Avination Viewer history
A little bit of back story. A couple months ago, i was asked to replace Mana Janus as viewer developer at Avination, replacing their viewer which used to be essentially rebranded Hippo by something more technically up to date and stable. The work began, and most necessary features were integrated into Singularity by version 1.5.6. Then my availability became low, and we agreed on adding another developer to the project. I didn't know at the time who this developer would be, and it was a surprise to learn that it was Fractured Crystal, with whom i got in touch and kept so during the project to oversee and assist. I have since terminated all contact with him. I don’t really know him at all, never was in touch with him before, nor am i aware of much of his character and back story, except for the obvious reasons for demise of Emerald, to the extent that it was in the press. I don’t really believe in branding people for life, even if they happened to derail once, so i was a bit cautious but didn’t see any immediate problem with him working supervised, and i think this had been Melanie’s attitude too, considering it’s obvious she never intended to hide who the new viewer developer is, and he was treated and presented just like any other Avination employee. I soon had the impression that Fractured was doing a clean job, not a single unnecessary change. The whole operation lasted perhaps a couple of weeks, in which he is likely to have had his hands full with viewer rework. Avination viewer 0.2, based technically on Singularity 1.5.8 (approximately - few commits on Singularity give or take) was the result.
As to security concerns: Avination Viewer binaries are produced from co-published source code by Melanie Milland, the proprietor of Avination grid. She has been producing binaries way before Fractured was involved. No pre-buillt dependencies (third party binaries which are used when building viewer from source) were changed compared to Singularity. Source code to the viewer itself has been audited by me, but is also available to third party audits. As to whether Fractured could have had any influence on the server software: Melanie herself has a strong obsessive-compulsive personality trait (perhaps to the extent of being unpleasant to work with) and is generally very concerned with security, it’s my assessment of her character that she would not give a person even a tiny bit more access rights than absolutely necessary for those to perform their job, and would keep a strong eye on whatever resources were trusted to the person.
One last major task that i left unfinished, was a full UI rework to look and feel more similar to the original Avination viewer, which isn't and will never be part of Singularity. In the state i left Avination viewer originally, UI rework was partially done but had many non-functioning parts. Fractured Crystal did the following:
- Numerous UI XML changes and fixes
- Changes of setting pre-sets
- Radar, activity column
- A change in menu handling to facilitate movement of menu items
- Search system changes providing one additional option
- Globalized show muted chat toggle
Since I oversaw all changes, the question of whether Fractured is trustworthy is completely irrelevant. I’m certain that Avination Viewer 0.2 is absolutely safe to use.