[sldev] Why Linden Labs needs to let the community extend the client without asking for their IP

[Ettore Pasquini]

On 4/6/07 5:54 PM, "Tim Shephard" <tshephard at gmail.com> wrote:

> a) LL is suffering from scalability issues

How is this related to the plugin API "problem" you mentioned earlier?

> b) LL is falling behind in the feature races as competitors gather

Who are the competitors?

> c) SL has a large developer community that could create the features LL is not
> d) That developer community needs realistic incentive to extend the client

Opening the sources of the viewer was really a major step, it just doesn't
happen so frequently. This move gave a tremendous and "realistic" incentive
to extend the client already.

>>> So: open up that plugin API.    Talk clearly and consistently about
>>> how we can extend the client and maintain our own closed source.

Hmm, closed source plugins for an open source app... Doesn't that sound
weird, at best? If you really want it to be approved by LL and the
community, you really need to explain what advantages a closed source plugin
architecture would bring over an open source one. And write it of course.

Ettore