Shuttleworth Talks About Open Sourcing Virtual Worlds

...Second Life of course brings a new twist to the idea of immersion, though for now it’s immersion on the virtual side of the looking glass. What interests me are the ways in which there is cross-over between the virtual world and the real world. When I’m walking around town, does my mobile phone alert me to changes in the virtual world? And when I’m working at my PC, how much can I stay focused on work, say, while my PC also keeps me abreast of what’s going on with my avatar?

I think there’s going to be a need for innovation around the ways we blur the lines between real and virtual worlds, and this is again one of those places that I think the free software community could steal a lead on the proprietary world. Think of the “presence” framework being extended to know not only about the real world, who’s where doing what, but also about these virtual worlds, in which we might each be engaged in any number of different activities. Turning all of that into a nice seamless experience is the challenge.

-- 'Sensory immersion', Mark Shuttleworth

He didn't jump right out and say 'Open source SecondLife' or 'Make SecondLife Free software'. To say so would be inaccurate. A few of us have been thinking about it seriously, and some have been doing more than thinking - such as LibSecondLife. Some of us are trying to map data from SecondLife into the real world, and vice versa - I'm one of them.

Even the most vociferous critics of SecondLife will say that the people who do own the rights to the proprietary code are doing things wrong. Oddly, these same critics are against Open Source and yet... they are happy to gripe about things which aren't being fixed, or which they think can be improved.

Do I think Linden Lab can do things better? Of course I do, but that criticism means nothing because I don't know what the Linden Lab developers are up against. I can jump up and down and shout what I think are the most important problems, but that doesn't mean that they are the most important problems. In truth, the majority of people I know who have spoken of the benefits of Open Sourcing SecondLife are fairly understanding when it comes to the position of SecondLife. It's not an easy thing to do given the many facets of SecondLife which are ruled by code - where code is Law. Does that sound familiar? It should - Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lawrence Lessig.

The question in the minds of the people who I do know is not whether SecondLife or any other virtual world should be made a commons, akin to a public throughfare. The question that is being asked is 'How?'.

That question has been popping up more and more often, it seems. Can it be done with SecondLife? Maybe, but it's not a simple desktop application. Would it be worth it? I stand in good company when I say 'yes', and I don't really mean Shuttleworth - as great a guy as he is. No, I mean the people who I've interacted with for months and years. There's a much longer post on this coming, perhaps later this week or this weekend.

I have to get some sleep so I can finish up some code tomorrow. ;-)