Second Life Opens up the Client

Fantastic news: Linden Lab has released the source code for the Second Life client under the GNU GPL v2. Nice historical context, too:

In 1993, NCSA released their liberally licensed, but proprietary, Mosaic 2.0 browser with support for inline images arguably heralding the start of the web as we know it today. In an act of either acceptance of the inevitable or simple desperation, Netscape Communications released the bulk of the Netscape Communicator code base to form the foundation of projects as Mozilla, Firefox, and Thunderbird.

We are not desperate, and we welcome the inevitable with open arms.

Stepping up the development of the Second Life Grid to everyone interested, I am proud to announce the availability of the Second Life client source code for you to download, inspect, compile, modify, and use within the guidelines of the GNU GPL version 2.

This is a great move by the Lindens, and a major step towards an open, standards-based virtual world. It will be interesting to see what comes of this. Sad, though, to see the deeply ignorant comments on the Linden Lab blog post lamenting this move because of the increased griefing they claim it will cause - as if security by obscurity ever worked.

Coders of the (virtual) world, unite!