I believe it was Emerson who argued that time is the most precious of all assets, because it is the only one that cannot be regained once spent. At no time does that lesson resonate more strongly with me than when I’m travelling heavily.

As with other assets, scarcity is intrinsic to value. The value of my free time can never be higher, therefore, than it is when artificially limited by obligation or circumstance. Circumstances such as being away from home every week out of the month of September.

The fact that I do not regret committing nearly an hour and a half to watching the above video in a 4×6 window of poor resolution, then, should tell you everything you need to know about what I feel about its value.

Few of us are given the opportunity to pass along our lessons learned before we ourselves pass along. When the rare individual does get that chance, it behooves us to stop and listen. They have a perspective that is granted only at great cost.

Thanks to Andy for the original pointer (his post includes an abridged version of the above), and my best wishes to Professor Randy Pausch and his family.

Since Linden decided to open source their Second Life client – or viewer, as they call it – there’s been a veritable flood of commentary, criticisms and everything in between. My first pass at parsing the news asked as many questions as it answered, so as promised I’ve been following up on those, both by digesting other commentaries and speaking with Linden Labs’ CTO Cory Ondrejka who very graciously gave me a half hour of his time this morning (and had already read my earlier piece – thank you Google, and thanks Cory for the time).

As is typical around here, we’ll tackle the subject in the Q&A format.

Q: How about the usual disclaimers?
A: I don’t know that I have any here. Linden Lab is not a RedMonk client, nor am I biased by an undue affection for Second Life. Mono, which will be addressed, is a technology I’ve argued on behalf of in the past, but that’s about the extent of it.

Q: You mentioned that you’d been digesting other commentaries: any in particular that you found interesting?
A: Way too many to list. The most complete, in my opinion, as I mentioned over on Luis’ blog, was Ethan Zuckerman’s take here. Charles River Ventures’s Susan Wu also has an interesting take, as unlike me she’s actually spent a fair amount of time in not just Second Life but other virtual worlds like World of Warcraft. As has IBM’s Bob Sutor, who sums up transcript from Cory’s town hall in a post here. Also looking at the town hall transcript was Novell/Mono’s Miguel de Icaza here. For the educator’s perspective, I looked at what Al Essa – ex-MIT, now Assoc. Vice Chancellor
/ Deputy CIO of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities – had to say. Those are a few of the posts still open in my Firefox instance anyhow. There are lots of interesting takes, just hunt around and you’ll find them.

Q: Let’s go back to some of the questions you had in your initial post: how about the complexity of the code itself?
A: According to Cory, the code is complex but not ridiculously so. It’s all C++ code, and was a.) not open source from day 1 and b.) is the product of a high paced development cycle, so it’s certainly not for the faint of heart. The code is, in fact, in the midst of being refactored. Plus, the functionality is non-trivial: real-time OpenGL rendering, protocol decompression, handling a tremendous number of textures, and so on. That said, within an hour of posting there was a Flickr shot of a full build (and Cory confirmed that the code would generally build in less than an hour, even without the help of something like distcc), they’ve already received their first patch, and Cory compared the client favorably to the complexity of the Firefox codebase. So it could be less complex, but it’s not impenetrable.

Q: Which of the clients (Linux, Mac, or Windows) is receiving the most attention?
A: Downloads are running about 85% Windows at this point, apparently. While that’s to be expected given the volume opportunities, Cory confirmed my impression that the lowest hanging fruit from a development perspective would be the Linux alpha. It’s fast, comparatively speaking, it’s just not reliable (my difficulties were attributed to deficiencies with my graphics card drivers, incidentally – or at least the way that the viewer uses them).

Q: What is Linden expecting in terms of contributions?
A: More or less what I expected: in the short term, mostly bug fixes and patches. Over the longer term, as people get to know the codebase better, then contribution could become more substantial, either from individual developers or – potentially – commercial entities with specific interests.

Q: How about the question of copyright assignment – is it a JCA? Outright assignment?
A: Shortly before getting on the phone this morning, I ran across their contributor’s agreement on the developer’s wiki. In short, it’s a JCA, as is fairly standard practice (much to the dismay of a substantial number of developers). I skimmed it, and it seemed fairly obtuse (as most legalese does to me), but maybe somebody legally inclined could give it a look to see if there’s anything unusual.

Q: What does that mean as far as accepting contributions?
A: Practically speaking it means that contributions back to Linden are owned jointly; this obviates the need for Linden to have to ask for your permission if they seek to relicense the code under a commercial license alongside the GPL version. It’s a fairly standard practice, if occasionally unpopular one.

Q: Are those the only terms under which contributions will be accepted?
A: Like many dual licensed and centrally maintained open source projects, such as MySQL, it’s certainly possible that Linden could specific license and integrate improvements to the code under commercial terms rather than the generic JCA. But those types of potential submissions, as discussed above, are a little ways away.

