For the ones among you who didn't already read it in the blog, here is what I posted about the new third parties viewers policy:
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| Quote: While I will make the Cool SL Viewer fully policy-compliant (not much work on the operational code changes: just one line of code to change, but more work on the "brandification" of the viewer to comply with stuff like not displaying the SL page when connecting to grids without a login page, etc...), I will NOT register it into the directory.
Why ?
Because Linden Lab requires personnal data that is not needed by them (should I violate their policy after registering into the directory and should they want to sue me, a judge in France can easily request my personal data from my ISP based on my IP, so Linden Lab does NOT need my snail mail address, and in fact not even my real life name !), and even WORST, they do say in the registration form that my Real Life name may be displayed in their directory.
Well, sorry Linden Lab, but this in violation of the French Law "Informatique et Liberté" and would be an unacceptable breach of my privacy.
I suggest that you revise your policy to comply with international laws. | |
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There is also a flame war raging on the sldev mailing list about the TPV policy and its compatibility with the GPL...
Anyway, since I don't wish to fight futilely for something which, for me, is only a part time hobby, I will either comply to whatever reasonable terms LL ends up with, or will stop publishing my own viewer. Thankfully, it looks like Linden Lab is listening to the complaints of the open source developers on the mailing list, so we might end up with an acceptable compromise.
Looking forward such a compromise, and although no one at Linden Lab ever asked for a name change of the Cool SL Viewer, I am making myself ready to rename it.
So far, i came up with two possible names.
The first one (which I thought about as soon as they published their trademark policy) is the "Cool VL Viewer", with "VL" standing for "virtual life". The advantage of such a name is that it is close enough to the old one for people to follow up without "loosing track" of the viewer.
The second one is "Burning Ice". It comes from the motto I use for my products in SL ("Cool Products... They are hot !") and from a logo a SL friend made for me (the burning ice cube you can
see here). after all, the Cool SL Viewer is both "cool" and pretty "hot" as well, no ?...
So, as users of this viewer, what kind of name would you prefer ?