Also, the LL platform is programmed in C++ and ASM. Providing LL with the best performance on the low power systems they use to host. If they switched to Open-Sim they would spend all of the money they "saved", upgrading every system in the data centers. And They would again RAISE sim purchase costs to cover the higher end machines.

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Open Sim (which is also Linden Lab) is not Linden Lab's Second Life.

Here's an analogy:

Second Life is to Open Sim as Facebook is to a Ning group.

i don't know how to explain it any better than that.

And the only BIG "business" hope they had- PAYPAL plus protection- has been lost by the utter disdain they have shown to 3rd party IP owners over the years.

The new SL viewer will determine their future.. either another 3-6 years as a quasi-game-platform entertianment- or another forgotten AOL, Compuserve,within the next 2 years,

Other Futures I really dont see.

and the rest of the world doesn't?

Second Life? “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre”

(saddling members with silly names ensured that Second Life would never be seen as anything other than a niche fantasy game by the majority of internet users, no matter how much real money is spent there)

Just because you're using in-house technology and don't have to pay yourself anything, doesn't mean that the product is free. It costs a lot of money for Linden Lab to develop and maintain its server software. If the software never changed again then you could argue that it's been paid for — why not use it?

But the platform continues to evolve. Under pressure from not just OpenSim but also Blue Mars and other virtual worlds, Second Life will have to continue innovation.

Take mesh objects for example. The Lindens promised to have mesh imports this year. That means upgrading the server software, and upgrading the viewer, to support meshes. On the OpenSim side, this is already available (with the modrex module and the realXtend viewers).

Keeping all these guys employed is a lot of overhead.

Meanwhile, business and educational grids will need to have Vivox voice support — which is an extra cost to grid operators. But the free physics engine that's available in OpenSim is just fine for these users.

AOL faced all these issues when it became clear that HTML was the way to go. It had invested a lot of money into its own proprietary technology. And HTML — at least at the beginning — looked really bad by comparison.

If the Lindens switch over to OpenSim it won't happen overnight. Meanwhile, the OpenSim developers are continuing to work on scalability and load balancing issues. Intel in particular has been putting a lot into this — last week, they were able to run 1,024 regions in a single sim modeling Yellowstone National Park (come and visit — look for Geography regions on ScienceSim grid). Keep in mind that OpenSim is still officially "alpha" software — it hasn't even reached the 1.0 release yet. However, despite all its problems and issues — and despite the fact that the developers remind us of its alpha status on every occasion — hundreds of grids are already running the software. Based on the growth of the top 40 grids alone (not counting all the uncountable private grids out there) I'm estimating a 177% annual growth rate in OpenSim regions — compared to just 6% growth for Second Life.

Article here: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2010/01/opensim-…

Even if OpenSim grows at a steady linear pace and does not accelerate (which is highly unlikely) it's on track to pass SL in regions by early next year.

– Maria

Linden's commitment to its behind-the-firewall enterprise customers may be an obstacle as well; clients paying big bucks for SL server software may not like the idea of swapping server software out from under them, even if would nominally be an improvement. So at a minimum, Linden Lab would have to foot the bill for maintaining the old server software, plus customizing the new platform, at least for the duration of existing contracts.

I don't understand the argument behind this point, since LL don't have to pay themselves a fee to use their own technology.

On the whole though, this article made more sense that I initially expected it to from the title. The physics in SL is vastly superior to OpenSim because LL have bought-in the Havok engine. But, imagine if the Havok engine, and other commercial modules, became optional features to buy when setting up a Reaction Grid sim. Adding all of the modules would probably take the cost to equivalent or above what is available from LL, but the choice would be a vast improvement.

Microsoft can never buy out linden labs. Check sl there's no microsoft sim anymore.

I don't see the point in jumping to another grid (unless it's mica astrophysics n-body experiments) The point of opensim is running your own and experimenting. Second life is the leading competitor so why settle for anything less than the real deal?