Tuesday, 9 January 2007

Second Life Looks to Open-source Move for Growth

Second Life Grid has made available the Second Life client source code for you to download within the guidelines of the GNU GPL version 2.The Second Life development work currently in progress is focused on building the Second Life Grid—a vision of a globally interconnected grid with clients and servers published and managed by different groups. Expect many changes and updates in the coming months in support of this architecture.

The initial move means outsiders will be able to modify the Second Life viewer software. That practice isn't a guarantee for success, but it has worked well with other open-source projects such as Linux and Apache. Linden Lab Chief Technology Officer Cory Ondrejka hopes initially for bug fixes and a better Linux version of the software, but in the longer run expects more significant changes.

"It's pretty clear when building something as open as Second Life, you want the product itself to be open," Ondrejka said. Second Life participants already have written millions of lines of script code to control Second Life objects, he said. "It would be a little silly to not allow that talent and energy to be applied to the client (viewer software) itself."

Second Life is a virtual world where people's avatars can chat, fly, buy goods and interact with programmable objects. Basic membership is free, but Linden Lab sells real estate to those who want to set up shop.