Look at Blu-Ray and HD-DVD which are both superior from a quality perspective and yet are totally insignificant compared to DVD the current standard. Second Life is in a great position because of the economy. There are others that have an economy like Entropria, but there aren’t many. Croquet? Is there an economy there yet?

As for linden lab being able to control who can connect to the servers? If we are to believe what Daniel Linden says, they want to step away from that, not get further entrenched. I don’t know who to believe or exactly what will happen but once it goes open source, the horses are out of the barn no matter what licensing they use. It’s possible Linden Lab’s hands will be forced with projects like opengrid, just like the RIAA is being forced to deal with DRM.

We all could have created our own virtual worlds already, anyway without Linden Lab. Whether it’s Croquet or the others, or simply building one from scratch, nobody *needed* Linden Lab to have their own world.

What I think is the most important thing that makes Second Life be Second Life is Content, Content, Conent. Linden Labs has already said, if I recall correctly, that even after open sourcing, *they* want to be the primary providers of Inventory management, data management, and by extension that means content management.

External islands aren’t necesarily going to have great builds and great environments except if content creators decide to cross license to each individual island owner outside of the official grid. Otherwise, these island owners are going to have to connect to the Second Life grid to preserve inventories and carry content to their islands. And if they to do that, guess what? They’re going to probably have to live by the *same* set of standards that Linden Lab implements, otherwise Linden Labs will simply not allow them to connect.

Scenario:
Linden Labs: Oh, you have certain content X on your external island, or you engage in Y type of behavior there? Well, sorry, but you can’t have our inventories because we have “community” standards here, and our “community” disagrees with yours and we’re not going to indirectly say to our community that your content behavior is ok by allowing you to connect. Bye.

Perhaps even Worse at some point:

Linden Labs: Oh, content creator X, I see you’ve been sharing content with external island Y, and we disagree with Y’s content or behavior. Sorry, but you’re going to have to stop creating content for them in order to stay on our grid because we don’t want to be associated with them, even indirectly.

They will still hold most of the keys to the kingdom so long as the content creators find it more beneficial to stay in their grid where most of the customers and most of the economy is, don’t you think? If push comes to shove, based on their prior behavior, I certainly don’t expect Linden Labs not to cave in to certain pressures that call for this sort of isolation from external “undesirables.” And by external pressures, I mean legal pressures not “community” pressure, mainly where different countries’ laws conflict and Linden Labs decides to abide by the most restrictive of the bunch.

When the code is released, I am nearly certain it’s going to be licensed similarly to the client, in a GPL+exception style license, perhaps even with GPLv3 (???) to ensure that improvements or changes must be shared with the world so that nobody uses their code to create a better world that they can keep to themselves.

The last and only resort then will be to get those cross-licensed content deals and hope Linden Labs doesn’t deter the content creators from making them.

And even without that pressure, you are going to run into problems with content creators wanting to charge more simply for carrying content to your island (because they can) or simply deny it because they too disagree with your island’s practices. (Not to agree or disagree whether or not they have that right.)

So I don’t know.. were it not for the Content, I don’t see what truly makes Linden Lab’s Second Life so great that would make somebody want to choose a future GPLv3 (or similar licensed) coded Second Life server when there are so many other alternatives (doesn’t Croquet already have HTML-on-a-”prim” and even entire-applications-on-a-”prim” already, for example?).

I think they’re continuing to shoot themselves in the foot by becoming more involved in regulating content and trying to spread their software across the globe “at all costs,” rather than sticking with their initial stated intentions, OR AT THE VERY LEAST, putting restrictions on residents ONLY where absolutely necessary (German users can’t do X, French users can’t do Y, Spanish users can’t do Z…).

Because now, they’re just throwing the years of promises to the early adopters to the wind and saying good riddance. I’m not sure how much they’re going to like that as time goes on.

I think that video speaks volumes about the dreams of LL.

(and yet as you point out too Badger, their actions speak the opposite)

On top of that, they acted outside of the scope of their own Community Standards by saying “broadly offensive” things are prohibited everywhere, even though the document itself says it’s only prohibited outside of private Mature areas.

And on top of *that*, their own ToS was just declared unfair and illegal with respect to the law of their own state in which they operate. Yet they chug along with their agenda and actually think people will be spoon fed their rhetoric and believe every word.

That’s just my opinion, anyway. The cult reference is a good one because anyone who does actually believe that you can be “hooked” to their platform without a viable alternative being in existence is kidding themselves.

People may well be hooked to the idea, but if another similar idea comes along, don’t expect people to decide to stick around just because they like the color of your logo or the faces of your employees. It’s about the service and what you do with it, and how your ideology devolves over time.

Anyone else besides me think the goal was to lure people in within great promises of both riches and freedom, then once people came in, relationships formed and assets acquired, and cost of leaving became, swoop in, and slowly change the rules to try to mold the service into what you really initially wanted it to be, rather than the “monster” you created.

So yeah, he sounds a bit off the wall there.