Second Life made their client software open source today, sparking near rapture among its hard core users (see comments to their blog post). The first two paragraphs of the announcement talk a lot about about the inevitability of destiny. And they mention Second Life in the same breath as Mosaic and Mozilla.
I’m a Second Life fan, but sometimes the hype gets to be a little too much. At any given time up to 20,000 or so people are logged in to the service. That’s not enough adoption to justify putting Second Life in the same sentence as Mosaic and Mozilla just yet. Today, it’s the playground for just a few hard core users who can live with an annoying server lag and who, apparently, spend at least some of their time gleefully throwing penises at others. Second Life is a really fancy hosting business, since their main revenue source is renting servers for people who buy islands and other real estate.
At current growth trends, though, SL could be a real economic force in a few years. When things really start to hop, SL will look more like it’s own private Internet. Or a privately held virtual nation. At the point that millions of people spend most or all of their waking hours within the SL world, we’ll know this has happened.
I think people (and governments) will start to get a little nervous at that point. It will be impossible for SL to put both its shareholders and users first, and history suggests that users will get the shaft. I can image the most bizarre anti-trust lawsuits in history being fought in courtrooms around the world.
What might make more sense in the long run is more of a Wikipedia-like approach to Second Life. A non profit organization running open source software where people can add their own island just by plugging in a server in their living room or the hosting provider of their choice. Whoever builds that and provides a serious alternative to the SL experience could help the world at least as much as Wikipedia has.
I’m a big fan of private enterprise, but when it comes to creating the next world, perhaps the interests of shareholders should come second to those of its actual residents. And since virtual worlds have many of the attributes of a natural monopoly, running them via a non profit organization may make a lot of sense.
Bloggers are also noting that Second Life has only open sourced the client software portion of their business, not the actual grid. Steve O’Hear speculates on what would happen if they did open source the grid, allowing anyone to add their own server (and therefore real estate) to the system. The result would be a plummet in real estate prices in SL.
Our previous Second Life coverage is here.
Maybe I’m just too skeptical, but I don’t really see Second Life ever becoming a huge force. Sure people are making money in it, but it seems the game only appeals to people who see the dollar signs in it. It’s a tiny little world that only has value because people in business say it does. I think it’ll eventually start to inflate, people will lose money, and then they will lose interest.
But like I said, maybe I’m too skeptical.
Yawn. No one plays this game.
Interesting post but there is no shortage of tools on the web that would be well served by nonprofit leadership. That comes at its own price too, though. The nonprofit world is a frustrating, slow place that’s widely short on innovation and very hard to sustain financially. Given the state of the world, other strategies seem most realistic - like demanding *open standards* so that competing for-profit enterprises and small nonprofit alternatives can cross polinate and hold eachother accountable.
I dont think we can / ask or demand / anyone to go ” Non-Profit” I mean is this atleast 25% comparable to asking Google to open source their algorithm? or - go non-profit?
- I see that we can ask - ; for a Secondlife.org which would mirror a Google.org -
- We have to allow the companies that created the software; to capitalize on it! if not there is not reason anyone would want to creat new things; there has to be a benefit.
- When you have a very very! original idea (windows, DOS, Office) you are allowed / atleast for a moment / ! its un-spoken law.
- I don’t think SL owes us anything; and they should be 100% free from outside pressure to create!
Just my opinion , RBowles
i felt obliged to try out SL, so a while back i duly registered (so i guess i - like many others - am only compounding the issue regards their ‘real’ # of users) and hastily assembled an avatar and went for a stroll. i can’t really be bothered to comment much more than that, frankly. spent about 30mins in there and have never logged back in.
if people (whoever they are) really want this kind of parallel alter-ego world then a web-enabled multi-gamer version of the sims would surely destroy SL?
To this day I’ve still not bothered to checkout SL properly.
I’m now intrigued as to how it can be abused especially for financial gain
“then a web-enabled multi-gamer version of the sims would surely destroy SL?”
They actually already tried that… Sims Online. It wasn’t very much fun.
I’ve never heard of SL until today…guess I will have to try it out..mike always putting me up on something new!
Well, I’m just hoping it turns out like the VR world in Snowcrash. Is that too much to ask?
ta for that heads-up, phil - when i submitted my post i thought re: sims: ’surely they have already tried that?’ - mind you, we bought the sims a cpl of yrs ago and i think in total have used it (played with it? what is the lexicon for such software apps?) for a few hrs. maybe we’re the wrong demographic, i guess
Linden Labs have hinted that they might open source the grid too. But I doubt that they could swallow the drop in land prices if they went down that road.
I think Marshall’s right - a non-profit would sure be nice. But just having open standards so that anyone can plug in a server and interoperate with the SL grid would be plenty.
I caught Philip Rosedale’s talk at the end of November (http://discuss.longnow.org/viewtopic.php?p=587) and he said in no uncertain terms that their goal was to do just that sort of openness.
This seems like a great first step.
As antisocial as I am, I don’t see the point of people paying money for 0s and 1s and waste their time living in a virtual world. Once we figure out how to replicate the model of the human brain, we may copy these idiots brains and delete them from the real world to preserve natural resources.
