“Hi SecondLife. Meet interoperability.”

SecondLife is now stepping in unfamiliar territory. With the recent showings of OpenSimulator that actually indeed works after the developers reverse engineered the sim based on the API hooks from the clients, IBM has also shown that the open source version does jam with the close source one. One of our own even visited the open source grids to give a shot a while back.

Now here’s the kicker. Is Linden Labs digging themselves into a ditch? Ponder ever so slightly at the current economics of SecondLife. Then ask yourself, if these sims can actually link together and there are sims out there that can be managed by third parties that would more free (aka less control), then would there not be a shift in economic base? It’s like opening the financial markets of an oligarchy to capitalists. The money would rise fast and furious, but it also would shift towards the capitalists and not so much through the hands of the oligarchy.

There also are many things that could come of an open source grid, but from a regulatory standpoint I would imagine that you would definitely see person(s) bring back a gambling grid. At the very least. And base it in a country where online gambling is permitted.

Now that the proof of concept has be shown the light, and people await patiently for the next step, my thoughts are towards Linden. What exactly are they doing? Where are they going with all of this? Are they going to open up the worlds? Are there new management ideas coming down the path? Or is this the same ol’ thing that drove most of the VTOR contributors away from the experience at the end? Either way, the open source part of it is exciting but the interoperability between grids bring upon many unanswered questions. Unless Linden is well prepared to either change their way of thought in managing the grids, this could be the precursor to frying themselves in the pan.