How Linden Lab managed to fool almost everyone with a spectacular tech stunt in 2008

In mid-2008, at the peak of the Second Life hype, a remarkable project went live which, until today, is unprecedented: the attempt at connecting 3-D virtual worlds from two different developers and sending avatars from one world to another. Some may remember the story of people teleporting from Second Life to OpenSim and the project being abandoned not much later.

Just recently, Wagner James "Hamlet" Au published a new post on his New World Notes blog and took the opportunity again to show OpenSim in a bad light again. His wording even makes it look like OpenSim has long since vanished when it's actually growing faster than Second Life with more than four times of the latter's landmass.

But there's more to the whole story.

A bit of history

Let's look back in time first. Second Life, one of the most successful 3-D virtual worlds ever, was launched in 2002 and opened to the general public in 2003. Being operated by a for-profit, however, it had to make money. It started with pay-to-play, but eventually switched to a revenue model based on land rentals. Plus an increasing number of taxes.

It didn't take long for the Second Life API to be reverse-engineered and alternative 3rd-party viewers to be developed. But eventually, someone who was disgruntled with Second Life's rampantly capitalist system decided to build something against the other side of the API, a free, open-source virtual-world server application similar to Second Life. It was first released the same month that Linden Lab open-sourced the official viewer, January, 2007. At first, it was named "OpenSecondLife", but it was eventually renamed "OpenSimulator".

In July, half a year later, the first public OpenSim grid went online, OSgrid. It is not only the oldest, but one of the two biggest of probably over 4,000 OpenSim grids, having recently surpassed even Second Life's landmass.

At first, all OpenSim grids were stand-alones. If you wanted to visit a certain place in a certain grid, you needed an avatar on that grid. This changed in 2008 when OpenSim developer Diva Kanto introduced the concept of the Hypergrid which connected OpenSim grids in such a way that avatars could travel between them, looks, inventory and all. Like many things in early OpenSim, it was very buggy. But it worked.

Industry interest

The invention of the Hypergrid, the first interconnection between separate virtual worlds, coincided with the Second Life hype. In those days, Second Life was all over tech media. Some media outlets, even including mainstream mass media, had offices in Second Life to be able to see things from up-close and interview avatars and such. Second Life was that big. And the announcement that an open-source Second Life spin-off had just made it possible to travel from one grid to another caught quite a lot of people's attention.

IBM was particularly interested. The Hypergrid looked like the future of virtual worlds to them, especially with the mindset of those days that virtual worlds are the future. And OpenSim was still very close to Second Life in technology. It had to because it depended on third-party Second Life viewers since it had no development capacities for its own viewer.

And so the idea came up to create a network of virtual worlds that should include not only OpenSim grids, but Second Life as well.

In general, IBM got very interested in OpenSim. They offered the OpenSim devs to collaborate and set a few dozen paid developers aside to improve the OpenSim code, especially the fledgling Hypergrid. They also got into contact with Linden Lab to launch a project named Open Grid, a connection between Second Life and the Hypergrid.

The publicity stunt

On June 30th, 2008, the cooperation between IBM, Linden Lab and the OpenSim developers appeared to come to fruition: A bunch of "gridnauts", both Lindens and IBM developer avatars, "teleported from Second Life to OpenSim". That's the short version of the story.

But first of all, they did not start from the Second Life main grid. A special beta grid was created and even partly decorated for this occasion. For the time being, it was declared impossible to teleport from the Second Life main grid because changes had to be done to the beta grid to make this connection possible. Some of the "gridnauts" kept their avatars as standard Ruths, but a few did some modifications on their looks. Of course, not being on the main grid, they had no access to the assets on the main grid such as clothes.

In addition, this could not be done with the official Second Life viewer. Linden Lab provided a special viewer named the Open Grid Beta Viewer.

The destination of the trip was not, however, an OpenSim grid specifically created for the Open Grid project. It was bone-stock OSgrid. Granted, OSgrid has been running development code since its creation, but there must have been precious little Open-Grid-specific code in it, if any. "IBM's modified code", as cited in the official Second Life wiki article linked above, was probably almost entirely bugfixes plus a few new features that everyone in OpenSim could profit from. This could have included the possibility to register new avatars in a viewer rather than only on the website of a grid.

Torely Linden captured the event on video and edited the footage into a two-minute clip called "Across the Metaverse". Yes, Torely Linden spoke of "the Metaverse" 13 years before Mark Zuckerberg did. But the OSgrid founders did so another year earlier.

