Second Life A Model for applications and integration
Tom Bestebreurtje · 2007
Second Life(1), an online 3D virtual community developed by Linden Research, Inc.(2), came to international mainstream media attention in 2006. Since then its user base has roughly doubled every six months. With a greater number of users, the number of applications of a community with a varied user base also increases. These applied uses of Second Life can be analyzed and placed in a two dimensional model where the axes correspond to the amount of rules and the measure of entertainment involved in the application. We will find that Second Life is still mostly used for entertainment purposes and less for constructive ends. Furthermore, the recent distribution of the client software under the GNU GPL(3) allows for greater customization of the client, like communication with third party packages. We will explore some of the possibilities of using modified Second Life clients in combination with a separate back-end to facilitate communications not supported by the Second Life servers. The implications of an important future step, open source server software, are also worth looking into. We will conclude with a brief overview of the future of Second Life. An appendix on developing the open source viewer software is also presented.