From our view, OpenSim could become the Apache of the 3D Web serving up 3D scenes to hundreds of millions of daily users in the near future.

Below are my notes on OpenSource: what it is, why it is changing online and how it has become so significant a force.  Plus, how people make money around Open Source–which is not necessarily free or a charity effort at all. Also watch the short video below where I hit some of the key points on why we are investing so much time and effort into using, developing and trying to make money with our mix of OpenSim, Drupal and more.

Watch video above: Jonathan Himoff, CEO Rezzable talks about why Open Source Software is so important to online innovation and the 3D Web

Not Just About Coding—Using Something That Works

We come at the Open Source topic from the user side, not the coding side. Wouldn’t it be great if software just did everything we wanted it to? Well, that never happens. We want to make new user experiences without having to deal with the technical issues—just in the way people make website and don’t have to first create their own database application etc.

Using a big software application, especially if it is core to your operations, is making a relationship with the developer. This is more critical in innovative, uncharted areas–like virtual online.  And it is not just about the present (unless the software is good enough as it is) it is about where the development roadmap is heading, the people leading the efforts and how fast progress can be made.

When software works,  it keeps working without fatigue, without rusting.  New hardware often makes old software perform better too. So really it is about enhancing and making applications meaningfully better over time. People can keep challenging the software with new uses, many of which can be accommodated and some which need new code to run.

Open Source Software is Seriously Big

If you have a computer you are already using Open Source. For people not familiar with the software industry and online it might be a surprise to note the following data-points:

• Apache celebrates 15th anniversary and proudly boasts 112 Million servers running the software, something like more than 50% of all servers
• Java went 100% open in 2007
• Firefox / Mozilla went open in 1998 and is by far the most popular browser today
• Linux released by several companies including Red Hat (market cap $5.0 billion+), Debian
• Google purchase the initial developers of Open Source Android and now their new browser Chrome is based on Chromium which is partially OSS.
• MySQL – coveted and purchased by Oracle for billions
• More than 225,000 open source projects on SourceForge with tens of thousands of downloads per day.
• OpenSim has something like 500,000 lines of code – Ulysses by James Joyce has 22,941 sentences in it.
• Drupal a web content management (WCMS) and publishing system has 500,000 installs and runs the Economist, the Onion, NASA and many university sites. Check nice whitepaper by Acquia on why Open Source is best.

What is Open Source Software?

The code can be read openly.  You can see the lines of code and comments. Developers can review, study and understand how the applications and modules function. It is also possible to make your own changes to the code and then (try) to compile it and run in your flavour.

Yet, OSS is not necessarily free to use or without usage restrictions. You can’t just do anything you want with opensource code – just like you can’t read a new book and then go off on your own and make a movie out of it.

Opensource is developed by a community with vested interests in using the software and having it work well. Collaboration with a community of developers and users can be organized and is not necessarily anarchy.

OSS is a very different way of solving problems, designing solutions and developing software. It is done out in the public. It is global collaboration at web-speed. There is also a balance between what the coders write and what the users contribute and each party gets access to the codebase for their participation.

OSS is released under a variety of licences such as GPL and BSD which restrict usage and how code can be modified and republished.  According to Black Duck GNU GPL licence is the most widely used.  There are a lot of commercial and philosophical points on why certain licences are better or worse. There is also a hot debate regarding Free  and Open Source Software.

More info on Open Source:

• the Open Source Initiative
• Opensource.com news and articles
• list of top 50 OSS blogs
• IBM describes OSS
• City of San Francisco goes only Open Source
• GPL vs BSD blog post by Paul Ramsay

Why Open Source is the Way to Go –

• More Users Faster
  Users, especially early adopters, seem to jump on good open source a lot faster than proprietary software. More users means more attention to bugs, more comments on roadmap and more stress testing.
• Share the Load, Build Momentum
  Making great software take a lot of time and an enormous amount of effort. Many people using and working on  improvements is better than a small team in stuffed into corporate cubicles somewhere. Typically there is a core coding team, but also there should be lots and lots of other developers and users involved. It is an extended team activity and leverages the web in a great way. The developers can get massive, immediate feedback and then make rapid updates further building trust and momentum within the community. Users are part of the process—not just the recipients of what comes out of it.
• More Flexible Architecture, Faster/Smaller Iterations
  As OSS has a collaborative approach built-in to the development process, the systems should have more modular design to allow people to work independently on functions without impact each other or degrading the core performance. This also enables faster/smaller new code releases. Each release then is also easier to debug and track uplift.
• Easier Integration
  Integration is more than just pushing XML files around. Complex online systems share data and resources in more detailed often delicate ways. Replicating data is not efficient either and impacts scalability. OSS allows for new small applications to be built into the code, often as modulars that can be shared also,  or accessing data in tables already existing.
• Focus on Core Performance
  Ultimately there should be a set of core functions that should be common across all the use cases. People can then work on making  those critical areas work better—ie serve pages faster, be more secure, scale better. This then benefits all the users significantly.
• Create an Ecosystem
  While the OSS might be free/low cost there are still many opportunities to add commercial value and build value in a business that has expertise around deploying, running, customizing, integration and creating content. As a network effect, more users lifts the benefits of each participating in the community.
• Less Risky to Use
  You always have access to the code you are running. While it might not be practical for non-technical people to do anything with this, it does mean that you have the opportunity to pay for changes or at least port your content over to an alternative in the future. You are not at the mercy of a single software publisher—many of whom are bought and sold or become so profitable as to neglect the interests of their users. I don’t know that in all cases using OSS is necessarily cheaper, although it certainly seems to be, but as a user or a business you have a lot more control of what you put into it.

