Really

It’s been a while since I posted anything — partially because I just spent some time in Montana with no access to the Internet. However, since I was surrounded by gorgeous landscapes, Casinos everywhere, and furry animals popping up when least expected, it was similar enough to Second Life to lessen any withdrawal symptoms.

One piece of news that came out while I was away was Linden Lab’s announcement of the impending arrival of the “Hetereogeneous Grid”. Apparently, the latest upgrades have set up the underlying architecture of Second Life to allow different versions of the server software to be running on the grid simultaneously. This will allow the Lindens to run Beta versions of the server on the main grid, or gradually roll out the latest version of the server to a small set of regions, only affecting those residents who chose to visit them. Viewer upgrades are also optional, so users can run older versions of the client without crashing or being forced to upgrade.

Enabling the heterogeneous grid will hopefully lead to a more stable Second Life, where new features can be tested more thoroughly and shutting down the entire world on “upgrade-Wednesday ” is no longer necessary.

What else is possible? Linden Lab could offer different versions of the server software to sim owners, perhaps a “premium server” with additional features (for a moderate fee, of course). If they were in a more benign mood, they could allow users to develop and run their own versions of the server (once the server code is open sourced). Land-owners could then try to lure residents and businesses by offering more features than the competition. One could even try to lock-in residents by providing features that also require a custom version of the client. The result will be a truly heterogeneous grid, with different clients and servers, only unified by a common protocol, similar to the World Wide Web.