I've recently taken up quite an interest in the online environment second life, and the potential it holds as an emerging virtual reality.

It was with considerable pleasure that I heard the news that Linden Labs the owner of Second Life had open sourced their client software. This was quite a bold move, as it lays out their strategy as an environment, rather than as just software. It also allows for considerable possibilities when it comes to user-directed design and development.

To celebrate, I joined one of my second life friends Tao Takashi at an open source party on the Island of Theta.

I hung out for an hour or two while doing work in the other window, taking time every now and then to chat with other open source supporters at the party. I heard and learned quite a bit in terms of the potential that open source brings to second life, as well as some of the possible directions the software could go, two in particular captured my attention.

The first was a suggestion from Violet Hazlitt about a mobile version of the second life client, which struck me as a great way to further integrate the virtual and the material. I could imagine being outside of an office building, logging in to second life to see what's in the building, and then deciding on your location based on the info gleaned from the virtual representation in second life. Violet also discussed her deployment of Linux on the Nintendo DS, and speculated on what a second life client would be like on that platform.

The second idea, that moo Money was discussing, had to do with further development of the machinima tools in second life. moo Money is behind the machinima newscast The Grid Review, a clip of which I include below.

I've always loved machinima, i.e. film making that involves virtual environments as the primary stage or set upon which the movie is created and shot. I've always lamented the fact that movie making in general tends to be quite capital intensive, and that the barrier to entry is still too high for most people to be able to dabble in that kind of narrative. Thus what I love about machinima is the ability to make a major production with crazy sets, costumes, and a large cast with little material expenses due to the virtuality of it.