Second Life user Jacek Antonelli has announced a new, user-interface oriented project called Imprudence as a major fork of the Second Life viewer. Citing difficulties and delays within Linden Lab's own development and quality assurance pathways, Antonelli and McCabe Maxsted have created the basis for a community effort to rework the viewer's user-interface.
'The Second Life Viewer suffers from a stifling atmosphere of non-change. This atmosphere emanates from Linden Lab, whose attitudes and policies discourage all but the smallest and most superficial improvements. This is the result of the nature of Linden Lab as a corporation,' they write, listing lack of resources, burdensome QA that punishes change, and a paying customer-base that actively resists alterations.
Antonelli and Maxsted believe that a community project can overcome all of these obstacles -- and that if users do not choose to attempt it, the status will continue to remain pretty much quo for the foreseeable future.
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According to the Imprudence website, they problems they hope to solve include a cluttered interface, crude tools, and stability/performance problems. They acknowledge that these are issues that Linden Lab has made some progress on, but not substantial progress.
The Imprudence Manifesto itself outlines the atmosphere which has generated it, the goals that it seeks to achieve, and the means by which it intends to achieve them. Imprudence is looking for contributors to help with every aspect of the project.
While a number of alternative Second Life viewers already exist, few of them deliver any significant user-interface changes. The Imprudence project certainly has the potential to spawn a host of viewers that users can select from, each cherry-picking the best qualities of others.
It will be interesting to see how the project progresses, and whether it can truly achieve its goals.
