Day: May 30, 2026

2026 week #22: SL Open Source meeting: Chat Modernisation

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Theatre: home of the OSD/TPVD meeting
The following notes were taken from:

  • My chat log of the Open-Source Developer (OSD) meeting held on Friday, May 29th, 2026, together with my chat log of that meeting.
  • Pantera’s video of the meeting (embedded at the end of this article) – my thanks to her for providing it.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The OSD meeting is a combining of the former Third Party Viewer Developer meeting and the Open Source Development meeting. It is open discussion of Second Life development, including but not limited to open source contributions, third-party viewer development and policy, and current open source programs.
    • This meeting is generally held twice a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre and is generally text chat only.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

  • Default viewer: Flat UI – 26.2.0.25386466510,  -“flat” UI and font update, dated May.
  • Second Life Project Viewers – Lua Editor Alpha viewer 6.1.0.23768336784, April 29..

Viewer Notes

  • Per the above, 26.2 remains the release viewer.
  • 26.3.0 – performance improvements – work continues on this, but it is not ready to be issued as yet.
  • The order of progress for all other viewers currently available (Lua Editor) or in development (Graphics Care Package; maintenance release) remains fluid.

Chat Modernisation – IM Conversation Histories

We’ve been working on improving text chat, especially as we have moved from a desktop-only to a multi-platform product. We’re making important improvements to how text chat works behind the scenes. One of the biggest changes: We’re improving how conversations are maintained across devices.

– Grumpity Linden, May 29th, 2026

  • The Lab is working to make person-to-person IM chat histories persistent regardless as to how they are accessed – whether switching from one viewer to another or from a viewer to SL Mobile and vice-versa – so that up to the full history of a conversation can remain available, making it easier to pick up conversations wherever you log-in.
  • For clarity:
    • Nearby Chat history is not a part of the work, nor (for the foreseeable future) is Group chat (although this may change at some point).
    • The core functionality of messaging will remain unchanged: how live IMs are sent and received via UDP pathways is not changing.
    • Nearby chat logs will remain available just as they are at present.
    • It is only how (and how much of) IM histories are served to the viewer that is changing.
    • This work is in its early stages, and some of it might change in view of on-going feedback, etc.
  • Under this changes:
    • IM histories will be served encrypted over HTTPs, and the data store will have encryption at rest — allowing your data to stay completely private and secure.
    • For security reasons:
      • Only users opting-in to the Lab’s Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) will be able to access their complete IM histories.
      • Those who remain opted-out of MFA will only be able to see the last few days of chat histories.
      • This is to reduce risks of privacy breaches if a non-MFA account is hacked. Additionally, the number of days back and history fetch will go, will be determined by the server.
  • Partially because of the MFA dependence, LL is intending to expand options for using MFA (e.g. e-mail, SMS, etc.). However, these new options may not be available prior to the new chat history capability going live.
  • During the meeting there were numerous security concerns raised – particularly around store IM histories as Personal Identifying Information under regulatory requirements such as the EU’s GDPR, the degree of access LL might have to IM histories, even if encrypted.
    • Some of these were addressed to a degree (e.g. yes, histories would be deleted along with other PII data in response to a request under GDPR).
    • Some questions passed unanswered, potentially because they may require further internal discussion at LL.
  • As a semi-side note, it was indicated that one potential outcome of the overall Chat Modernisation work is that a some point in the future, it should become possible to have simultaneous log-ins from different devices.
    • So, for example, someone could be logged-in viewer their desktop but need to go AFK from their computer. They could then open SL Mobile on their mobile device and continue to follow a conversation without going through a log-out / log-in situation. They could then switch back from their mobile device to the desktop on their return.

Other Items

  • The legitimate use of bots for grid data gathering was again raised, together with what data may or may not be deemed acceptable for gathering, and guidelines on how such bots should be used in order to avoid sudden bans.
    • Geenz Linden noted that in terms of making aspects of region data available more readily to assist with things like 3D terrain (region) map creation, etc., there is interest in trying to implement an engineering-based ability. However, this is not something actively being developed at this point.
  • A brief discussion towards the end of the meeting on EEP bugs (which are likely to be addressed in viewer 26.3), with a note that PBR Sun / Moon will be part of the GCP viewer.

Next Meeting