Second Life Client Released As Open-Source

It seems that on Monday Linden Labs released the client software, which is the component that the residents use for viewing and interacting inside the virtual world, as an open-source project. Linden Labs say that there are plans to follow suit with the server software, which is the component that powers the virtual world itself, but shall do so cautiously and gave no indication of any time frame for this upcoming release.

What this means is that now outsiders - those not employed by Linden Labs, will be able to modify the client software and add features that they feel are both needed and helpful or beneficial. This type of move does not guarantee the future success of Second Life, but turning to the open-source community has worked very well for projects such as Linux, Java, Apache, and several others as it allows a rather vast intellectual base or community of proven talented developers access to this code base.

It is reported that Cory Ondrejka, the Chief Technology Officer of Linden Labs, holds the hope that this move will initially bring much needed bug fixes to the Windows version of the client and a much better Linux version of the client software. In the long run Cory Ondrejka expects many more significant changes to the client.

It has been my experience that the Linux client requires some immediate attention. I was only able to get a linux client functioning properly once on a Suse 10 box. After that I had to resort to using the Windows client under Wine, but with every weekly update came a never ending onslaught of problems. It seemed to me like a Linux client was an afterthought, but it they did appear in the forums that they did put forth some effort to work with the Linux users. Since the Linux community consists of a number of diehard gamers, hopefully this new Linux client shall not be too far off.

Was this a wise move by Linden Labs? This VTOR contributor, being a big supporter and member of the open-source community, says yes! This move should bring the involvement of many talented programmers, which can accelerate the development and adoption of the software. Plus, as recent history has shown us, the open-source community and it’s vast intellectual resources tend to fix bugs & exploits somewhat faster than proprietary venders do.

This move seems to be a rather logical progression for Second Life since the very nature of this virtual world promotes it’s residents to use their talents and energies to build and control their in-world experience and existence. Now those who have written millions of lines of script code to control in-world objects, can use their talent and creativity to enhance the way that they interface with the virtual environment that they helped to create.

I would like to see the client evolve into a plug-in model. This way each resident can build or customize their client to suit their needs, desires, and resources. Something like that used by the web browser FireFox. I think this alone would reduce the number of difficulties that residents currently encounter.

Now upon releasing the server components as open-source, some may feel that griefers will be able to sneak things into the code base. But as long as Linden Labs maintains a sound version management and review policies, this will be rather impossible and there shall be far fewer outages and calamities then residents have experienced over this past year when a new version was rolled out.

I personally feel that this move will bring a much needed solution to Second Life’s scalability issues. Plus this could open up things for creating sim specific functions or features, yet still maintain a continuity with the adjacent sims, which opens up a whole new level of possibilities.

On top of everything else, this move opens the door for major players in the world of technological development like Sun Microsystems and IBM, who are not only staunch supporters of open-source, but have a presence in Second Life and an interest in virtual reality. I think that this alone might offer the biggest technological boost to Second Life. Hopefully we shall see the effects of this very soon.

I congratulate Linden Labs for this wise decision!