Great Canadian Grid shuts down

Update from GeVolution founder Cliff Hopkins:

  • There are more than 500 OARs, which are stored on Great Canadian Grid servers. Hopkins has access to those servers and will be distributing the OARs.
  • GeVolution will pay for the hosting costs for those servers for the next month.
  • Once Hopkins gets the final go-ahead from Roddie Macchi, he will set up a page where region owners can give permission to move their regions to a download location and indemnify GeVolution against any intellectual property issues that may arise from that download.
  • Roddie Macchi is currently in the hospital, which is not helping the communication issues.
(Image courtesy The Great Canadian Grid.)

The Great Canadian Grid shut down this morning, according to its website, and according to its technology provider, GeVolution.

“I enjoyed my virtual travels and managing GCG in the last seven years,” wrote Great Canadian Grid owner Roddie Macchi. “But it is time to move on. Since GCG started out as a hobby I decided not to sell the grid but to close it permanently.”

Macchi said that residents looking for OAR exports of their regions can contact the grid’s hosting company.

“I have made arrangements with Cliff Hopkins aka Shadow to be sure to hand over only those whose names were owners on the OARs,” he wrote. “He has an entire list of who owns what.”

Macchi said that all servers were shut down, but did not explain in that message why residents had no advance notice so that they could prepare themselves. He did not respond to requests for comment from Hypergrid Business.

In a now-deleted post on his website on March 22 (see cached version here), Macchi said that he was stick with the coronavirus.

GeVolution founder Cliff Hopkins said that he offered to subsidize the Great Canadian Grid for another month.

But Macchi chose to shut down the grid this morning anyway.

“We have access to the OARs,” Hopkins told Hypergrid Business. But he’s waiting for final approval before sending them out. “We’ve already been accused of intellectual property theft,” he said. “So we’re not sending out any of the Great Canadian Grid OARs until I get Roddie’s input.”

The support email for GeVolution is support@gevolutionworld.com.

Updates will be posted on GeVolution’s discord channel at https://discord.gg/MAKEXGB.

According to Hopkins, there are more than 500 OARs, which are stored on Great Canadian Grid servers. The OARs are still owned by the Great Canadian Grid — ownership of them has not transferred to GeVolution. However, GeVolution has access to those servers and will be distributing the OARs on behalf of Macchi, who is currently in the hospital.

Once Hopkins gets the final go-ahead from Roddie Macchi, he will set up a page where region owners can give permission to move their regions to a download location and indemnify GeVolution against any intellectual property issues that may arise from that download.

Hopkins recently lost his wife of 23 years and is in the process of getting ready for her funeral tomorrow, April 1.

“Please understand that even though I am in pain and grieving, I have offered to help a fellow grid out and require nothing in return,” he said. “I shall even be paying the servers for the next month again not requesting anything in return, this is for the GCG members, not for me or GeVolution… for them.”

He added that some Great Canadian Grid users have been extremely abuse, and he’s had to block them. Those users will need to connect directly with Macchi for their OAR downloads.

The Great Canadian Grid went into a downward spiral in December, when a dispute with its previous hosting company, DigiWorldz, first took the grid down. A crowdfunding campaign then failed to raise enough money to save the grid, raising only $1,410 of the $5,000 needed, according to GoFundMe. However, in a now-deleted Facebook post in early January (cached version here), Macchi said that $3,100 has been raised.

The circumstances of this final shutdown, as well as those of the shutdown in December, are not completely clear. Macchi continues to blame his previous hosting company for the problems, but the hosting company said that only the additional functionality they themselves were providing was shut down — not the grid itself.

OpenSim core developer Ubit Umarov has denied that the OpenSim development team detected evidence of misconduct from the Great Canadian Grid’s former technical provider. But some OpenSim core developers do help out grids on their own, he added.

“One member of the OpenSimulator core development team was recently involved in technical support to that grid, in that individual capacity,” he said in a discussion on the OpenSim Users list. “That member informed that he had not detected anything other than natural consequences of termination of services provided by former technical staff or termination of the right to use materials under copyright restrictions.”

Maria Korolov