenix-Firestorm blog that support for the Phoenix Viewer would soon come to a close. There had been a meeting Saturday the 15th in which the details were discussed. The news about the viewer support ending was first announced there. The reason: Linden Lab's plans for improving Grid performance in what they call "Project Shinning," which involves what the Second Life Wiki calls "Server side 'texture baking.'" For newer viewers the result will be less lag, at least according to Linden Lab. But for Viewer-1 based viewers, the result is what Oz Linden was quoted as saying "a world of gray, cloudy avatars."


"The clock is now ticking,"  Tonya Souther, the leader of Phoenix-Firestorm's Mac viewer development team, wrote in her blog, "We asked for at least two months' ntice, and yesterday we got that." She stated Linden Lab would like to bring the code active in February, but would work with Team Phoenix-Firestorm and other third-party viewer teams to make sure all have it and work it in before it finally arrives, "you will have to upgrade your viewer sometime in February or early March. No exceptions."

Oz Linden had made his intentions known months earlier in July, which Tonya commented put Viewer-1 viewers on "borrowed time … The loan is about to come due."

Jessica Lyon on the Phoenix-Firestorm website stated emphatically they were not trying to tell Phoenix users what to use, nor were they or Linden Lab blocking or actively stopping the Phoenix Viewer. But there were changes coming, and they had to change along with them. "I realize this decision will not be popular among our Phoenix users, and I apologize for that," but she asked users to read the facts, or watch the Office Hour video she made. before complaining.

In the speech she made, Jessica reminded Team Phoenix-Firestorm were volunteers, working without pay, whom liked helping people, being appreciated for it, and coding new features. They had created Phoenix more than two years ago in order for Second Life residents to keep using the features of the defunct Emerald viewer. But over time, it was becoming clear updating it with the Viewer 2 features was becoming increasingly difficult. So they created the Firestorm Viewer based on Viewer 2 technology. Continuing to work with the Phoenix Viewer was just simply becoming too difficult. "Can we keep it alive? Yes we can, but it would be a heck of a lot more work than it's worth." If someone wanted to "fork" the Viewer and develop it further themselves, they were free to do so. Though they knew of only "one or two copybot viewer developers" who were doing so.

Support for the Phoenix Viewer would officially cease on December 31, but they were creating a new "peer to peer support group" for those who still insist on using the viewer: "Phoenix Viewer Self Help." "It will largely be a group of Phoenix users helping Phoenix Viewers."

Tonya's comments to those whose computers couldn't use Firestorm or other Viewer 2 or Viewer 3 viewers: It was time to either upgrade their computers, or buy new machines, "Sorry, folks, but you will have to spend some money. There's no way around it."

Responses to both Jessica's announcement and Tonya's blog entry were mostly civil, even positive. Some responders called the move to halt Phoenix development "long overdue," happy to hear the team was free to concentrate solely on Firestorm.  Some, mostly polite, stated they would be sticking with Phoenix for now saying Firestorm didn't work on their computers as well. A couple readers stated that they would be preparing to leave the Grid, one saying, "Thanks everyone on the Phoenix team, the best viewer I've ever used in my time in SL. I'm really grateful and appreciate all the hard (no-pay) work you have done over the years. … But everything has an end, and this will be mine."

To watch the Office Hour video, Click Here.

Inara Pey's article on Project Shinning and "bake fail" Here.

For Daniel Voyager's article: Click Here. 

Sources: Phoenix-Firestorm Blog,  The Tigress Second Den

Bixyl Shuftan

Eye on the Blog: New JIRA Reports No Longer Visible to Public

Tonya Souther of Team Phoenix had a few things to say about Linden Lab's new JIRA policy. Although some categories had been closed to public viewing, such as security issues, most were accessible to the public for residents to read to see if a reported bug was the same as the problem they were having.

According to the JIRA update on Thursday September 6, this will no longer be the case. In the summary of changes, it was stated "Second Life users will only see their own reported issues." No longer can residents read and compare.

Tonya mentioned earlier on her blog about a JIRA being made secret, which held up the release of a Firestorm update, "as I said in my last post here, having the JIRAs be secret hurts TPVs, too. It makes it much harder for us to know whether the bug we're hunting is a LL bug. It also makes it harder for us to realize that we just fixed an LL bug and contribute the fix back to them. They spend a lot of time assuring us they want our contributions. This change makes that much more questionable."

She felt the decision will hurt in other ways, noting the "people who watch the LL JIRA and help with triaging, work with reporters to make sure the needed information it present, and suggest fixes without ever writing a line of code." Also, the move ensures the Lab will get a number of JIRAs that are duplicates of others already filed because no one could see that someone else reported on the same issue. This decision, she concluded, will further strain relations between the Lab and Second Life's residents.

One can read the blog update in full Here. There's also a thread in the Second Life forums Here.

*Addition* Hamlet Au later put up his comments, notably referring to blogger Darius Gothly whom thought this marked the beginning of "The End of Second Life."

Bixyl Shuftan