| The following notes were taken from: |
Table of Contents |
Meeting Purpose
- The Open Source User Group (OSUG) meeting is an open discussion of Second Life development, including but not limited to open source contributions, third-party viewer development and policy, and current open source programmes.
- 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: Second Life Chat Modernisation viewer 26.5 – 26.5.0.42122621216, November 11.
- Seamless integration of IM histories between clients / devices.
- Support for the new Group Role activity to set who can post URL links to Group chats.
- This is set to allow ALL roles by default, but can be toggled for specific roles by Group Owners / Officers.
- Includes a preset whitelist of LL / SL URLs which can be posted.
- This whitelist may be expanded in the future.
- Camera and Travel improvements.
- Create an account from within the viewer.
- LEAP Camera API.
- Portable viewer storage.
- And more.
Viewer Notes
Third-Party Viewer Policy and Directory – Potential Update and Discussions
In light of the sudden rise of various third party viewers … we’re considering a change to our TPVD policy that effectively shuts the door on closed source TPVs entering into the directory. Existing closed source viewers that are in the directory will likely get grandfathered. No final decision has been made on this policy change. To be clear this does not stop you from asking an LLM to make you a viewer, but it would require you to make said viewer open source in order for us to consider it for inclusion in the directory.
– Geenz Linden
- This announcement was largely received positively by those at the meeting.
- Such a change would not prevent new close-sourced viewers being used with SL, but it would deny them a voluntary listing in the Third-Party Viewer Directory.
- Geenz additionally indicated that consideration is also being given to:
- Potentially pruning those viewers / clients which are badly out-of-date with SL’s more recent protocol and server features.
- Various measures to better inform residents about the overall safety of viewers and the like. This is unlikely to expand LL’s overall vetting process, but Geenz hopes to have more on this once internal discussions are further along.
- Requests were made for LL to better define “safe” viewers and protecting user accounts, clarification on what being listed / not being listed on the Third-Party Viewer Directory (TPVD) means for the lay user, etc. In respect of the TPVD, Geenz reiterated LL’s long-standing official standpoint:
We’ve always noted that being on the TPVD is optional, and further that we don’t vouch for the security or stability of those viewers. That will still remain the case. Just that those TPVs are in some manner of “good standing” – in other words, we haven’t seen any red flags, no one’s given us any heads up about them that checked out, etc. That list is we did some basic vetting, we did some research, checked against our policies, and it checked out.
I won’t list every consideration, but some examples: Does this viewer adhere to Second Life’s permission system? Is it appropriately licensed? What kind of track record do the authors have? Is the commit history publicly available, and can we audit it? We consider many things for overall TPVD inclusion and compliance. For example, if you’re collecting user data – you’re probably not gonna get a lot of fans. We have had to pull the “shared experience” rule every now and then as well – which doesn’t mean make your viewer look exactly like the official viewer, but at least don’t break content.
– Geenz Linden
- Code review on TPVs came up – but this is a matter of resources and time; viewer code is extensive, and trying to run through it all for every viewer is not practical. In response to the idea of using AI assistance, Geenz (wryly?) noted this would come down to token spend and goal.
- Most of the meeting revolved around these subject and on the use and capabilities of AI tools in general, with the core of Gennz’s responses from the Lab’s point of view as give above (there were also some referrals to other user group meetings which might be better placed to answer non-viewer / open-source questions).
- There were also various observations on the recent region crossing updates.
- Please refer to the video below for these latter points.
Next Meeting
- 13:00 SLT, Friday, December 11, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Theatre.
