From Dana Blankenhorn & Paula Rooney: "Linden Labs, whose Second Life is so cool yet so lacking in profits it’s been lampooned in an IBM ad, sent out an e-mail alert this week boasting that open source is giving the company, well, a second life. The alert lists a host of open source contributions made to Second Life over the last year:
* An open source Second Life client written in AJAX.
* A mobile Second Life client.
* A custom viewer allowing more mixing between Second Life and the real world.
* A patch enabling you to use Second Life with your 3-D glasses.
Linden Labs has also created awards for open source contributions and said its acquisition of Windlight opened up more Second Life code to open source licensing.
The criticism IBM makes in its ad is the same one many people make for open source generally — show me the money. Actual money. Got any money to show them?" I wish LL would be more open source about their financials. They are reportedly profitable according to their CEO and "self-sustaining".
4 comments:
they broke from red into black when they were at top, i.e. when online casinos and ponzi-schemed-"banks" were still online... I wonder what they have now :)
Just look at MySQL's IPO if you want to see how OS makes money!
or rather the mysql sale to sun for $1 Billion - http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8UM8OJG0.htm
not sure whether MySQL is of same league as Second Life (to put it polite) - utility of MySQL is merely visible, while LindenLab's open source efforts of now-gone Cory were only small initiative... And now LL ship goes down content-and-quality route - open sourced sims & grids are of least their interest if not only against of it. But let's wait and see - we have no license for future...
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