Linux Client for Second Life
Thanks for alerting me to this, ! It's only a matter of time before and I can explore the online virtual world of Second Life simultaneously, side by side. A version of the SL client program that can run on my Linux computer is under development-- long rumored of-- and has now been revealed. Linden Labs made a early and incomplete Alpha version of the software available for download and bug-testing.
I've downloaded it, and much to my surprise, the license says it contains source code. It also says that permission is given for anyone to modify and distribute it. That smells like Open Source Software to me, even though it's an Apache license which I'm not familiar with, rather than a GPL. If so, this is more incredible than I thought. Is this an act of self-destructive heroism on the part of Linden Labs?
The way the game has made money works as follows: LL provides the software for free, and even lets you play the game for free, but if you want to build things or own property you have to pay. They worked out a system in which the cost is roughly proportional to the bandwidth and processing power necessary for your objects, special avatars, land, and buildings to be rendered when players view or interact with them.
Isn't there some secret in the source code that open source programmers could use to create an interoperable equivalent to Second Life, run it on free, non-Linden servers, and let users start importing the landscape and objects of the Second Life world? Could these servers create an infinite amount of virtual money that could be spent in Second Life? If that happens, how does LL plan for their business model to continue to work? Probably because they have not released the source code for the servers.
But LL has even more going for it than a lock on its currency validation and its world. Second Life is a classic Web 2.0 company in that all the content of the experience is created by many users working together. That's where the value comes from. What makes most internet-based businesses work is not just the software, it's the critical mass of participants. Consider the open source instant messenger Jabber. This challenger hasn't supplanted any of the champions because we choose an IM service for social reasons, based on who else we know that's on it.
Can some of you tell me more about this license, or about running web services? Do you think LL is crazy like a fox? What are they up to? In any case, I'm thrilled that Linden Labs has made this move, and hope that they are rewarded.
Comments
stormgren on Feb. 13, 2006 2:31 AM
The Apache license is a pretty free license. It's more BSD like than GPL like, with the primary difference is that no matter what, you must always attribute the Apache Foundation (or, in this case, the SL programmers) for the source code they contributed.
There's a very tiny bit of controversy regarding that last bit, but it really isn't that big a deal.
One could reverse engineer a server implementation based on how the clients expect to communicate with the Second Life servers, which is no "secret", as it's just part of the source. Happens all the time in the software industry in various forms all the time (See the Samba Project vs. Microsoft's SMB/CIFS protocol as a good example.)
That being said, whatever someone reverse engineered for a server would more than likely not be compatible with the SL server's inter-connections. You could theoretically create a perfect SL utopia where there was scads of "money", but there would be no revolution in the "official" SL world, unless Linden has done something massively dumb in designing their protocols and security. If so, you'd probably see changes happen VERY quickly to contain the damage. Attempting to impose new rules on the servers externally is the computation equivalent to screwing with the space-time continuum, you Just Don't Do That.
That being said, there is something to be said for a distributed base of SL servers being run by private individuals that would generate them "income" from the system by making resources available to the SL world at large. Again, not a trivial task to secure or properly maintain such a beast, though it does generate ideas I need to investigate.
One could work instead to create a second Second Life (Third Life?), but there is the fact that sheer inertia tends to keep someone else from trying to take on the SL world and serverbase. Additionally, running the servers and Internet *connections* required to duplicate the SL infrastructure is not a trivial task. You'll see a lot of one-off implementations run by private individuals if someone generates a second server implementation, but to take on SL directly would require a capital investment of not insignificant size. It's not impossible, just improbable.
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