On Hurliman

 This Sunday at 11am is the big meet up for OSgrid residents to have their say and learn more about the decision to close the grid on the last day of December 2026. Come to Hurliman Plaza with a local avie, as simply dressed as possible, and have your say.

Event Plaza

Hurliman Plaza.... as most people know, there are a core set of OSGrid regions, they have 'Plaza' in their names. Let's take a quick tour of a few. For example, the most visited of all has to be Event Plaza where grid admin Aussie oversees the music on Wednesdays and at the weekend.

LBSA

Then there is of course LBSA Plaza, the Welcome sim for all of OSGrid, seen here in all its Halloween glory. You may be able to spot grid president Dan Banner center left. This sim dubs itself the social lounge of OSGrid, someone said years and years ago that LBSA stands for "Linden Bay Shipping Association", I wonder if that's true. It might be too late to find out. Despite having a web page dedicated to it, the history of OSGrid is very poorly preserved, which is a huge shame. 

However, there's more plazas out there to discover ...

Wright Plaza

Continuing with our Plaza tour, a lot of you know Wright Plaza with its historic freebie shops and the Shinlei Winkler prim sculpture of rearing horses, set there by Nebadon Izumi in 2007. There are three Sandbox Plazas, and another region that resonates is Recreation Plaza with its community games and competitions and art work - very much worth a visit.

Recreation Plaza

Of course there are also residential regions where Osgridders can have a free bit of land for a house. Each has its own style. SeaPrior is a maritime community...

SeaPrior

Zaius Plaza has a contemporary suburban feel, with houses set around a central building in the brutalist style. 

On the ground floor of the Landing point on Zaius, this poster reminds us of the rules of OSgrid, and of the nine unpaid Admins from around the world who have shared the burden of maintaining things in OSGrid in recent years.

And then there's Teravus Plaza - closest to my heart because Safari's clubhouse was located here from 2014, in the top right hand corner by the little hill. Since 2021 the Safari building (complete with flying bus) has been located just in front of the Marketplace on Teravus.

Teravus Plaza

Last but not least, Hurliman Plaza. It's an island sim with a multipurpose building for meetings big and small. In addition to the main auditorium there's an upper room that for years has been the home of the Core Developers weekly meeting, plus an outside loggia for informal get togethers, and even a pool where one imagines overheated attendees are sent to cool down. 

Hurliman Plaza

The region is named for John Hurliman an early dev who did such wonders for Opensim as writing a new package handler that allowed way more avies to be on a single sim all at the same time without crashing it - something pertinent to our meeting on Sunday. 

John left Opensim almost 15 years ago, due to pressure of other work commitments. He had been a valued contributor to the Opensimulator project for five years, and so it's no surprise that they decided to name a Plaza for him. 

I got to wondering, what would John Hurliman make of the news that OSGrid is closing?
Easy to find out! I wrote him, and he responded with these words.

"My connection to OSGrid comes through the early open-source work around libsecondlife, libOpenMetaverse, OpenSim, and SimianGrid. We were figuring out how virtual worlds worked and building tools that let more people experiment with them. OSGrid’s community actually built something with those tools, and kept it alive for nearly two decades.
"I stepped away from virtual-world development in 2011, so I can’t claim the credit that belongs to the people who kept OSGrid running and growing for all these years. Nineteen years is an extraordinary commitment from volunteers, builders, and residents.
"Hearing about the community gathering at Hurliman Plaza means a great deal to me. It’s a lovely connection to a chapter of my life that I’m grateful to have been part of.
"While it’s sad to see the end of an era, I also know that the ideas that were born in this early virtual space have shaped the world today. To everyone who gave their time to this place: thank you. I’m grateful that something I helped build could become a small part of what you made." - John Hurliman