Linden Lab announce drastic changes to Third Party Viewer policy

Photo taken using the third party viewer Firestorm with shadows and depth of field enabled.

Linden Labs, the creators of Secondlife have announced policy changes to developers of third party viewers (TPV's).
The open source viewer code has been modified by numerous programmers who have introduced innovations that enhance the user experience.
The history of TPV's is a chequered one.
Maliciously scripted viewers have been able to copy other peoples creations and crash other users.
These security issues are usually shut down soon after they appear.
What these new policies mean to the average user of a TPV will be minor cosmetic changes like not being able to see viewer tags that identify other users viewers or true online status.
Linden Lab plan to remove the ability to see online status server side.
For power users or those using RLV and other interactive multi-user options, these policy changes could be a disaster.
RLV is used for role playing within Secondlife.
Not being able to know the online status of another RLV player will destroy parts of that RP.
Thousands of shopkeepers have message boards for customers to communicate with them.
These boards show the owners online status no matter where they are on the grid.
These too could break although Owner Only code changes may retain this option.
Beyond the actual changes that Linden Lab is making, the bigger story here is the ultimate demise of the volunteer development and innovation followed in swift order of the demise of Third Party Viewers altogether.
The Lab are basically saying, if we didn't invent it, you can't.
This is certainly a backward step for Linden Lab and Secondlife.
It indicates the Lab's corporate mentality that has deemed that innovation and the raw enthusiasm of it's own user base that has led to some incredible developments like Advanced Shadows/Lighting/Depth of Field, Parcel Windlight Settings, client-side Animation Override, Area Search, Double-Click Teleport and many more features is cutting too close to their own bottom line.
And TPV's make them look bad.
Because the official LL Secondlife Viewer is nowhere near as good as most TPV's.
Several years ago LL decided to change their old viewer and create V2.0.
V2.0 stunk.
Several iterations later and it still does although it's getting slightly less offensive.
But by comparison to any number of TPV's, V2.0 is unintuitive, clunky, search NEVER works... I could go on but there isn't enough room on this endless blog!
Suffice to say I avoid the official viewer like botulism.
TPV's became a viable option for many users including myself at this juncture because many of them were built on the old version one code.
The look and feel was the same as the old LL viewer so it was more comfortable and underneath the bonnet, they had some cool features.
Now it looks like these good times are over.
The sun has set on these wild west days when a viewer update brings a slew of new toys to play with and a wide-eyed amazement at the creativity and dedication of their developers.
The Lab have effectively signed the death warrant of Third Party Viewers and that is a very bad thing.
Already forum chatter is urging these developers to concentrate on OpenSim and other metaverses where such restrictions are not stifling progress.

Here's a link to TPV Phoenix/Firestorm blog where they report they have been contacted by LL who insist they and all other TPV developers implement their latest policy without delay.
http://phoenixviewer.blogspot.com/2012/02/new-additions-to-third-party-viewer.html

Here's a link to a Secondlife users blog with a link to an audio recording of Oz Linden explaining the Lab's changes.
The author has helpfully noted time stamps for some of the important bits.
http://yournymph.blogspot.com/2012/02/policy-on-third-party-viewers-changed.html