Second Life Open Sources Client

An anonymous reader writes "Just noticed that Second Life released their client under the GPL today, and that they're up to 2.4 million users. Article says that 15% of users contribute scripted objects."

Comments

Excellent? Maybe ...

[eldavojohn]

Really, this is a great step towards "Cyberspace" á la Snow Crash. Open Source and, eventually, Open Standars will vastly spur development of this technology.

I'm generally positive about this move also. However, I played Second Life for a couple weeks back when it was coming out and, it's quite clear that Linden Dollars are directly equivalent to USD in some ratio. Now, one thing I've learned about MMORPGs like World of Warcraft & Ultima Online is that the client needs to be protected. What better way to protect it than to open source it, right? While I am of that opinion when it comes to other software, I feel that this just presents many problems for the server side of things. From the article,

But now, says Linden CEO Philip Rosedale, independent programmers will be able to "modify it, fire it up and sign on with it." The company gave Fortune exclusive access to executives in advance of the change.

Ok, so this is good unless hackers figure out how to modify the code to just perpetually make them Linden dollars. This isn't a combat game and position hacks really wouldn't do anything for you since you can fly anywhere in the game anyway. But I'm still a bit worried about people being able to look at the code of the client and abuse some action or property that is left responsible to the client and, in this manner, they gain an edge or amass Linden dollars.

Perhaps my fears are unfounded but I would imagine that the servers would be heavily taxed if everything was going on server side. I mean, let's say you make a product. It's possible this creation process is left to your client and then the server is informed of the new object and persists it. Well, wouldn't it be profitable to make a client that just keeps notifying the server of new objects that sell well in the world? I'm not too clear on the crafting process in Second Life but I imagine it takes resources.

I've heard a lot of comparisons of Second Life to Snow Crash but I'm not sold yet on this step being purely progress forward. I don't even think I could think of server software that could handle all possible clients without the processing and network traffic getting exponential.

Re:Excellent? Maybe ...

[Cheesey]

I think this is a surprising move, but for a different reason than client-side hacking, which is always unavoidable (although made easier by releasing source).

LL make their money by selling server space. You can't just connect your own server to SL - it has to be one of theirs. The network is closed. All of the PR and astroturfing that's been coming out of LL recently is aimed at getting more people to invest in SL space: the more investors there are, the more the space will be worth. They're trying to drive a homesteading boom like the one that happened in the early days of the Web, when companies started to go online.

Now people could create a SL client that can connect to an alternative SL universe: one where the servers are free software clones of the original SL servers. This makes SL an open standard. That means we can all join in and host our own stuff without having to pay LL for a server. The system is open - we can join for free.

Presumably LL are relying on "their network" being the best, so people continue to pay them for something they can now do for less money elsewhere. Bit like AOL and Compuserve assuming that their internal networks would always be worth more than Internet access.