developerWorks: Second Life Client, Part 1: Hacking Second Life

[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for this link. ]

"Second Life is a virtual world, maintained through a combination of client software and hosting servers. It is somewhat similar to various 'massively multiplayer' online games (MMOs) but has the unusual quality that nearly all of the content is user-provided. It is also unusual in that Linden Labs recently announced the release of its client software as open source. This is something that is rarely, if ever, done in commercial MMO apps. The specific license chosen is the GPL, version 2, with an exception for FLOSS software.

"In this series, I introduce the client (or 'viewer' in Linden terminology) and explore the development environment, documentation, and more. Developers who are used to an open source environment are sometimes a little put off by things that might be done differently in a commercial environment, and this project offers a number of opportunities to explore some of the tradeoffs. Of course, the best way to explore a program is to do something with it, so this series gets into the code to make a few changes..."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Computerworld: Second Life's Population Problems(Mar 07, 2007)
• internetnews.com: Second Life's Open Source Fairy Tale(Feb 02, 2007)
• Linux Journal: 2007 Begins with a Bang(Jan 22, 2007)
• internetnews.com: SecondLife Goes Open Source (Sort of)(Jan 09, 2007)