Open Source

32782 readers

613 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

We need to discuss an alternative to the Metaverse (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

21 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Usually the open source community is very scattered, there are many groups developing similar projects like operating systems for instance. If all open source developers focused on the same system it would be miles ahead of the proprietary alternative but it's usually the other way around. I think with the Metaverse is important that we focus early on a single project because if the Metaverse gains traction everyone may end up living in Facebook's virtual reality and that would be the same as if we considered Mark Zuckerberg to be our god.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Eh, I think I'm at a very different place. Yes, it's true that it's in early stages, and the rollout and media talk at the current moment if probably influenced by public criticism of Facebook rather than the technology being ready.

However, one of the largest companies in the world is working on it, and elevating it to a central strategic objective. They are seeking to set the trajectory of the whole technology, possibly creating new cultural norms, possibly setting everything on a centralized framework instead of open protocols, and possibly creating a whole new set of issues relating to access, privatization, democracy, spread of misinformation, and power. We could easily look back in 20-30 years and say we wish that robust alternatives were opposed in the beginning.

So while I ate there's nothing much to do and nutting to be done right now, I think facebooks involvement should be considered a significant thing to reckon with.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago

I understand your concern and it's a great issue to raise but I disagree that there's nothing to be done. I look at it as a competitive landscape where we FOSS devs will create our own spaces and culture. If we want to provide an alternative that the masses will prefer then then that's a specific goal that would involve a huge amount of investment, probably on par with what FB's doing.

The open source way is slower, more viral and ultimately covers more of what people want to do all the time. I think there's tremendous potential in pioneering how VR can be used for good and using open source software to do it. Maybe FB goes out and paves everything over and it's up to us to grab what we can and be ready when their stuff crumbles.