Q: What is Linden’s experience with open source?
A: In terms of using open source, quite extensive. The infrastructure is Debian (more proof, as if it was needed, of the importance of Debian), the web servers are Apache, they use Squid for caching, they’ve been working with Mozilla fairly extensively, and as has been much discussed, they’re betting heavily in Mono on the server. So as consumers of open source, they’re very well versed in a variety of projects on both client and server side.

But as project maintainers, it would seem, they’re very inexperienced. So that’s one reason to a.) start with the client, and b.) not wait until the aforementioned refactoring is complete. They need to learn, on the job as it were, what it’s like to run an open source project. The client is a more manageable open source project than the server.

Q: Speaking of the server…do you think it’ll be open sourced? And if so, when?
A: If Cory has anything to do with, I’d say they will. And as the CTO, one would assume he would have something to do with it. He seemed very genuine in his belief that open source was inevitable not just for the client but the server as well.

The obvious obstacle from my perspective is business model; at this point, Linden is essentially a toll collector for the Second Life network. Making the server software available would potentially undermine that ability, if not eliminate it entirely. And even presuming they can get that worked out, finding a way to not only establish multiple Second Life worlds but seamlessly bridge from one to another despite network gaps and so on is not the simplest of tasks.

But at the same time, it sounds as if Linden accepts the inevitability of the challenge. As I contended in my post the other day, they’ll face an Innovator’s Dilemma sooner or later as open upstarts challenge their superiority. Further, Cory’s view was that their ambitions to be a world rather than just a game preclude the idea that it would be an infrastructure that one vendor alone could run.

So while I can’t report any binding legal commitment, it does seem as if Second Life will be open source. As far as when, I couldn’t guess, except to agree with Ethan when he says not in ’07. Too much to be worked out.

Q: Speaking of Ethan, did Cory have any response to Dave Winer’s comment over on his blog that the server could reverse engineered from the protocol access granted by the open source client?
A: Yes. Cory’s answer was that the protocol was mostly available already, and he didn’t see the relatively small additional available information within the open source client making that significant a different in such an effort.

Q: Back on the open source front – have they selected a governance model for the project itself besides a license and basic copyright provisions?
A: No. With the project newly minted, and with the open source governance experience low organizationally speaking, Linden will be taking a wait and see approach with respect to governance. Personally, while Cory did not say this, I wouldn’t be surprised if they followed a path very similar to MySQL. But that’s just speculation on my part; I’m sure all options are still on the table.

Q: You mentioned Mono earlier: what does this decision mean for the platform?
A: Well, not much. As Miguel cited in his earlier post, this is from a post on the Linden blog:

Open Sourcing the client does not impact continued development of Mono or other planned improvements to LSL. Although Mono is also an Open Source project, that code will be running on the server, not the client. As has been previously discussed, part of the reason for going to Mono and the Common Language Runtime is to eventually allow more flexibility in scripting language choice.

I did ask Cory whether or not it was possible the codebase could be migrated from C++ to C#/Mono, and while he did mention that pulling scripting out to the client was a subject of interest, it’s not on the short to medium term horizons.

Q: Anything else from Cory that you found relevant?
A: Two points. First, that the decision to open source had actually increased developer interest in working for Linden Lab, which speaks to the desire that many developers have to work on projects out in the open. Second, that we need to bear in mind that a lot of the efforts within Second Life are in their extreme infancy – think of what web retailing mid to late nineties. I really hadn’t considered it in those terms, and that’s something I’ll have to think about.

Q: Any suggestions for Linden?
A: Tons, but we’re way over time on this already. So let’s just say this: if I were Linden, I would strongly consider committing – in a binding sense – to a timeframe for the open sourcing of the server. This would address many of the concerns that people like me have, and might prevent redundant efforts from reinventing what’s already been built. It might be far out, but it would go a ways towards ensuring that potential investors (in all senses of the that word) in Second Life would not be locked into the whims of a single vendor.

ScreenShot of Second Life on Ubuntu

Originally uploaded by sogrady.

As lots of you have no doubt noticed by now (you heard it here last), and Linden’s PR folks were kind enough to let me know via a morning email, the Second Life client is now open source (GPLv2 license, for those that are curious [1]). This was, according to Linden, an inevitable decision:

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.

Unsurprisingly, I think it’s a good decision on their part. As do Bob and Matt, among others. Linden is to be commended for this decision, IMO, and I’m hopeful that it will accelerate development of the Linux alpha which, the last I tried, was still taking my desktop with it when it crashed (the only application that can consistently do so).

While the Linden folks should be commended, however, I’m less certain than others appear to be that this will have a material impact on either the client or the concerns that many have with Second Life.

Client

I’ll see if I can’t make some time for Linden this week to get some answers, but I’m curious as to how accessible the code will be for non-Linden developers. It’s a sizable product; 30 MB’s as of 1.12.3.6, or roughly a third of the size of the OO.o codebase. While size is a rough metric at best for complexity, I think I’m safe in assuming that the client is non-trivial in its construction. That is a barrier to entry for would be open source developers, and it will be interesting to see how Linden tackles that. Is the code well documented? Did they take a page from Sun’s experience with OpenSolaris and flag relatively good entrypoints for folks new to the codebase? How modular is the client itself?

