News:OpenClient

From libsecondlife

Today Linden Research announced that they have opened the source code to the Second Life viewer application. This shows commitment to what they have said in the past, and this lends credence to the statement that they intend to open other aspects of the Second Life infrastructure.

Several people have asked if this spells the end of libsecondlife. Work will continue, as libsl continues to provide a platform to develop new third party tools. The source released today is that of a client, not a library upon which to build upon.

The libsecondlife and libsecondlife-java projects both provide the additional flexibility of having a BSD license, compared to the GPL license under which the viewer was released. Both are "open", however the BSD license is more open in terms of derivative works and this may prove attractive to some that would wish to make use of Second Life as a platform for the Metaverse.

Licensing details remain something of which the libsecondlife project must continue to be aware. Due to licensing differences between the two projects, we will need to completely re-implement any application which connects to the Second Life platform. That is to say that the Second Life viewer code is not to be straight-up copied. The Second Life source will be useful in creating specifications, but we must make sure they are free of all implementation details.

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