When the "gridnauts" arrived on OSgrid, their inventories were empty. Linden Lab explained this was the case because it was technologically impossible to transfer an inventory from Second Life to OpenSim or vice versa.

It was all show

What few people know: It was all show. A Second Life user and former Open Grid beta-tester called it "smoke and mirrors" on the official Second Life forum.

Linden Lab fooled the public, and Linden Lab probably also fooled both the IBM devs, the beta testers and maybe even some official Lindens until they understood what was actually happening. All that the IBM devs had to do was make OpenSim fit for the event and iron out bugs that might have ended up awkward. IBM was probably working entirely on the OpenSim side of things. Linden Lab took care of the Second Life side, the beta grid and especially the beta viewer, alone without IBM having any insight. Thus, the IBM devs probably never really knew what Linden Lab did, and that the alleged teleportation from Second Life to OpenSim was nothing but a lie.

At no point did any avatar ever actually teleport from a Second Life grid to an OpenSim grid.

What the Open Grid Beta Viewer really did was log the Second Life beta grid avatar out and an OSgrid avatar with the same name in. On the way back, the OSgrid avatar was logged out, and the Second Life beta grid avatar was logged in. When logged into OpenSim, "_EXTERNAL" was added to the name tag after the avatar name.

So what people actually saw during the OpenSim segment of the video footage of this trip weren't Second Life avatars stripped of their inventories. They were OSgrid avatars.

At first glance, this was not too obvious. An avatar from the same grid as the one logged in usually doesn't show its home grid in the name tag above its head. So there was no "@osgrid.org:80" above the heads of the "gridnauts".

Also, as the video footage shows, the whole trip was restricted to a piece of hilly, barren land rather than one of the OSgrid Plazas. Only a few signs had been placed. Otherwise, nothing had been done, nothing had been built. It was obviously a sim created for this specific purpose. Access to this sim was probably limited to a specific group which the OSgrid avatars of the "gridnauts" were added to immediately after their creation. No group names are shown, though; it's either because the Open Grid Beta Viewer had group-showing code removed, or Torley Linden had switched group tags off.

By the way, notice how the name of the sim is censored in the video. Also, notice the absence of OSgrid avatars. Or OpenSim avatars in general. There was no welcome committee.

...an obvious show even

If you know a thing or two about OpenSim or even only Second Life, however, a few things make painfully obvious that the whole show was just that, a show.

The best sign is Torely's empty inventory. I've seen empty OpenSim inventories. And believe me when I say they're never completely blank. Even if there are no assets in the inventory, even if a grid does not add a pre-filled library with a few things to new avatars' inventories, there's always the basic directory structure. But Torely's video doesn't even show that.

Instead, it says, "No matching items found in inventory." It only says that and looks that blank when something has been searched for and not found. Either the Open Grid Beta Viewer was hard-coded to search for something that would definitely never be in Torely's inventory. Or it reset the search field while being closed and re-opened, but not the search itself. Either way, some search was used to artifically wipe Torely's inventory view clear.

Either Linden Lab thought it'd be easier for clueless casuals watching the video to understand that the inventory is empty when it's actually completely blank, or Torely had something to hide.

It gets even better. Pay close attention to the avatars in the video. Pause it if necessary. Yes, Torely's avatar looks like a standard Ruth on OSgrid. But Torely's avatar on the beta grid is a standard Ruth, too.

Now look at Hamilton Linden. He is wearing a dark top on the beta grid, prior to departure. This top is actually one of the few clothing items whose texture manages to load during the OSgrid segment in spite of the corrupted cache. It's the same dark top as on the beta grid. Everything an avatar wears when teleporting from one grid to another must be in the inventory and remain there. This means that Hamilton Linden has his dark top readily available in OSgrid. Thus, it has to be in his inventory. But if transferring content from a Second Life grid to an OpenSim grid is not possible, how did it get there?

Better yet: Zero Linden is wearing a skirt. On a Second Life or OpenSim classic avatar, it's just another texture layer, but it has to be there. It's grey on Zero Linden, but completely absent from all the other avatars, so it has to be there. Again, how could it possibly have gotten there?

