Second Life clones....Already functioning

I was shocked to see that Openlife is already running and you can log on to a Second Life clone. Even more Amazing it appears that Centralgrid is actually already selling sims.

Question I have is, though these are relatively new upstarts, what type of impact is this going to have on the SL economy and on those who are rather heavily invested in SL? I had also read that one of these clones has an enhanced LSL... could this be Cory? I sure hope SL can add some new funtions to the LSL we all love/hate

Incidentally for those of you that didnt know about it already, you can connect to these grids using a copy of your Second Life Client, by modifying the target. Simply enough

Maybe they will be competitive enough that it will become a contest as to which world is more (easily) entertaining to griefers.
Lets hope they win!

What a tease.........got a URL?

Here you go, Peggy, http://www.openlifegrid.com/

Hmm.. dunno if I wanna log into that or not. It's like SL.. without a full inventory!

But, it offers a stand alone sim for your own computer. Anyone want the ultimate private sandbox?

It was not efficient enough to take the place piece by piece, ya'll just took the whole damn thing.

I guess there is no legal liability in this?

There is definitely a place for open source worlds.

It's not anything even remotely like the grid here, though.

If you ever expect anything to work - you won't care for opensource worlds. Sure, some things do, and more and more will.

But for anyone that got fussy over the functionality of the grid that Linden Research Inc provides, opensource worlds will redefine the meaning of low quality. Think: Yugo automobile, Net Zero internet services, Velveeta cheese, ActiveWorlds. None of them stood a chance, really.

I honestly don't see an opensource grid flourishing with a Second Life engineering design. Server side, the architecture just isn't right. Asset server = failed concept. No way around it. Peer to peer? Not without Internet II.

I've checked this stuff out; obviously as someone that does rentals on the grid it's a topic I've stayed in touch with. My response? I'm rolling out some more regions here soon. If that's not putting my money where my mouth is, I don't know what else is

I would recommend a standalone server for home use though; it's great for doodling, but gets boring pretty fast. You can set one up in literally five minutes. But don't call me for tech support if it doesn't work.

I downloaded the standalone sim, so far it looks pretty much Like SL, BIG SANDBOX.

I would think that there is some kind of infringment though.

I said when SL first released the opensource viewer, that it wasnt a wise idea, now after landbots have pretty much taken away any competitive land market among real avatars, I woudl say my first assesment was on target. Now it looks as if SL is going to have some type of real competition using thier own stuff against them

This could be a good reason to phase out the opensourced viewer and cancel plans on releasing the opensource server code

With all the bitchin and complaining about SL people do, I doubt many really want to see SL go belly up

I think one way that these opensource standalones in particular can be a benefit to SL is if someone was able to create a prim exporter/importer so we can build in a relateively quiet enviroment and import into SL

This grid is unreal! its like a new world..........

I'm actually hoping that the 'release' of the sim source would actually encourage Linden Labs to really FIX the problems that keep cropping up with the grid. That and outstanding customer service is the only thing that will help them at this point.

Also, keep in mind, this is actually what Phil's dream was about.. the whole kit and kaboodle being run on private computers, with any sims owned by LL being 'rented' by those who couldn't run sims on theirs.

As for the idea of infringement? I'm pretty sure Linden Labs is aware of this and if they feel the need, they will be taking actions to remedy the situation. For all I know, they could have their hands in this too.

Yeah, LL's grid is really reliable.


The Linden Lab asset servers are now so full of crap that it will take a considerable amount of time to find a requested asset. A new grid will always be faster because there are fewer assets to rummage through.

well its not much and the well bugs if you call it is plenty. But still impressed with it.

I very much doubt that. OpenLife is waaaaay behind SL, in every way. It's just copy, it's tiny, it lacks functionality, and it looks like a hobby rather than a serious business venture. SL is a long way ahead in every way, and it's extremely doubtful that OL could catch up.

Now, if something came along, with the same basic concept, but different, it could attract venture money and possibly flourish, butI don't give OL a hope of doing that. It's more of a Second Life playground.

Competition is good?. Prevents a monopoly etc?


Are you a land baron?

