Linden lab I’m sure could sweeten the deal by figuring out to hire him on his terms. I mean, I wouldn’t want to live in San Fran either, who can afford it lol!
They’re fools for not reaching out already. IF firestorm wanted, they could compromise a lot of user data, since so many people use it. LL needs to get control of this now. Fire whoever is in charge of that at LL... obviously they’re scared the firestorm devs will put them out of a job
Independent developers can and do contribute code to LL, and since Firestorm code is just as open-source as LL's, they could merge FS's features into their own code if they wanted it. But their policy is to wait until it's contributed or to develop their own versions themselves.
TPVs' success with "breast bounce" and parcel windlight is what prompted LL to develop avatar physics and region windlight. I don't know who has contributed precisely what, but there's probably a bit of Firestorm developer code floating around in the LL viewer, as well.
No formal merge is needed for that to happen. More importantly, the target audience for the official viewer isn't the same as the target audience for Firestorm or any other TPVs. The fact that the official viewer is comparatively feature-free makes it a better learners' viewer for newbies and probably leaner for people with slimmer systems.
Heck, even FS support sometimes gets asked if we'd ever develop a "scaled-down" version of our viewer "without all this dumb crap I never use." We suggest they download the LL viewer.
TPVs happen for exactly the same reason that content creators develop avatar clothing and body parts for those who don't want to be limited to the starter avatars, or add-ons for Linden Homes: because SL residents are creative and innovative, and LL has given us the tools to branch off from what they give us.
So while it wouldn't surprise me one bit for one FS dev to start working for LL, it's safe to say that the viewer itself or the team on the whole would never somehow find itself under the LL umbrella.
From the time I started SL, people have always wanted a better viewer. LL's old viewer wasn't too bad - it just didn't have as many features. But ever since 2.0, there has been a significant amount of complaints. No wonder FS is the most popular viewer used.
Nobody would pay. A few might, but the vast majority would refuse. If FS wants to monetize, the only way they could manage it would be to sell in-viewer advertising and offer the option to pay to have the ads removed.
Gogo ♔
, the sentiment is appreciated, but we (speaking as the Firestorm support team manager) actively don't want that much money. We don't want any more money than we need to pay for our server and our licenses.
And we get what we need through the Google ads on our wiki and from occasional fundraisers when we're running dry (we usually don't advertise it when we don't need it, but you can buy Firestorm apparel on Marketplace).
Actually, we did get a very strong response the one time we actively pushed the apparel in order to pay for a particularly expensive software license. But still, we don't want money that would go into someone's pockets. The relationship between a free product and its users is very different from that between a commodity and its buyers.
We've been getting that question for years. Here's a blog post I wrote seven !!! years ago on the subject. The tone is a bit aggressive, and I apologize for that, but it gets the reasons across. Heard That One Before 5: So You Want an Oompa Loompa
Gogo ♔
: I'm not suggesting that Firestorm isn't worth paying for. I'd almost certainly buy it if it were commercial software; it's really good. But, taking something that has been available for free and making people pay for it almost never turns out well. That's just how people are.
Lette made a really, really good point too: going from a labour of love to a commercial product changes the thing entirely and profoundly. If people pay for something they will have a justifiable right to expect a certain level of service, which means that the Firestorm team would have to commit to meeting that level of service.
It's seriously the weirdest symbiotic relationship in tech. Linden Lab is making $60 million a year from SL but is totally reliant on the Firestorm team, which is making $0/year.
I'm not sure how LL is dependant on Firestorm. It's a great viewer but if it were to vanish overnight there would be some histrionics and then people would use something else.
More likely, a sole developer (not necessarily one of ours — remember, it's open-source, so anyone with the know-how could do this) would pick up the code and attempt to keep up with LL changes to keep a spinoff of Firestorm current and available. And most likely they'd only build it for their own OS, so only the other two would be screwed.
It would be a low-rent version of its current form (no support, probably buggy because no QA, and again, probably only one OS), but it would keep the masses from collective despair.
Lette
: It's used by about 90% of the active userbase, so replacing it wouldn't be a small thing. Plus any feature LL adds, like BoM, is effectively useless until Firestorm supports it. Not even getting into Emerald-type shitstorm scenarios.
Heard That One Before 5: So You Want an Oompa Loompa