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Open Source Second Life

Wagner James Au comments on Linden Labs' decision to Open Source the code that runs the Second Life viewer. [Link]

The official announcement begins by comparing Linden’s move to what Netscape did (motivated by “acceptance of the inevitable or simple desperation”), when they opened the source to their browser, which led to a fruition of Web development.

For the very young who are reading this, some history: Netscape, you see, was a company that once dominated the browser market. Why sonny, did you know its IPO in 1995 launched the dot com boom? Yes they did. Now, however, its share of the browser market is less than 1%. So while it’s true the source code was a marvelous gift to the web’s growth, in retrospect it seems like a heroic sacrifice— great for the Internet, but not so great for the company that did it.

jon posted this at 10:10 PM
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