Well if you call no profile photo, no edition your shape, no this and this and this.............then you are right its lacks 95% of everything sl does but worse its not even accessable ehhehe

I've been on OLG, made a shape, some clothing, flew around. Its still rather small, not a lot of people on at any given time and there are a million things it doesnt have, but thats sort of how SL started isnt it? It was interesting to see a world that might have been like SL in its baby days. No ad farms, no ugly builds (yet), just lonely.

Was that you crashing in to the building hehhehe

SL had advertising, bulging casino's, and at least one laggy mall in beta. SL is what it was.

It probably is how SL started, but SL was a new concept, and not a copy of an existing successful one.

It's not unlike search engines in that respect. The Google engine came along in the late 90s when there were a number of major search engines. It was basically the same as the others (a search engine), but it was different enough for people to take to it, and it became a major engine. And then it became THE major engine. The differences were (1) the front page was clutter free - no frills, which mattered to people - the other engines had turned into being portals to try and make some money from the traffic, and (2) they ranked pages in a radically different way to the others, which produced noticeably better results. Since then, they added advertising - AdWords and AdSense, which made it *very* profitable, and caused the big players, who never had their own engines, to copy Google. But even the biggest of players (MSN and Yahoo!) are nowhere near catching Google, in spite of the money at their disposal. If the biggest of them can't catch Google, could a startup copycat engine catch them? No.

I see SL and OL in the same way. SL already has the lead by a very long way. OL is a copycat startup, and hasn't a chance, imo. If a startup comes along that is basically the same thing (equivalent to Google being basically the same thing - a search engine), but s noticeably different (equivalent to Google being noticeably different to the major engines of the time), then it will have a very good chance, imo. But OL isn't that.

I'd hardly call it 'functional', until all the features actually work. Right now, it's hacked code that allows you to play with a few of the features of SL, in a very unstable environment.

FWIW - If I'm not mistaken, LL is licensing a major portion of the technology integral to the sims functionality - the Quicktime VR engine. It's not something they invented or have an rights over.....

There is no reason why a "Copycat Startup" can't succeed. They do have the benefit of seeing where Linden has gone wrong so far, and if they have some creative thinkers and better business minds they could definitely come out with a cometitive product. LL's busness operation is not that flawless that someone can't do better. It's kind of like saying Karl Benz built the first cars, and Henrry Ford was just a "Copycat Startup". Complacency and bad business have become an American Tradition. Anything you can do, someone else can do better.

At this point in their development, I only see one use for one of these "Open Sims" that is of any interest to me. It might be worth establishing one as a stand-alone terraforming test bed, for uploading, looking at and manually fine-tuning a whole-sim terraform project's .raw file. That assumes, of course, that the terraforming tools work in these sims as they should. Even then, I doubt I would connect it to anything else.

Branding, Brenda. The big brands are rarely ousted by copycat startups, and SL is a big brand in this field.

That's an example for my reasoning - not yours Ford came out with basically the same thing (cars), but he did it in a radically different way (mass production). Even then, it wasn't the same really, because cars were being produced in countries, rather than globally, so many car startups made it big. Internet systems are global. Google rules the search engine roost, and a copycat startup couldn't even dent them - not without doing it in a radically different way. MSN and Yahoo! tried, and they couldn't do it, because they were not noticeably different. I do think that similar systems to SL can start up and succeed - I said that earlier - but not a plain copy of SL. SL is too big a brand now to be challenged by an identical system - imo.

The reason why a "copycat startup" would probably fail in my opinion is that it's too late now. SL has been around for a long time, and as we all know, the technology itself is hardly perfect - but the whole reason that the concept has been successful is that it allows people to come in and add to the content, in terms of scripting, building, designing and most importantly socialising.

SL now has years of that, built up, all sitting there, and that is what attracts and retains people. Even if alternative grids become reliable and equivalent to (or better than) the SL grid, it won't do them much good unless they can get people in there, and SL would have to perform a lot worse than it does now for the difference to cause a mass exodus I think, if they don't have something unique. What that might be, I don't know - if I did, I'd be signing up for a consultancy.

I think that alternate grids would be able to make a good business out of dealing with outside companies that just want static sims with no connection to a broader Grid and no interest in an existing userbase, though, assuming that they reach the requisite level of reliability, and have some good marketers and salespeople.