How to Make Money Around Open Source Software

The main point is you can add value to something that already works and performs, it is a foundation for your new intellectual property. You don’t need to create a web page server to make a great website—use Apache and then focus on what you can do best. Your starting point is much further than if you had to build everything or if you had to pay lots of money to get the basic online stack (like LAMP).

Depending on how mature the code is, you should prepared to invest some effort in the Community – it doesn’t have to be writing code, could be in using software, flagging issues, reporting bugs and also giving active coders good use cases.

Then understand where you want to add value and build a business in an open source ecosystem

• Premium modules
• Services – at a lot of different points
• Support
• Using a mix of opensource in unique ways to do amazing stuff – like 3D Web!

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Check links below or just go to our virtual, online, 3D immersive areas and make your own great discoveries now on our opensource-based, opensim grid!

Recent coverage on Heritage Key and our King Tut Virtual area on CNN iDesk –> click to watch it here . It is a nice explanation of the main idea and enthusiasm from presenters is excellent!

(there is an sorta annoying pre-roll add that you can’t skip and opens a new window if you touch it–future of monetization? Force feeding ads?)

Other recent press/blog coverage :

* BBC News: As an interactive community, Heritage Key also allows visitors to join lectures and meet with people from around the world to share and discuss their experiences.

* Easier.com: This immersive adventure is complimented with a media-rich website. So, whether you want to step back in time and see Stonehenge, watch YouTube videos on your iPhone

* Tech Radar: a mainstream application of a once niche feature that reminds us why we all thought it was such a good idea.

* Iggys Blog: Improved Avatars and Navigation

* Virtual Learning Blog: I’ll definitely be back to King Tut Virtual! I have a classroom of 2nd graders who study ancient Egypt every year. This…will be a lasting resource for the future!

* Vorticism blog: I was therefore thrilled yesterday to discover Heritage Key

* PocketLint — Sorry no Spinal Tap at Virtual Stonehenge (but that is a good idea!)

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Go Check it out,  OpenSim works.

OpenSim works, is getting better and will be the future of the 3D Web.

First thing to point out is that we are using OpenSim in combination with Drupal as the core user and even grid admin system.  So your own usage may not be the same if you are just working with OpenSim all by itself. We also have about 10 servers cranked-up to support all of this on a cluster sharing 50mb bandwidth.  Info on the tech layout here.

In general OpenSim has come quite a long way in the last year. There is still quite some road in front to get it to be a sort of 3D Web Server like Apache. It is very complex–maybe too much so, but nonetheless it works. And it works a lot better than it did a year ago.

The greatest strength of OpenSim is that it is opensource and has a smart enough set of committed developers beating on it.  We have been luck enough to work with a few of them and meet even a few more.  Because it is opensource we have been able to create our own integrations and services around the core.

The core dvelopers have cleared-up a lot of real problematic stuff like cross-region boarders, assets vanishing, general caching/grey-goo. You can give folders now! The regions are snappy. The build issues are still there on some level, but the workarounds are also better understood. The most painful build issues lately have been with scripting (and not overloading scripting).

The use cases that Rezzable is focused on, try to aim for the what OpenSim does right now and not steer directly into known gaps. So, again you own use cases might trigger different issues.

Below is my list of Top 10 Issues we see with OpenSim —

OpenSim Issue 1: Physics is still weak

Physics engine options are not that good right now. This causes a lot of problems and work-arounds.  Shooting, dropping, collisions and driving are basically to be avoided.  The physics engine also seems to create a lot of issues with the bounding boxes and sometimes you can’t walk through doors easily or phantom prims get solid-ish.

The obvious solution here is to find a way to plug-in better physics engines. It would seem that OpenSim will support this, but so far I have not heard of anything implemented in the last year that changes the performance.

