[Opensim-dev] If MIcrosoft buys LL, impact on OpenSIm?

[Daniel Smith]

That is awesome to read, Crista.  It is what I suspected, but even better.

Daniel

On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 5:28 PM, Cristina Videira Lopes
<lopes at ics.uci.edu>wrote:

> The OpenSimulator project has absolutely nothing to do with Linden Lab,
> aside from the fact that it includes one plugin that implements the protocol
> that their open-sourced viewer understands. In the extreme worst case
> scenario, if code in OpenSim was proven to come from the GPL viewer, OpenSim
> would have to be re-licensed as GPL -- that's the worst that could
> conceivably happen (and I bet some would think that wouldn't be a bad
> thing). But, due to the project's strict contribution policy [1], we have no
> code based on the LL viewer and derived  viewers, and we also have no code
> from anyone who has been exposed to Linden Lab servers. So that worst case
> scenario is beyond the realm of possibility.
>
> This is not to say that a future buyer of Linden Lab would never, ever try
> to stop an open source project from getting in the way  of their product.
> They might. I doubt Microsoft would do that, but there are companies much
> worse than Microsoft.
>
> That's why we have that very strict contribution policy in place. If the
> future owner of Second Life would try scare tactics on the project, they
> might scare people, but they wouldn't get very far, because they would have
> no case. Unlike Blizzard and others, Linden Lab went public with their
> protocol and encouraged people to use and extend it. We should thank them
> for that (it's a huge liability from the point of view of being acquired by
> others) and wish them the best to recover from the bad time they've had
> recently.
>
> [1] http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Contributions_Policy
>
> On Sep 30, 2010, at 4:07 PM, Daniel Smith wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Melanie <melanie at t-data.com> wrote:
>
>> I can't see MS continuing with OpenSource viewers, and I can't see
>> them supporting any platform other than Windows for the closed
>> viewer they would come up with.
>>
>> I would most certainly liquidate my assets and leave if that were
>> happening.
>>
>> Melanie
>>
>>
>>
>
> The core thing I care about is not so much what MS would do with SL....  I
> just dont want to see them trying to do anything to OpenSim.  It's all
> speculaton, of course.   Recent events (Oracle, and what they are doing to
> Sun/Java/Google) prompt my question.
>
> Daniel
>
>
> --
> Daniel Smith - Sonoma County, California
> http://daniel.org/resume
>
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-- 
Daniel Smith - Sonoma County, California
http://daniel.org/resume
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