Collaboration, Values & Privacy Statement - ApertureViewer/Aperture-Viewer GitHub Wiki

Comprehensive overview – last updated June 2025

[!IMPORTANT] For the complete legal and licensing analysis, including citations and section-by-section commentary on LGPL 2.1, please see: Our Approach to Open Source, Licensing, and Collaboration

1 · Purpose 🎯

Guided by our ethos “Nothing Is Not Possible,” this document explains how Aperture Viewer collaborates with others, the values and ethics that shape our community, and the privacy commitment we uphold. It complements (and does not replace) the long-form policy linked above, which focuses in depth on licence rights and legal foundations.

2 · Guiding Principles & Community Spirit ✨

2.1 Our Ethos 🚀

Nothing Is Not Possible – we relentlessly push visual creativity while recognising that many people’s journeys can be challenging or lonely. Virtual worlds can be spaces of hope, warmth, and connection; Aperture aims to amplify that positive potential.

2.2 Community Values 💖

  1. ❤️ Kindness & Empathy – lead with an open ear and gentle understanding.
  2. ✨ Radical Openness – free flow of ideas and code; no hidden agendas.
  3. 🌱 Shared Growth – teach, learn, and improve together.
  4. 🎨 Inclusive Creativity – empower all creators, whatever their background.
  5. 🔒 Privacy First – zero telemetry, zero hidden data collection.

These values guide every interaction – on GitHub, in Discord, and in-world.

3 · Call to Action – Join Us! 👋

If these values resonate with you, we invite you to collaborate:

  • 💡 Submit pull requests, ideas, and issues on GitHub.
  • 🗣️ Share feedback in our Discord community.
  • 🛠️ Build your own innovations atop our code.

Together we can demonstrate what’s possible when openness, creativity, and kindness combine.

4 · The Heart of Openness: Our Philosophy, Licence & Community 💖📜🤝

At Aperture Viewer, open source is more than a development method; it is a moral commitment. We believe shared ideas accelerate growth, nurture creativity, and safeguard the freedom for everyone to learn, build, and dream. This conviction guides every line of code we write and every collaboration we pursue.

4.1 A Legacy of Generosity: The Upstream Foundation 🏛️

Aperture Viewer stands on the shoulders of giants—most notably Linden Lab, whose bold decision in 2007 to release the original Second Life viewer under LGPL 2.1 invited a global community of developers, creators, and dreamers to co-shape the virtual-world experience. That act of generosity ignited a thriving ecosystem of third-party viewers, each exploring new ideas and perspectives.

We honour this gift by upholding the same spirit of sharing, transparency, and community-driven improvement that Linden Lab modelled. Their open-source release is a living reminder that progress flourishes when the door is held wide open for everyone.

4.2 Why LGPL 2.1? Protecting the Commons, Empowering Creators 🛡️🧑‍💻

  • 🌊 Core Stays Free & Open – Any distributed modification of the library must remain under LGPL 2.1, ensuring the “well” of shared innovation never runs dry.
  • 🕊️ Freedom to Innovate – Everyone may use, study, modify, and share the software. When a project distributes an LGPL build, these freedoms automatically pass to its users.
  • ⛔ No Further Restrictions – Section 10 forbids extra hoops like embargoes or private approvals. Once code is public under LGPL, it is immediately available for all to build upon.
  • 🌉 A Bridge, Not a Wall – LGPL is pragmatic copyleft: it preserves the commons and lets both open-source and proprietary tools link to the library.

4.3 Our Commitment: Paying It Forward 🎁

Inspired by that upstream generosity, Aperture Viewer pledges to:

  • 🌐 Share our code openly and keep development transparent.
  • 🙌 Welcome contributions in a climate of kindness, respect, and shared growth.
  • 🌟 Champion every creator’s freedom to adapt the viewer while protecting user privacy and the integrity of the commons.

