Well the big news of the day is that Second Life open sourced its client side viewer under the GNU GPL standard. Complete with a snazzy developers wiki and a lot of audaciousness (their word, not mine), the Lindens have made a giant leap forward in guaranteeing the success of the 3D internet. They have talked about this path many times, claiming that it has been an integral part of their dream from the beginning, but I would have loved to be at the board meeting when Phillip Rosedale explained to his investors that he was actually serious about it! Just to see the look on their faces. Really, how many VC sign up to make history rather then money? I might be wrong, and there is a lot to be said about them to this point, but WOW.
I of course, like any application developer paying any attention, am fanatically happy about the situation! We have just been given the keys to the kingdom, and we are ready. I think the analogy the Lindens made to the open release of Mosaic, web browser whose open source release by Netscape pulsed throughout the net, is totally accurate. All of the interactive applications that we at Metaverse Technology have been developing, in spite of the total lack of client side access, have now just been set free. Imagine the web with just HTML, without Flash and QuickTime plug-in, without Java support, and now
