[sldev] Opening the server source?

[Matthew Dowd]

> LL is moving towards being the ICANN of the 3D Virtual World - likely 
> what they will sell will be region handles on the main grid, and the 
> ability for your users to connect into it from other gridded servers. LL 
> will probably also sell things in addition, like asset storage space, etc.

As has been pointed out, allowing thirdparties to connect their own sims could result in massive growth of the Grid and put additional pressure on precisely the services which are currently suffering scalability/reliability/performance problems (the asset servers, the search servers, etc.), and this would be a major issue for LL aspirations to be the ICANN of a 3D web.

The more components that LL release to the commnuity the less work you'd have to do to run your own Grid. I am sure that as soon as LL release the sim source code, the OpenSIM community would start work on an opensource asset server etc.

I think third party SL grids are inevitable (the OpenSIM community will get there sooner or later in any case). 

One model is that LL runs the main Grid, with these thirdparty grids being just small, enthusiast Grids (although I suspect we'd see a lot of University research projects running these in anycase, which could loose LL some of its current publicity). However, someone will mod the client so that it can import/export full mod objects between Grids, someone will mod the client so that it can simultaneously connect to a second grid to do searchesin, IMs, map look ups etc. someone will mod the client so that logging in/out between Grids is as transparent to a user as a teleport, etc.

If would only take, say Microsoft deciding to run their own Grid to demonstrate the performance of MS SQL (that it can run a 3D world asset server with good performance even with transactions enabled), or Disney, or Maxis, or Google or Playboy etc. to decide to run their own Grids, and we would begin to see the emergence of a MetaGrid. At this point someone like Anshe Chung would set up an inter-Grid financial Exchange.

Within the MetaGrid which Grid you spent time on, or connected your sim to would be a mixture of cost, level of reliability, level of service, rules of conduct etc. unfortunately things which LL has been struggling with a little recently. At this point LL's Grid has to be highly competitive to survive, and it seriously faces the same fate of other Technology pioneers such as Netscape, Lycos etc. 

Would this scenario happen - I don't know, but there are no real major leaps of faith there - it is a real possibility, and one I'm sure LL would be taking seriously in its internal discussions on open sourcing the Sim code, whilst aware that the activities of the OpenSim community could still bring this scenario to pass regardless of whether LL open sources its own code or not!

Matthew


 
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