Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

Some of my blog readers have asked me the question that Second Life have made the move toward open source by releasing their code for the Second Life Viewer. I just want to quickly note what they have released are the code for the client side application, not the server technology. Without the server being open source, Second Life is still a proprietary system. In another word, Second Life is a server based technology that allowing multi-users to log on and share the simulation experience, without the server, the client is only a useless portal to an empty space.

The next question would be will this hurt Linden Lab's business? The answer is not likely. Sure people can reverse engineer the Second Life server and then “duplicate” the entire second life technology, but what's more important is the business model and service model behind the business. This reminds me when Macromedia just released their Flash Viewers' code, both Adobe and Corel came up with their own Flash authoring applications (Adobe LiveMotion and Corel R.A.V.E.). However Macromedia didn't lose much of their flash application buyers at all. I do need to point out Flash is not a server based technology (all flash animations are rendered on the client side). So, Linden Labs is, of course, in a much safer position. In order to replicate Second Life, one needs to create their own server to work with the clients.

Then why would Linden Lab do this? I don't know, and I don't understand either. Because many of the open source network based applications I have come across with are poor user interface on the client side but solid server architecture. This is because most of the open source projects do not have hundreds of marketing specialist and support staff to feed the users' need back to the developers at a timely basis. From a pure technical point of view, I personally think companies would benefit much more by releasing their server side technology rather than the well thought and well designed front end applications. Linden Labs is doing exactly the opposite by releasing the client side codes only and hide the server side code from the Open Source community. This way they lose the opportunity of having hundreds and thousands of brilliant open source developers to improve their server side technology.

Croquet, needless to say, it is a complete open source product. In fact, you can even start your own company based on the code.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so... - from Croquet License page

However, I do respect the effort of Linden Lab making the client application code available to the developers, it is a baby step towards the open source community. I am looking forward to see them working out a better strategy, a plan that is win-win for both them and the the open source communities. That, of course, will always benefit us the end users.