Granted, it was expected, but there is one major issue thats a big bad omen: And thats content copy protection.
SecondLife has been largely tauted as a place where you can make a "quick buck" by creating and selling copies of content. This is mostly an artificial market created by placing DRM on objects - being able to flag a texture, model, script or an entire package as non copyable, modifyable or transferable. Personally, I am all for an opensource platform with no DRM involved. I believe that a VR platform can only become mainstream and widespread if it is open and free. But SecondLife's act is more self destructive because by nature they are not open and free. With the source out, it would be a rather easy task to duplicate models and textures of objects, pretty much "breaking the DRM" with a very casual effort from the programmer. This could be very damaging to their internal economy. Again, I do not support the concept of having virtual economies, but doing what they just did is more like shooting their own foot. Perhaps this signs that LindenLab now views the big gamers - companies and such as the real customers now? These people will have much less of an issue to "enforce their copyrights" then the regular person. On Jan 8, 2007, at 5:52 PM, Len Bullard wrote: > It was expected. It gives them a way to push the financing of the > development off to organizations like IBM and to claim they are an > open > platform. They need to do something to stop the burning of the VC > capital > and they have to solve out some very difficult technical problems. > > Expect yet-another-big-burst of CNet articles. > > len > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:vos-d- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of Or Botton > Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 9:38 AM > To: VOS Discussion > Subject: [vos-d] SecondLife client goes Open Source > > LindenLab have just opened the source code for the SecondLife client. > > http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/ > > This step has actually surprised me - I didnt think that they were > anywhere near doing this for the next two years or so. > > _______________________________________________ > vos-d mailing list > vos-d@interreality.org > http://www.interreality.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vos-d > > > > > _______________________________________________ > vos-d mailing list > vos-d@interreality.org > http://www.interreality.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vos-d _______________________________________________ vos-d mailing list vos-d@interreality.org http://www.interreality.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vos-d
