Linden Lab, developer of popular reality-based MMO game Second Life, broke the news to us all with grace and resolve. The news is rather simple but its ramifications could be endless and unsettling. The company announced today that they just opened the floodgates to SL by making its source code public.

Prior to this, it would be remembered that bugs and problems are staple to the game with the need to update getting more frequent. Is Linden Lab giving up and leaving the problem at the hands of the users? According to them, they are not. They are merely accepting the inevitable. Part of their official announcement reads:

Expect many changes and updates in the coming months in support of this architecture. Much of the recent work has centered on securing the code against potential threats. Releasing the source now is our next invitation to the world to help build this global space for communication, business, and entertainment. We are eager to work with the community and businesses to further our vision of our space.

At Linden, we have always been strong advocates of the use of open standards and the advantages of using open source products. Though Second Life makes abundant use of non-standard technologies, our basic UDP protocol message system for example, we rely on open standards and open source implementations when appropriate and available.