Die Palace Hilfe - Aktuelles

Von: Jim Bumgardner [mailto:jbum@jbum.com]
Gesendet am: Mittwoch, 18. Oktober 2000 21:28
An: paldevgroup@egroups.com
Betreff: [PDG] Passport Notes

I thought I would hold my tongue until I got a chance to take
a look at what CC is replacing the Palace with. I've seen it,
and now I'm talking.

A lot of people have asked me "Why did you create the Palace" or
"How did you get the idea". I've given lots of different answers. Not
all of them satisfactory.

Because the real answer was simple, and didn't sound that interesting.
I wanted to make something that I would enjoy using. That's it.
I wasn't designing for the world at large. I wasn't designing for
a hypothetical community. Or perhaps I was - I had a hypothetical
community of one.

That hypothetical community had a few basic priorities though.

I wanted the freedom of visual self expression.
I wanted a decent, relatively clear interface that felt "comfortable".
I needed a certain amount of creative "ownership" over the
appearance and behavior of the space.

Security was also important, but not as important as these other features.
Why? Because in a healthy community, security could be provided through
social mores, whereas the self-expression features required technology (prop
editors, scripting languages, personal servers and so on...)

However, whenever I would talk to certain folks from CC (this was before
they had acquired the Palace) there was a lot of hand-wringing on their
part over the "security problem" as they saw it. In retrospect
it seems clear that after CC took ownership of the Palace, it was their
top priority to "fix" this problem. And with Passport, the problem has
certainly been "fixed."

I've spent a little time using the beta version of Passport now, and one
thing
is obvious. In fixing the "security problem," CC has sacrificed almost
every
other feature, and many of those features were ones that I originally felt,
and still feel, are far more important.

The Palace is NOT simply about avatars with chat balloons. If this were
so, then every other avatar chat would be as successful as the Palace was.
The Palace is about freedom, comfort and self expression.

CC says they are about community. This is complete and utter bullshit

A community that cannot express itself is not a community.
A community that is uncomfortable is not a community.
A community that cannot build is not a community.

A company whose number one priority is security is not building a community

It is building a prison.

What CC has created is a prison. A stable. A holding pen for livestock.
But
you are not livestock. And you do not have to live in a stable.

I intend to do anything legally in my power to help this effort, including
assisting
in the creation of a new, free Palace Directory Server, and in finding a way
past this Reg Code impasse.

- jbum