Second Life goes open source

Popular online world Second Life has officially become an open source application. 

Linden Lab, which develops and hosts Second Life, said it has made public the source code for the client-side 'Viewer' application, allowing developers to alter and redistribute the code under an open source licence. 

The company did not release the code for the server-end software used to host Second Life.

Linden Lab will continue to develop an "official" Viewer application that contains in-house fixes and additions, as well as new features taken from outside developers. Only the Linden Lab version of Viewer will be supported by the company.

Executives claimed that the move is a natural progression for Second Life, which relies almost exclusively on content created by users.

"While it is clearly a bold step for us to open source our code, it is entirely in keeping with the community creation approach to Second Life," said Linden Lab chief technology officer Cory Ondrejka.

The market for user-generated content has led to a self-sustaining economy in Second Life. Users purchase 'Linden Dollars' to obtain clothes, objects and services in the online world.

Second Life has nearly 2.5 million users and Linden Lab processes almost $1m per day in transactions.

Interest from large companies such as IBM and Sun Microsystems has turned the creation of Second Life buildings and objects into a profession. 

Wagner James Au has spent nearly four years as an 'embedded journalist' in Second Life, publishing the New World Notes blog which chronicles events in the virtual world and its various communities. 

Au told vnunet.com that most of Second Life's casual users will have little, if any, immediate reaction to the news. 

"The large majority of the Second Life community, if they can keep doing what they're doing, will not care," he said.

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