I'll tell you how: At least Hamilton and Zero, just like Torely, knew from the get-go that the whole shindig was as fake as it could ever get. In order to make their avatars recognisable on both sides, they wanted to redo their beta grid look in OSgrid. So they logged into both grids and redid the few changes on their beta grid avatars in comparison to standard Ruth on their OSgrid avatars. All "gridnauts" who were filled in on the scam had previously created avatars on OSgrid. And at least these two couldn't help but customise their avatars. The uninformed "gridnauts" had their OSgrid avatars created for them and probably also had to keep their beta grid avatars stock Ruths.

Torely was right about the inventory not being carried over, though. What the "gridnauts" had in their inventories on OSgrid was either supplied by OSgrid or remade by hand.

Obvious precautions

It's obvious that Linden Lab had precautions taken to make it more credible. Torely's artificially "blanked" inventory was one part of it.

Another part was the "gridnauts" landing on almost barren land, all alone. There weren't even OSgrid officials present to welcome them and interact with them, at least not in Torely's video edit. The "gridnauts" needed to have this unwelcoming piece of land for themselves for a short while. If OSgrid officials arrived later to greet the "gridnauts", this must intentionally have been left out. Most likely, if they had been there, the Open Grid Beta Viewer would have slapped "_EXTERNAL" on their names as well because it couldn't distinguish between OSgrid avatars owned by admins and OSgrid avatars owned by "gridnauts".

It's even more likely that this sim was not only group access-only, but that the "gridnaut" avatars were the only ones in the group. Even OSgrid officials weren't allowed in. Linden Lab could not risk the presence of non-"gridnaut" avatars. For one, a fully decked-out OSgrid official avatar with "_EXTERNAL" behind the name would have ruined everything. Even worse, OSgrid or other visitors could have made their own video of the whole show. And it would have looked a whole lot different without the trickery demanded by Linden Lab. Don't forget that YouTube already existed in 2008, and much more than today, it was a place where everyone could upload self-made videos.

With all those precautions in place, it's interesting how none were taken to trick OpenSim users into taking this for genuine. They were probably considered too few to be a real danger because nobody outside their own little bubble would even notice them. And with no chance to prove Linden Lab's manipulation with a video of their own, there was little they could do anyway.

For the vast majority of the target audience of Torely's video, the precautions were sufficient. At least Hamilton and Zero re-doing their avatar looks on OSgrid was allowed in order to make them recognisable to people who don't know that an avatar's look is stored in the inventory. Only the few OpenSim users who had already Hypergridded back then knew what that meant. Everyone else, maybe even including some Second Life users, didn't see how this contradicted Torely's tall tale of empty inventories.

But why?

Now you may ask yourself: Why did Linden Lab even take all this effort upon themselves?

I can only speculate. But I guess it's because, in stark contrast to IBM, they never really wanted Second Life and OpenSim to fully connect. They wanted to present it as "technically possible, but too unfeasible to continue working on it".

Linden Lab and Second Life would have had nothing to gain from such a connection if it had ever gone fully functional but a whole lot to lose. "Fully functional" would have required taking your entire inventory with you in both directions.

First of all, this would have required adding support for there being more than one grid to Second Life, just so that it could identify avatars from other grids, assets from other grids et cetera. For OpenSim, any Second Life grid would only have been one more grid. Second Life, AnSky, 3rd Rock Grid, Metropolis, it would have been pretty much all the same, only with different names and maybe with different quirks.

At first glance, this connection would have been a dream coming true for businesspeople. OpenSim would have opened up Second Life's markets to more customers. In theory.

In practice, it wouldn't.

Unfair advantage for OpenSim

OpenSim never had an official inter-grid payment system. In fact, it was only in 2008 that 3rd Rock Grid was launched as the very first grid to implement payment beyond "Monopoly money". And that was an in-world currency that could be bought from real money, but not sold back. And that currency was only available on 3rd Rock Grid. It would have been impossible to introduce the Linden Dollar to OpenSim in general, much less force it upon all grids.

It wouldn't have been worth the effort anyway, seeing as how few users OpenSim had in 2008, especially considering how many users Second Life had. After all, it was Second Life's heyday in full effect.

It also wouldn't have been worth the effort because next to nobody in OpenSim would have bought anything in Second Life anyway. Why should they? Early OpenSim's everyone-for-themselves, all-rights-reserved culture carried over from Second Life was fading away with the arrival of freebies being shared with full permissions. The Queen of Freebies was Linda Kellie, formerly known as Karra Baker in Second Life where she attempted the same thing before Linden Lab kicked her out. She made and released more and more free stuff, and in 2008, she opened up her first freebie sim, Linda Kellie Designs. Everything on that sim was made by her, and everything on that sim could be copied, modified and shared freely.