Over the longer term, I’m sure there will be interest in the project and at least some external contributions [2]. But in the short to medium term I’d expect the tangible impact to be more of the security patch type of contributions than potentially evolutionary or revolutionary new features, not least because while the client is open source the server is still not.

Server

Apart from a debate on the metrics of Second Life (criticism here, defense here), the principal concern that many have with Second Life – myself included – is the question of investing in a world owned, collectively, by a single commercial entity.

Second Life, after all, is differentiated, at least to me, by its intended longevity. I’ve played a fair amount of online games in the past – mostly of the first person shooter variety (I had a serious addiction to Team Fortress at one point that necessitated the uninstallation of Half Life, upon which TF was based) – but never doubted that eventually I’d outgrow the games. And I did. Investments made in those worlds, then, would be viewed as more or less frivolous – temporary outlays for short term gratification. The gaming equivalent of the stuff in the supermarket checkout aisle, in other words.

Linden Labs’ creation, on the other hand, is a different animal altogether. People heavily invest both financially and – more critically – in time, towards less ephemeral, more permanent goals. They build houses, they create furniture, they design clothes – there’s even a real estate market. The experience then, I would argue, is materially different from just about any other game out there (with the possible exception of World of Warcraft, which I haven’t played). It’s more demanding of one’s resources. And that would seem to be fine, as the reward is an immersive, long running experience.

The difficulty, however, is that all of your investments are ultimately dependent on a single entity, and more problematic, a single commercial entity, with all the responsibilities that that entails. Now I’ve heard almost nothing but positive commentary about Linden Labs and the way they conduct themselves, and the decision to open source their client is indicative of a vendor that understands and appreciates the nature of community.

But all that said, I’m instinctively mistrustful of closed environments; they’ve been tried before on the web, and most if not all have failed when faced with open competition. That does not appear to exist at the present time, so Second Life has yet to face a real threat of this nature, but projects can evolve. Like David, [3] I’m quite reluctant to invest significant time, money or both on either a personal or commercial level in a world that is inherently closed in nature – and could become more so depending on the financial fortunes of the organization backing it. I can’t forgo it entirely, because several of our customers are beginning to conduct briefings in the virtual world, but I’m definitely a skeptic (and can’t see myself spending money on SL clothes when I won’t do so in the real world .

Kudos, Anyway

Independent of those concerns, however, Linden deserves credit for this decision and their relatively capable handling of the news (there are some things missing from the FAQ, like contributor policies and such, but it’s not bad – call us if you need help there, Linden). I’d be far more excited were the announcement to cover the back end as well as the client, but I understand and appreciate the business models involved. While I think Linden’s probably only a few years away from an Innovator’s Dilemma in terms of combatting open alternatives, it’s certainly possible that the open sourcing of the client could win them converts in the interim – and the user experience should improve in either case.

Disclaimer/Credit: Sun, briefly mentioned, is a RedMonk client, and credit for several of the links belongs to Andy who sent them along today.

[1] Mildly interesting on the heels of MySQL’s recent decision

[2] Speaking of which, how are those to be handled, I wonder? All I found on the FAQ was this:

Anyone will be able to submit code to Linden Lab, which we will consider including in the Second Life viewer that most people download from secondlife.com. However, we will carefully review any submission, and ensure that it is safe and stable code that will be of broad benefit to all before we accept it into the mainstream version of the Second Life viewer.

I’m assuming the Linden folks will require either a JCA or outright assignment, no?

[3] See here for a response to some of David’s questions, or here for a view on why marketers should invest from Andy.

ScreenShot of Second Life on Ubuntu

Originally uploaded by sogrady.

For the record, I did try and get into Sun’s Second Life situated press conference today, it just didn’t work out. For the first five minutes, I received a message saying the location was full. For the next couple, I got a message saying that I was not allowed there. After that, the Second Life client – which is in a very Alpha state on Linux – hung, taking my desktop instance with it. When Second Life goes down, it really goes down. Incidentally, if you have problems getting the client to run on Linux, follow the instructions here.

Having played around with Second Life a bit this weekend, however, in preparation for today’s (botched) attempt at attending I must confess that I still don’t “get” Second Life. Not the technical part – I think what the folks from Linden Labs have accomplished is hugely impressive [1] – the social part. My explorations have not taken me very far, so admittedly I’m no expert on the subject, but just on principle Second Life confuses me. Perhaps, unlike the allure of MySpace or reality TV, I’ll come to understand it in time. Or maybe I’m just too old and crotchety.

Either way, sorry I missed the Sun folks – hope it went off well.

Disclaimer: Sun’s a RedMonk client.

[1] I’ve linked to this before, but skip to about 16:40 in the video here to hear about Second Life’s use of Mono.