realXtend starts a new from-scratch viewer

Posted by on December 13, 2008 under News | Be the First to Comment

Ryan McDougall, realXtend technical architect wrote an open letter to OpenSim-dev mailing list. The letter said that realXtend is planning “…a from-scratch BSD-derived viewer.”

Current realXtend viewer is a fork from Linden Lab Second Life Viewer, and it is GPL licensed. The SL Viewer causes problems as OpenSim contribution policy explicitly states that OpenSim can not accept code from developers who have seen or developed SL Viewer. This policy is widely discussed in SL-Dev and Opensim-dev mailing lists and it seems unsolvable.

“We will begin this new process in January and continuing until February of 2009, with a feasibility study.” wrote Ryan McDougall in his letter. “That process will conclude with a proposed road-map as a result, what will be able to take us through 2009 and beyond. The process will begin internally with RealXtend, in order to solidify a unifying core set of principles, but very soon move outward to include a call for proposals and comments from all of you. With a clear road-map and a successful consultation process, we are confident that we will birth an cross platform Open Source community that will be at the forefront of the 3D Virtual World revolution.

“We invite you to give your feedback by visiting the RealXtend website, trying out our software out, signing up for our mailing lists, or joining us on IRC.”

This is an exciting move and from what we have seen from realXtend, we can have high expectations.