Where things are and what is to come

Hello hello,

It’s about time I check in with you all about the status of Radegast. The rumor mill is always working at full capacity, and the best way to keep that in check is with an update.

Why hasn’t there been an update?

After much consideration, I decided that in order to meet the goals I have set for Radegast, it would take considerably less time to write from scratch that refactor some of the older and more unwise architectural choices hindering things like crossing from one region to its neighbor. I have been hard at work writing a replacement for the core library, LibreMetaverse, in C++ which should produce a much more stable experience across all platforms and which will enable us to go beyond simply Windows, MacOS, and Linux, (think mobile and web!)

There will be another update

I am taking a break from the C++ rewrite to fix some outstanding bugs in the current Radegast-ng that have been reported, and to prepare for Inventory APIv3 which will be required in the near future in Second Life.

Website stability

You may have heard or experienced for yourself the recent outages on this very website. A short explanation, radegast.org finally went offline earlier this year. This induced a forced migration of users from the final version of the original Radegast to the currently maintained Radegast. This brought a heavier amount of traffic to the website. We have also been relentlessly hammered by crawlers and bots on the website.

Since I took over maintenance of the Radegast project, I have paid out of pocket for server costs and infrastructure. I have meager means and so the server has been running on a very low-end server. This worked well at first, but resources are maxed out currently.

A request for donations

I am a proud person and really dislike to ask for anything, but I simply cannot alone afford to upgrade to a more robust server for Radegast’s website and infrastructure. It was suggested to me by a user that I make a request for donations to help.

This makes sense to me. Radegast is uniquely suited for several communities in Second Life and OpenSimulator from those requiring screen readers and other accessibility needs, to needing a simpler way to connect through a proxy, those who have low resource computer, and, of course, those experimenting with automation and bot control.

I am asking, if you have the means and if you so desire, to help Radegast flourish and expand by donating to server costs. Radegast hosts its own bug tracker, support forum, wiki, and documentation. True, these things can be found for free elsewhere, but it is better to have one resource. Not to mention, we have no control over what other providers decide to do. Given the accessability needs some of our users have, fancy javascript and captchas are not acceptable.

Anyway, whether or not we receive donations, Radegast will continue, just with a somewhat hobbled website. I am not holding the project hostage. Nor am I asking for you to pay my bills. I am asking that perhaps, others would like to contribute in their own way. (Plus, I will make some cool Radegast swag in Second Life for supporters!)

You can find the donation page here.

Remember, even if you can’t contribute, there are other ways you can support Radegast! Submitting pull requests and bug reports is always helpful. You can help others in the Second Life Radegast and Radegast Users groups. Articles on using Radegast can be happily published for others to utilize.

That’s it for now!