OpenSim Issue 2: SL Hangovers

OpenSim seems (and we really try to avoid most of this stuff) to have a lot of SL-oriented functions especially around land, parcels that are more interesting to SL-copycat virtual worlds than our interest in 3D online experiences.  Net Net is the core code isn’t as performance-oriented as we would like to see it.

The biggest gap vs SL is that OpenSim does not have a commerce feature and of course no $L which is still a trusted micro-currency.

OpenSim Issue 3: Perms are Not There

We did quite a bit of work to implement a fairly basic permissions concept, mainly using Drupal roles. This works fine for Heritage Key, and we also have a separate “sub-grid” for build work. On the Rezzable grid it will require a lot more manual switch-flipping to have quasi-group/collaborative control on access and prim-perms. We have not implemented any commerce concepts (and may not either). I think the whole issue of perms/DRM needs a more complete architecture to avoid the issues beleaguering/demoralizing SL content creators.

OpenSim Issue 4: Lack of Docs

I suppose if you like to read code, you should have all you want with opensource OpenSim–but for those of you, like me, that like something with pictures and some summary, we are out of luck. It is more of a Ouija-board process with the developers to understand what it is, does, might be. And of course things are also changing as new releases flow through–but getting a roadmap certainly would require a crystal ball and some incense.

OpenSim Issue 5: Admin Tools

We have made quite a few tools to track users, manage resources. I think we should even be able to share these (once we write-up what they do somehow).  I have seen that there are some basic tools also floating around to make some reports/alerts, but these are quite simple.  I would hope to see more user info and logging–especially relating to inventory and server memory.

OpenSim Issue 6: Voice

Vivox apparently has a OpenSim implementation. I have not seen it, but the gang at IBM seems to be messing with it. It would seem to make sense that it works. It is not free, so there is more of a cost consideration than a functional one.  We have been more focused on lectures and talk-show use cases and are using skype-to-stream solutions which works fine and also has the advantage of being broadcast to the web.

OpenSim Issue 7: Mesh Support / SL Viewer

Being able to deploy mesh assets is also a gap on the SL grid (although not on Blue Mars). Main points about this are 1) more cost-effective production for sculptural content 2) more realism for objects. I think Mesh will also need careful design and usage so as not to kill performance, not of asset serving, but of the user experience with viewing/streaming. Blue Mars looks great, but has apparently great than 1 gig client with all the meshes inside it.  The Mesh topic also hits on the Issue of OpenSim not having a native viewer. All the viewers are basically SL viewers in the first instance.  So there is a lot of overhead, random issues and workarounds to get the SL viewer to work — but our guys at Imprudence have done it for us! They rock! And even the new Imprudence code we are using on HK/Rezzable viewers works much better in the last 3-4 months.

OpenSim Issue 8: Concurrency

Concurrency on light interaction areas we think will scale out at 20-25 concurrent on a region. Now, this is a lot different than on SL for a couple of key reasons. First if you are running your own server, a region is less of a cost issue than it is on SL. So you can have more regions each with less content. I think the main focus is on server-loading then. We are running as much RAM as we can get on a machine and hope to see server concurrency at 400-500. The best news about OpenSim vs SL here is that you can have cross-region tps scripted. If you visit our King Tut Virtual you will basically visit 6 different regions on OpenSim that was just 1 in SL. So on a cost-basis OpenSim has better cost per concurrent user than SL by far (SL $300/month for 50 concurrent and OpenSim $350/month for 400+ concurrent).

OpenSim Issue 9: Scripting

We just had to unravel some scripting to get a new project to run with even a target of 10 concurrent. The good news is that the OpenSim modules allow for server-side coding instead of scripting. The bad news is that coding is more complex and of course see Issue 4 about about lack of docs. Scripting will still be very important, but I am hoping we can get a lot done in the code and create modules/integrations that way. We are making more Bots now that so far seem to work nicely. These Bots will access our CMS and have AI features for NPC interaction (= they will do smart stuff with our existing .com content).  Again, benefit here is that Bots will be also accessible from the web pages, iPhone etc.

OpenSim Issue 10: Cross-Grid Movements

Maintaining identity, roles and assets is still the biggest isssue holding back larger adoption of the OpenSim platform.  We are aware of other work and have our own initiatives in the area. I would think that within 6 months it will be a few clicks to move an avatar with inventor between grids effectively. I can see where a facebook connect will work well and I also am hopeful that DRM issues can be addressed as well.  Right now we are testing mechanisms to move avatar between our own grids (ok, that isn’t too sexy, but it proves a point).

So there it is. Stay tuned we are working on these issues as are many other OpenSim project, developers and enthusiasts. I think a year from now it will be even a bigger step forward than over the last 12 months.

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