Multi-Manager World

[Tristan Lawksley]

This subject of having worlds with multiple managers has been brought up in passing in other parts of the forum, but it's a concept that I think deserves its own thread. The basic idea is to allow collaborative partners to share a world and manage it equally with the intent of making collaboration simpler. On Second Life such partnerships are handled via estate management controls (My understanding is that some of these controls are bugged on OpenSim), land sells (Unfortunately disabled), and group management tools, but none of these options are without flaws (which seem to be low priority fixes at the moment). However, even if those issues didn't exist that doesn't address one of the world options that Kitely has: Megaregion mode management. Without adding that option, and others, into the estate management (Which I would assume would require the development of a Kitely client) tools then it would have be handled via a multi-manager world set up.

To address some of the points made by Ilan in the other thread...

A single-manager world has less potential issues than a multi-manager world (which means it costs us less to support).

I'm assuming that the main cost here would be the time that has to be put in fixing issues when they occur. I don't have any idea how the financing would play out, but with a slightly elevated pricing for group worlds perhaps it'd be off-set?

Proper group collaboration support also requires various features which we didn't mention in this thread (such as bulk user provisioning, ability to backup/export content that is owned by multiple different people not just the single world manager, etc.).

I'd suggest only allowing backup/export of content to group-owned objects only in such a world.

The world manager is held personally accountable for what happens in his or her world but fallouts between once-trusted friends are quite common in virtual worlds. The more accounts with access to potentially harmful rights you add the more risk you expose your world to. Allowing other people to use functions that can destroy worlds they don't manage and aren't held accountable for is a potential source for a lot of grief both for well meaning world managers and for us.

There will always be a chance of fall-outs - it comes with the territory. The solution I think here is to put in place the same type of management system you see on the Estate Tools. One person would be listed as the owner of the group-owned world, and the others would be listed as managers - all with the same rights as the owner except for deletion of the world/account. I'm not sure how the fees would be handled between all the people on the account, but it might be simpler to again fall back to the group owner.

There is some cost to collaboration projects that result from those safety policies but working around them is a lot less painful than you might think (settings/functions that are world-manager only are usually updated very infrequently).

As far as I know, those settings/functions are importing/exporting raw files and a few others, but in the scope of Kitely that includes being able to kick a world out of mega-mode and waiting on your partner(s) to come online to deal with it or other issues that could be potentially time sensitive can be a problem. The other problem that we have run into is that some of the work-arounds don't work - such as those with land management.

[Constance Peregrine]

Hi Tristan,

Group managed worlds cost us in two ways:
1) Increased support costs relating to system events that can be initiated by multiple parties instead of just one.
2) Our current pricing is based on usage averages of single-manager worlds. People co-managing a world means less worlds being payed for by people looking to own their own world while costing us more in datacenter costs than a single-manager world.

There are quite a few features that we'll need to implement to properly support group-managed worlds. Some of them relate to unimplemented or broken functionality in OpenSim and some to Kitely-specific features that people have asked for and won't be willing to upgrade their plans to group plans without them. The required development will cost us time and money. We aren't likely to prioritize doing that if it means a reduction to our bottom line. Group plans will therefore need to be priced accordingly and will, in any case, need to wait until we implement features that can have a more substantial positive effect on our profitability.

[Constance Peregrine]

gotta love that ROI-)))

[Tristan Lawksley]

Hi Tristan,

Group managed worlds cost us in two ways:
1) Increased support costs relating to system events that can be initiated by multiple parties instead of just one.
2) Our current pricing is based on usage averages of single-manager worlds. People co-managing a world means less worlds being payed for by people looking to own their own world while costing us more in datacenter costs than a single-manager world.

There are quite a few features that we'll need to implement to properly support group-managed worlds. Some of them relate to unimplemented or broken functionality in OpenSim and some to Kitely-specific features that people have asked for and won't be willing to upgrade their plans to group plans without them. The required development will cost us time and money. We aren't likely to prioritize doing that if it means a reduction to our bottom line. Group plans will therefore need to be priced accordingly and will, in any case, need to wait until we implement features that can have a more substantial positive effect on our profitability.

Thanks for the details on the financing Ilan. I don't expect it to be implemented overnight - especially if implementation would hurt the bottom line. However, I think it's an interesting enough option to entertain discussion.

In regards to your second point, I'm not entirely certain that it would be the case. Sure, there would be some that choose to share a world instead of investing in their own (which they can do currently regardless), but I think that despite the option to share world management there would people who would purchase their own worlds as well. If my current situation wasn't what it is (and I could choose to place my world next to a friend's.) I certainly would consider it. I can't speak for everyone else, but I think that it's safe to assume that it could go either way. Some will purchase their own worlds and some won't. Group Management doesn't really have as much impact as it would seem in that regard.

Would you mind sharing the details of the Kitely-specific features that have been asked for? I'm assuming here that you mean beyond what's already been mentioned previously on this thread.

[Constance Peregrine]

Hi Tristan,

I have quite a few bizdev discussions with various groups regarding their needs and how Kitely can address them. We believe in transparency but we don't wish to share our market research with Kitely's competitors, some of which read our forums. What I can say is that many of the people I've talked to asked for features that we haven't announced yet and don't have time to implement at this time.

[Justin Smith]

Is there an easy way to make all of the objects in a Sim owned by a Group so anyone in the group can edit them?