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Second Life To Open Source Server Code

Posted by Zonk on from the over-there-is-sixth-life-nobody-goes-there dept.

mrspin writes "Having already taken the timid steps of open-sourcing the code for its client software, Linden Lab has confirmed that they'll be going the whole way, and will soon be opening up the server code for Second Life. This furthers Second Life's ambitions to be a fully distributed 3D network — built on interoperability and not owned by one company — a bit like the Internet itself. ZDNet's The Social Web asks: 'who will be the first to offer Second Life hosting or use the server code for their own internal purposes? IBM would be an obvious candidate, perhaps offering corporate Second Life services. And for the rest of us? GoogleLife, free virtual land — ad supported of course. It's certainly a possibility.'"

6 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Real Open Source by Trevor · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Second Life open client code is already out of sync with the production code because Linden Lab just threw it over the wall and then went on happily producing private versions of their software.

    Instead of waiting for them to do the same with the server, sidestep them altogether with libsecondlife.org's OpenSim or pick a new platform altogether from the growing list of real open source projects: Open Croquet, Ogoglio.com (my project), or Verse.

  2. Croquet? by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Informative

    I would ask those actually excited by this announcement to please inspect Croquet, a collaborative, three-dimensional framework for cooperative computing that is built atop Squeak, the modern implementation of Smalltalk by Alan Kay and others.

    Croquet is Open and Free now. It's in its early stages, but so is second life.

    I don't know if Croquet is an excellent choice for building a metaverse, but I'm pretty sure it's a better choice than Second Life.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Re:N/T by Bieeanda · · Score: 2, Informative

    The W-Hat crew in Baku region have had a two-way IRC-SL link for ages now.

  4. You're forgetting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    one detail... Second Life is intuitive and FUN to play with.

  5. Re:Angles of angels by WaXHeLL · · Score: 2, Informative

    As per "barter" in the tax code.

    You have a market price for linden dollars, this is available on Linden Lab's website. That's your "market value" of the goods.

    --
    The troll with karma.
  6. Re:Second Life Hype by Acer500 · · Score: 2, Informative

    There are currently 36,511 users currently logged into SecondLife right now. Somewhat hard to call that 'no one'. That's quite a lot, but it still pales in comparison to many online games.

    Soccer sim Hattrick http://www.hattrick.org/ usally has more than that (not right now, it has 13.000 because it's 2 am in Europe but on weekends and Wednesdays, it reaches 50.000 users simultaneously connected).

    I don't play it, but according to this site, World of Warcraft reaches 200.000 simultaneous users!!! and for all I know it could reach millions... http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december05/kirriemuir/12k irriemuir.html

    Other games I know of like Magic Online also have 10.000 to 15.000 users online at certain times, and googling showed EVE Online can have 50.000.
    --
    There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.