Re: [ogpx] Tourist use case

[Joshua Bell <josh at lindenlab.com>]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 8:43 AM, Sean Hennessee <sean at uci.edu> wrote:

Meadhbh Hamrick wrote:

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 1:51 AM, Morgaine
<morgaine.dinova at googlemail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 9:16 AM, Infinity Linden (Meadhbh Hamrick)
<infinity at lindenlab.com> wrote:

also. just a show of hands. who's planning on implementing the tourist
model?

Almost everybody who will operate virtual worlds, I assume --- that could be
hundreds of thousands of world operators, if not millions, mostly small.  We
certainly can't foretell!  And we can't get them to raise a show of hands
either. :-)

you mean you think they're all going to be implementing their own
software? i think that's unrealistic. even with the http servers,
which i think we could agree is slightly less complicated than any
virtual world protocol would be, web site operators use one of a
handful of implementations: (Apache, IIS, WebSTAR?, ...)

I think this is completely realistic. With the progress that OpenSim is making towards standalone (SL Like) grids, there will very likely be services popping up all over the interweb providing standalone virtual worlds for free or at a very low cost,

Before this gets out of hand, let's clarify the meaning of "implement"

There are two distinct definitions in extremely common use on the 'net:

(1) to implement: write the code for something
(2) to implement: configure and deploy code for something

With definition #1, as an example, the Apache Software Foundation is the only implementer
of the apache HTTP server (ignoring any distro/site customizations for the moment) - those millions of web sites that operate services using apache are NOT implementers. 

Definition #2 is used a lot as well, e.g. "our corporate IT department implemented Microsoft Exchange Server for our mail and calendar services". With this definition, ANYONE who rolls out the code (with configuration on top of it) is considered an implementer.

So far as I can tell, IETF discussions almost exclusively use meaning #1.

With this definition,
we would expect a small number of initial implementers of VWRAP-based software (the usual suspects - OpenSim, Linden Lab, and so forth), orders of more magnitude more people deploying services based on that software, and over time more VW providers with independent code bases adopting the protocol either during their initial design phase or to enable interop.

My interpretation of this thread is that Infinity is using definition #1, Sean and Morgaine are using definition #2. Infinity is asking specifically: "who will write the code that adds support for the protocol to a piece of software?" not "who will make use of software that implements the protocol?"