There simply wasn't much of an incentive to go to Second Life and buy stuff if you could get your stuff for free, full-perm and under a public-domain-like CC0 license in OpenSim. And by 2008's standards, Linda's stuff wasn't even bad. When she still was Karra Baker in Second Life, she was actually considered unfair competition for the commercial creators. And after LK Designs had been launched, an increasing number of OpenSim users started creating stuff and offering it for free and often even full-perm.

And if assets could have been transferred both ways, there would have been a great lot more incentive for Second Life users to go "shopping" in OpenSim. For free. Some may even have taken Linda's CC0 stuff to the Second Life Marketplace and tried to sell it for money until someone else would have come and offered the self-same stuff for free.

Introducing the Linden Dollar and access to the Second Life Marketplace to OpenSim would have led to disaster itself. That's simply because Second Life's permission system isn't nearly as effective in OpenSim as it is in Second Life. After all, anyone can set up their own grid and connect it to the Hypergrid. In this case, even connect it to the Open Grid network and thus to Second Life.

On your own grid, however, you're your own boss, your own Linden. And you have Linden-like powers. In fact, your powers may even exceed those of an average Linden. You have god-mode. Third-party viewers for Second Life that were also compatible with OpenSim provided you with it. And this god-mode not only lets you circumvent permissions, but even manipulate them.

So in theory, an OpenSim user with an own grid and enough money could have gone to Second Life and bought all the hottest stuff in-world. Or they could have bought it on the Marketplace and, if necessary, just picked it up in Second Life. Of course, all this content would have been either no-copy or no-transfer and usually also no-modify. But not for long.

For then they could have rezzed that content in-world, maybe even still in the shape of sales boxes. Then they could have used their god-mode to set all that content to full-perm. And then they could have hung it up in their own store and offered it for free. Even to Second Life users. In fact, they could have gone one step further, made new box art and made themselves the "creators" of this content. And Linden Lab could have tried to DMCA them all they wanted, but to no avail if that grid and its owner were located someplace where U.S. laws don't apply.

In addition, the Open Grid connection would have been bad for Second Life's land rentals, one of Second Life's main sources of revenue. In order to visit friends in Second Life or attend events in Second Life, you would no longer have had to live in Second Life. You could have had not only your avatar in OpenSim, but also your land. More land area and a much higher prim allowance for a fraction of the costs in comparison with Second Life. And in fact, even the friends and the events might have moved to OpenSim, the events particularly because event locations could have been built bigger with more prims on cheaper land.

Creators would have set up at least second homes in OpenSim. There, they would have been able to create and experiment without paying upload fees to Linden Lab. Once their creations would have been done, they simply could have sent them to their Second Life avatars that would have adjusted the permissions and offered them for sale.

All in all, the Open Grid connection was probably recognised to be costly for Linden Lab in various ways. It would have cost a fortune to implement and make stable, also because Second Life would require the majority of changes. Unlike OpenSim, it was not designed to connect to other grids. And after its implementation, Second Life's revenue would have tanked because OpenSim would have provided cheaper or free alternatives to almost everything.

Tying an overambitious corporation down

I'm pretty sure that Linden Lab was well aware of at least some of these potential consequences, if not all of them. Under no circumstances was any of this allowed to happen. But IBM wanted it to happen. They didn't know about these consequences because, truth be told, they didn't know much about Second Life and OpenSim in general. And just telling IBM, "We don't want to do it because it'll ruin our revenues," would have looked bad.

At the same time, IBM not having have a realistic idea about what was possible and what wasn't, especially not what was possible or not for Linden Lab, turned out to be an advantage. And so Linden Lab put up a show that demonstrated that what IBM wanted was allegedly basically possible (to satisfy IBM a little), but not very feasible (to disappoint them just enough that they wouldn't follow the Open Grid idea any further). It must have been convincing enough that IBM changed their plans.

That is, IBM didn't drop out of virtual worlds entirely. They continued to support and even develop OpenSim until 2011, hoping to create a free, open, decentralised metaverse without Second Life, only based on OpenSim. I'm not sure what caused this to end. Maybe it was IBM losing interest. Maybe it was IBM not making any money off of it.

If Linden Lab could actually foresee what terrible consequences an Open Grid connection to OpenSim's Hypergrid would bring with itself, it's strange how they could not foresee the consequences when they published the Copybot source code in 2009.