There’s a good article concerning Second Life over on Information Week called ” Inside Second Life’s Data Centers ‘” (Link). I was aware of most of what’s discussed, but this part came as a bit of a surprise:

While many Second Life residents are convinced that Linden Lab will release the server source code as open source, in fact that hasn’t been decided, said Miller. Linden Lab might simply decide to license the code to other companies, the way vendors now license any application. Linden Lab might publish all the APIs, and allow other companies to build clones of the Second Life sim software. Linden Lab might simply allow other companies to provide the hardware, which Linden Lab would run at its own co-location facility, running Linden Lab’s software. And there are other options as well, which Miller declined to elaborate on.

“Convinced”? I thought Linden Lab stated that it (and by “it” I’m not being specific to the client but to the whole ball of virtual wax) would – at some point in the foreseeable future – go open source. If it were easy to find, I’d pull up a quote where someone from Linden Lab effectively says as much. But then, it’s not like they have a good track record in that department.

via Blue’s News