Are there any SL users that have sometimes thought about the fact that all the Second Life residents are guests of the Californian company Linden Lab? And for those who do think about what should happen to all of their creations, and at all the things stored in their inventory, results of many and many hours of work and Linden Dollars investments, if the management of Linden Lab should decide to close the company and make a move to the Hawaiian islands to go surfing?
Seriously speaking, it is clear that the proprietary based environment is an important issue in all the company’s and commercial protagonist’s plans. The question is: it is possible to invest lot of money by using a platform that is managed by someone else, not under control? It’s clear that the question is very important for those operators that should invest capitals in the virtual world, although the Californian company has no intention to close its activity to go surf in Hawaii.
This is the reason for the growing concerns of Virtual Worlds, similar to Second Life, but independent and free, is developing based on Open Source movement, very largely diffused between the users of Open Source Software, the free software.
The Open Source phenomena is so largely diffused that even Italian Public Administration regulatory Institute has planned to use this kind of software in the public Administrations, with many savings in terms of investment and standardization.
So, the virtual world of Open Sims was born, a world that uses the free Open Source code to create and manage entire grids in free and independent mode, has permitted, since the beginning of 2008, the born and the development of several initiatives similar to those realized in Second Life.
The pioneers, in Italy, of this initiatives, are the people joined with Carlos Roundel, Laima Holmer and Ferdinand Begonia.
Their history began in the April 2008, with the creation of three sims called, from their names: Laima, Post Humanlab and Begonia. From this three sims, following the evolution of open source code, was born, in June 2008, Cyberlandia the first Italian Open grid.
The beginning history was, naturally, very pioneeristic; in fact, in that time (only two years ago…) didn’t exist several functions, like teleport, voice, instant messages, and so on. But since that period, the growing was very fast, especially in the last months.
Today, Cyberlandia grid includes 185 active sims, and the Avatar registered are 1644. A very important group, that is the principal Open Sim group in Italy becoming, in that way, the focal point for those users that wish to develop the free and independent Virtual Worlds. And this environments are developing very fast.
Anybody, in fact, can create his own sim, even on his personal PC by using ADSL to connect their self to Cyberlandia grid, with the permission, of course, of the owners, because it’s necessary to protect the grid by griefer or hackers also in this worlds.
The most correct choose, for those are interested to use this virtual world, for normal and frequently initiatives, is to use computers of an external server farm’s provider, by paying very few money, for having guarantee of stability and correct hardware management. Of course, in the case of business users, wishing to use Virtual Worlds for their commercial initiatives, they can use own hardware and dedicated technical staff.
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The Open sim movement is today largely diffused in the world, and Cyberlandia, for example, has established contacts, by using hypergrid connections, with French, German and, even, Japanese grids.
All the principal groups, or business and institutional users, have already built their own sims by using the Open platform, and, in Italy, they all are connected with Cyberlandia.
Cyberlandia is composed, as Second Life, by a Mainland and several separated islands. The politic of the owners is that all Mainland’s islands, have to be open. If someone needs to work in a protect place, he has the possibility to have an independent and closed isle separated by the Mainland, but connected with it.
The connection with Cyberlandia is very simple. It’s necessary to log on from Cyberlandia portal (www.cyberlandia.net) to create a new Avatar and to log into the grid directly, without to pass from an orientation isle. It’s possible to connect with Cyberlandia Grid also directly from the web, with apposite link.
With the recent evolutions, including the use of voice, and with the recent versions of the software, the technical level of the open sims is almost similar to Second Life platform. In my opinion it’s only a question of time, and such open environment will became more diffused and able to resolve all needs of users, like Second Life,is becoming, in that mode, competitive with the Linden Lab software.
Many things have to be resolved to permit a fast development of this world, not only respect its technical characteristics, but also in relation to the “social” development.
For example, the creation of an internal economy, based on a virtual money, like Linden Dollars, should help the growth of artistic and commercial initiatives. That don’t mean that it is necessary to have the goal to became rich, but this possibility should help the born of an internal economy, with the development of different kind of opportunities, similar to Second Life and other similar worlds.
I think that the fast evolution of the Open Sim Virtual Worlds will cause the opening to external of the Linden Lab company, exceeding the proprietary model. But this fact will happen for business reasons, and only when it will be inevitable as a market need.
This evolution will be very important, because the competition among different Virtual Worlds, with several new proposals and initiatives, will permit the growing of the quality of the services.
At this point, at only at this point, it will be possible the return in the Virtual Worlds of the business operators, following the evolution of this communication model, in a different and correct direction respected to the first phase of the last years.
This will happen with the defeat of the negative prophets of the death of the Virtual Worlds.
P.S.: For those among our readers, knowing the origin of the phrase in the title of the article, can send me the answer to the following email address: aquiladellanottekondor@
Originally published in Italian in Esseelle Movie Magazine by AquilaDellaNotte Kondor
translated by AquilaDellaNotte Kondor and republished with kind permission
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