In short, we pay forward the remarkable foundation on which we build—ensuring the open-source flame burns brighter for the next generation. 🔥

5 · Our Approach to Collaboration 🤝

We believe that the best innovations emerge from open, respectful, and principled collaboration. Our approach is guided by the following standards:

5.1 Attribution and Mutual Respect 🙏

We honour upstream work through commit history, license headers, release notes, and human-readable acknowledgements. Credit where credit is due sustains trust and fosters a positive collaborative environment. We expect and offer this respect in all interactions.

5.2 Embracing Diverse Visions: Freedom to Diverge 🗺️

Multiple visions and approaches keep the ecosystem vibrant and dynamic. When project goals or design philosophies differ, we believe projects are free to follow separate paths while maintaining a spirit of mutual respect. Each path can advance the art in its own way, and this diversity is a strength.

5.3 Upholding Open Source Principles: Our LGPL 2.1 Stance 📜

  • 🗝️ Full LGPL 2.1 Freedoms: We operate with, and expect our partners to respect, the full scope of LGPL 2.1 freedoms. This fundamentally includes the immediate right for anyone to use, study, modify, and redistribute publicly licensed LGPL code without additional conditions, approval processes, or timing restrictions (such as embargoes). Any distributed modifications of our LGPL code must, of course, remain under LGPL 2.1 with corresponding source availability.

5.4 Foundations for Fruitful Partnership 🌱🤝

We thrive on deep collaboration with projects that align on fundamental values. For us, these essential cornerstones for a successful partnership are:

  1. 💖 Alignment with Community Values – kindness, openness, and a genuine desire for shared growth.
  2. 🛡️ Shared Privacy Commitment – no hidden telemetry or data-harvesting beyond what the platform itself requires.
  3. ⚖️ Commitment to Full LGPL 2.1 Freedoms (as detailed in 5.3).

If a project's approach differs significantly from these foundational principles, we may choose to focus our direct collaborative efforts elsewhere. We’ll wish such teams well and respect their journey, remaining friendly neighbours in the wider community even when a deep partnership isn’t the most effective path forward. Our energy is best focused where these shared principles are fully embraced.

6 · Privacy Commitment 🔒🛡️

  • 🚫 No user-data collection – Aperture Viewer does not harvest personal data, usage metrics, or system fingerprints, beyond data handling essential for Second Life platform interaction as mandated by Linden Lab.
  • 📡 No tracking infrastructure – We do not run servers to receive or analyse any additional telemetry.
  • 🔍 Open-source transparency – The entire code-base can be audited by anyone, ensuring our practices are clear.

We are deeply committed to user trust and a zero-telemetry standard for Aperture Viewer, beyond essential Linden Lab platform requirements. To maintain transparency, if derivative works using our code implement any additional data collection, we may inform our community of such differences. This allows users to make informed decisions consistent with the privacy they expect from Aperture Viewer, irrespective of other disclosures or policies.

7 · Mission & Vision Alignment 🚀🎯

  • Mission: Empower virtual photographers and videomakers with the most advanced, intuitive, and powerful open-source viewer.
  • Vision: Become the indispensable benchmark for visual creators in virtual worlds, proving that Nothing Is Not Possible.

We recognize that diverse project missions and visions enrich the wider ecosystem. Our specific mission is best pursued through collaborations built upon the shared ethics, values, and principles detailed throughout this document, particularly our approach to partnership (Section 5.4).

8 · Legal & Platform Foundations (Brief) ⚖️🏛️

The full exposition is in the long-form policy linked at the top. Key pillars include:

  • LGPL §10 – No Further Restrictions
  • LGPL §8 – Termination Clause
  • Platform policies permitting open-source modification
  • GitHub Terms of Service’s inbound = outbound principle

9 · Contact & Dialogue ✉️💬

Questions, concerns, or collaboration proposals? Email [email protected]. We aim for timely, thoughtful responses.

(This document is distinct from, but complementary to, “Our Approach to Open Source, Licensing, and Collaboration”, which provides detailed legal commentary and citations.)