I am still uncertain about the impact of an open-source client for SecondLife. Seems that it might open up more opportunities for more intellectual property theft (such as the copybot controversy). http://secondlife.reuters.com/.....rotection/
Since the most serious SL gamers are business owners, it very well might undermine the reason that most of them are there. Many perhaps haven’t realized the potential harm, but you will likely hear the community complain loudly about the problems that may be caused by this in the coming weeks. Will Linden ax open source clients? Likely not. But they will likely burn through some serious dollars to patch up holes that will be discovered by handing the keys over to the community.
As far as SecondLife being an economic force, it is very likely considering that the momentum they are gaining is staggering. One small indication is that, a while back, U.S. Congress realized the potential for virtual economies and the real value of virtual property. They launched a probe to determine what policy changes might need to be made regarding taxation: http://secondlife.reuters.com/.....economies/
I agree, from the outside, this looks like a passing fad, but it could be a very venerable force if the trend continues in the same direction it is heading now.
It’s overrated. I even had one of the SV types quoting and saying “If you like being a diaper wearing Foxman… ” .. well you get the picture. It’s for people with a ton of time on their hands; and from what I hear, that is what you need with the crap back end lag you have.
Crash and Burn is what I am predicting. It wasn’t in my list of predictions for 2007, but - let’s all see how big it is in December 2007.
Rex
think bigger. second wikipedia would better go with the space metaphor of eve online. every server a planet. SL is just trying to building another mafia run las vegas. so expect some chinese dynasty world, or bollywood cyberopera to become much more interesting than this bad trip of flying penises and L$ gold rush. SL is a ghost from the nineties, fed by old media to bring down the web2 blogosphere. it’s extropian avatars and VR goggles all over again.
I’ve only heard of second life till now. It is nice that they are going open source and letting people create what they want to create but only the truly dedicated will create. But like many people are saying, it’s a copy of the Sims. I will wait and see how this goes before i make a true decision on the outcome.
Ethan Zuckerman from the Harvard Berkman Center has been calling for this for a while. I think it is for the best.
the idea of virtual property hosted on seperate private servers but united in one virtual world is really cool…
and has been described in sci-fi:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....#Labyrinth
I think you are putting Second Life up on a pedestal… I never see it getting the be a major force in the gaming industry much less in the IT industry. Second Life becoming an Internet alternative? This is the single-most crazy thing you have ever said.
Eric B (#9)- I LOVED SNOWCRASH!!! Why can’t Stephenson write like that anymore??
Anyway, lame idea Michael. By most accounts (including Wired) SL is “huge” or the “biggest VR on the planet.” In reality, the user base is still a bit small to be calling for pre-emptive self-regulation…
http://www.crunchback.com
I really do not think a website with virtual crap on it would pose a threat to the real world.
Tell me any reason or facts that justify that SL is a larger economic force than WoW, world of warcraft?
or any other online virtual world exceeding 20,000 ccu, which should be more than 20 in a worldwide base.
—-
http://blog.miula.cc/
SL will go down in journals as the largest example of mass hypnosis (of the media) in modern history. some seem to have taken the bluepill and are waking up. I mean what kind of human hamburger do you have to be to buy “virtual real estate” with “real money”? I love Gibson, Sterling & Stephenson - this comes no where near. just read the code of conduct page - if there is a purgatory, then SecondLife is definitely what it must be like.
If Second Life turns out to be an important way for humans to interact (or have fun or conduct business) then a truly open, public grid computing, alternative will spring up. Linden Labs have an opportunity to be that grid, but it depends if their shareholders are in it for the long term or if short-termism wins out.
Love it or hate it but dont ignore it! Consider what shopping on-line, or searching for information or many other things would be like if it were via a SL type of interface! Much more easy to understand and hey you would be able to interact with site employees and other customers in a much more productive way. The money side is interesting. Inside SL things are very cheap - people give you all sorts of useful things and the girls really like the shopping. People already devote much time for little return just to enhance the experience for everybody. The crunch comes when real-life resources are needed for SL things. Own servers cheaper (if the grid code goes OS)? GMAB! People already complain of lag and want more bandwidth so a server in someones bedroom on ADSL is hardly going to get worthwhile traffic!
I agree with some of the following:
“What might make more sense in the long run is more of a Wikipedia-like approach to Second Life. A non profit organization running open source software where people can add their own island just by plugging in a server in their living room or the hosting provider of their choice.”
… at least, from a technical standpoint. That is, the grid should be totally open. I don’t agree that it has to be a “non-profit” in order to succeed. Profit-based business models and open infrastructure can work well hand-in-hand (see: World Wide Web).
I find the concept of “renting” land at high prices a paradoxical one in the age of bits and cheap server hardware. This is where Linden’s business is the most vulnerable to disruption.
I like Second Life, but agree that to a point its a little overhyped. We wrote about the American Apparel store that opened in there and I’m a fan, but I have to admit, a lot of friends/people that I showed the concept to were more freaked out that others spend time in there than wowed by it.
Comparing SL and WoW in any way is a bad idea. But SL has a significant advantage in one respect: the market for foreign exchange between their currency and the US dollar is legal by the game standards and there is competition in the space. WoW will never allow that to happen as it is antithetical to the myth/enviornment of the game.
As for a fully open 3d emersive environment, try Croquet at http://www.opencroquet.org . It hasn’t quite taken off yet, but its good, and its poised.
Hmmm…Second Life, I tried it. But I just don’t care to live my life online. Maybe I will try it again someday.
Per your suggestions “where people can add their own island just by plugging in a server in their living room or the hosting provider of their choice” check out this coy from Melbourne Australia.
http://www.vastpark.com
If you had any idea.