@Kevin Davidson @Mathias Hellquist (Friendica) @volkris @stark@ubuntu:~$ :idle: It's interesting that you mention 3-D #VirtualWorlds.

#OpenSimulator (which is closer to #SecondLife than Mastodon will ever be to Twitter) offers the whole bandwidth of independence.

There are over 400 big and small public grids (= instances), a few run by companies, most run by private owners, that let you register an avatar and become a resident. If you want your own land, most of them let you rent land and/or attach self-hosted land (you can do that as well). It almost always costs money, but in comparison with Second Life, it's dirt-cheap.

How the grids cover their costs is different from grid to grid. For many grids, land rentals generate enough income. A few grids demand you rent land after a month or so. Others are financed with donations. Some admins of smaller grids can pay for the operation of their grids themselves.

At the same time, there are over 8,000 small private #OpenSim grids which are similar to personal #Fediverse instances. By far most of them run at the owners' homes on whatever Windows machines they already have. Since OpenSim was developed for Windows in .NET first and foremost and then ported to Linux and Mono, it can run on both. And Ferd Frederix' #DreamGrid makes it even easier to run your own grid without knowing anything about networks or ever touching the command line. How well these small, home-hosted grids perform for external visitors if they allow these is another story, but still.

Almost all these grids are connected in the so-called #Hypergrid which is the Fediverse of 3-D virtual worlds. It's the closest we've come so far to a decentralised, distributed #metaverse (a term that was used in OpenSim circles at least as early as 2008 when the Hypergrid was introduced), only that it's based on only one software project.

Oh, and Second Life is far from being limitless and having infinite space. Not long ago, their grid was on the brink of running out of vacant regions.

@Chris Trottier @Fediverse News They spent $13B on "inventing the Metaverse."

Only that they didn't invent the Metaverse. Either they believed they did, or they knew they didn't, but they had enough market power to bullshit everyone else into believing they did. For 99% of all people out there, #TheMetaverse refers to #HorizonWorlds.

As a matter of fact, however, the term #Metaverse has been used in conjunction with actually existing #VirtualWorlds at least as early as 2008, 15 years ago. That was the year when #OpenSimulator introduced the #Hypergrid, the first federation between independently-run virtual worlds, known as "grids" in #OpenSim lingo. The Hypergrid enabled you to visit grids with avatars registered on other grids. If anything deserved being called "metaverse," the Hypergrid became that.

Also, starting as early as 2008, single grids started using the term "metaverse" for themselves. In 2022, the oldest and once biggest German grid shut down after 14 years of operation: the #Metropolis Metaversum.

And guess what? OpenSim and the Hypergrid are still around. Not only still around, but growing. There are over 400 public grids and thousands upon thousands of small private grids, over 95% of which are connected to the Hypergrid. And there are still grids older than Zuck's Metaverse dreams which have "Metaverse" in their names such as the Alternate Metaverse which has gone by this name since late 2019.

@Stark Of course, #cryptobros don't like to use #Mastodon. They have their own instance, and this instance is defederated by most other instances.

And how they aren't really interested in decentralisation is obvious if you look at the #Metaverse. Most projects in this field are just-too-obvious attempts at get-rich-quick schemes by cryptobros. Jump onto the Metaverse bandwagon with a start-up, rake in lots of money by selling virtual land that's so outrageously expensive that it puts #SecondLife to shame, rake in more money by selling #NFTs, rake in even more money by watching the cryptocurrency of your choice get more and more expensive.

But since the Metaverse is supposed to be neither one big walled garden nor a bunch of walled gardens, it has to be decentralised in some way. Enter #Decentraland. It claims to be the, quote, "first decentralized Metaverse." This is false already: The first decentralised metaverse was #OpenSimulator which was launched in 2007, eight years before Decentraland, which has been using the term "metaverse" long before it became a buzzword, and which is still around and constantly expanding with several times more landmass than Second Life.

Yes, Decentraland is open-source and licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. But this seems to be only to either satisfy those who demand the Metaverse be FLOSS or delegate most of the development to the community. Yes, Decentraland is officially in the hands of a non-profit. But this seems to be a ploy to keep big players from buying it out. Not to mention how Decentraland as an actual #VirtualWorld feels cobbled together quickly, like an attempt at making tons of money by marketing the usual #blockchain, #crypto & #NFT recipe at people who don't easily throw themselves at big corporations.

Also, I've yet to be convinced that Decentraland is truly decentral to the point of there being privately-run places over which the owners/maintainers of the platform don't have a say.

For comparison: The #Fediverse is that decentral. Some projects like Mastodon have instances run by the main devs, but only to have "official" instances for newcomers to easily find a home; others don't have any. And each instance is entirely run and ruled over by its owners, not by the owners/maintainers of the project itself.

And #OpenSim is that level of decentral, too. There is no central ruler, no central authority in any shape or form. There isn't even an "official" #grid. The main dev doesn't own any land beyond his private sim attached to #OSgrid where he isn't even one of the grid admins.

But cryptobros would never let decentralisation go that far, for that'd allow people to use their services without making money for them.