LaRoche became proficient at designingitems <strong>for</strong> sale to other avatars and soonestablished a clothing store calledPreen. Other users bought her clotheswith Linden dollars, or Lindens, the“in-world” currency, which trade onexchanges operated by Linden Lab andothers at a rate of about 250 to 300Lindens to $1US.When American Apparel, a realworldclothing store, decided to create aparallel boutique in <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong>, Aimeewas hired to design it. Her company,Aimee Weber Studios, a <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong>development company, now employs11 full-time employees and another 10part-timers. But she also continues tooperate in-world businesses such as herclothing stores, and to develop her ownreal estate in areas such as MidnightCity, where she rents out storefrontlocations and lofts.The <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong> system runs on 1,800Debian Linux servers dedicated to simulatingactivities in the virtual world, withmultiple copies of the simulation softwareon each server. As of mid-February,there were 6,400 simulators—softwaredevices that track activity—in production,with each of them representing 16acres of land. Linden has another 200servers <strong>for</strong> supporting systems, includingMySQL databases, Web serversand test simulators. These numberscome from vice presidentLinden Lab Base CaseHEADQUARTERS: 1100 Sansome St., San Francisco, CA 94111PHONE: (415) 243-9000BUSINESS: Develops and operates the software simulation system behind the<strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong> virtual world.CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER: Cory OndrejkaFINANCIALS IN 2006: The privately held company expects to record revenue of$10 million to $12 million <strong>for</strong> 2006, up from $4 million in 2005. The company said itposted its first profitable month in December, but did not release figures.CHALLENGE: While continuing to grow and improve its own virtual world plat<strong>for</strong>m,Linden Lab is pursuing an open-source initiative that it hopes will set the standard<strong>for</strong> the 3D Web, which it sees as “a $100 billion opportunity” (only part of whichLinden will be able to capture <strong>for</strong> itself).BASELINE GOALS:4Support a peak load of 150,000 concurrent users by the end of 2007, accordingto an unofficial prediction from Cory Ondrejka’s blog. The peak number ofconcurrent users surpassed 33,000 in mid-February.4Achieve profitability <strong>for</strong> full-year 2007.4Grow the number of <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong> residents. The 2006 goal was 1 million. Althoughno specific target has been set <strong>for</strong> 2007, the company surpassed its 2006 goalof having 1 million residents by more than a million; in the first quarter of 2007,the virtual world had surpassed 3 million residents (although the number includesinactive accounts, as well as multiple avatars controlled by a single user).of technology Joe Miller, who notes thatLinden is currently adding three racks ofservers per week, with 41 servers per rack,in an ef<strong>for</strong>t to get ahead of a backlog inorders <strong>for</strong> new land.Meanwhile, Linden’s viewer software—effectively,the equivalent ofa browser <strong>for</strong> this version ofthe 3D Web—must downloadall the object geometries andthe images used to provide them with“texture,” and display them and theirmovements on screen.But there are limits to how muchthe simulators can simulate and theviewers can display. As the JanuaryTown Hall meeting demonstrated,<strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong> events often turn intoinadvertent stress tests.Ultimately, whether Linden Lab 4the Knowledge Universe InteractiveStudio and president of MindQPublishing, two companies focusedon lifelong learning services andapplications. Perilux Group, whichhe founded prior to joining LindenLab, designed products now offeredby LeapFrog, Bright Things, Appleand Fitniks.Robin Harper6Vice President, Community and SupportHarper is responsible <strong>for</strong> shaping the evolutionof the rapidly growing community of <strong>Second</strong><strong>Life</strong> users, working toresolve social and economicissues that arisewithin the virtual world aswell as listening to concernsabout <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong>technology. Be<strong>for</strong>e joiningLinden Lab in 2002,Harper was vice presidentof marketing at Maxis, a division of ElectronicArts, where among other things she helpedestablish SimCity as one of the most recognizedbrands in entertainment software.PROMINENTRESIDENTS3Gwyneth Llewelyn(real name withheld“<strong>for</strong> personal reasons”)In real life, Gwyneth is a veteran ofInternet startups who sees some ofthe same potential in <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong>that she saw in the early days ofthe Web, when the technology was clumsy,connections were slow and it took someimagination to see what the future wouldbring. She is an active <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong> citizen, promotingexperiments in democratic governancewithin the virtual world, and keeps a blog atGwynethllewelyn.net.Timeless Prototype4(real name withheld“<strong>for</strong> personal reasons”)A programmer working inscripting language used to manipulateobjects within the <strong>Second</strong><strong>Life</strong> world, Timeless created asoftware distribution system tosupport updates to his creations.He’s the creator of the MultiGadget (effectivelya bundle of several useful scripts, such as onethat makes a chair and table set materializeout of thin air) and proprietor of the TimelessGadget Shop. While he prefers to protect hisidentity, he identifies his employer as British digitalmedia company Graphico (graphico.co.uk),which is starting to do <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong> consulting.Prokofy Neva(real name: Catherine Fitzpatrick)Prokofy is a <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong> political activist, oftenchallenging Linden Lab on its policies and campaigning<strong>for</strong> more democratic governance of thevirtual world. “I take them seriously when theysay it’s a country,” says Fitzpatrick, the womanbehind Prokofy, who in real life is a Russiantranslator and human rights activist from NewYork City. As a dealer in <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong>real estate (sort of the equivalent ofbeing a reseller of server space <strong>for</strong>Web sites), she has also protestedLinden’s move toward open sourcingits system, which could in the futureundermine “land” values if the numberof servers operated by other organizationsgrows too rapidly.Baseline March 200733WWW.BASELINEMAG.COM
c a s e d i s s e c t i o n : s e c o n d l i f eGROWING PAINSBaseline March 2007he news that drew a crowd to <strong>Second</strong><strong>Life</strong>’s Town Hall meeting on Jan. 9 wasthe announcement from Linden Lab, thecompany that runs the virtual world, thatit would release the <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong> viewer as opensourcesoftware. This means programmers outsidethe company’s employ will have a chance toimprove the graphics rendering, fix bugs, improveper<strong>for</strong>mance and develop specialized versions ofthe viewer <strong>for</strong> specific audiences, such as professorsteaching courses within the virtual world. Ifthat goes well, Linden is talking about also opensourcing the server software that simulates theexistence of the world these avatars share.Now <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong> “residents,” as users of thesystem are called, want to know exactly how theopen source plan is going to work. Many are excited.Some are upset. Prokofy Neva (the creation ofCatherine Fitzpatrick, a Russian translator and humanrights activist), who’s in the virtual real estate business,is concerned about the long-term impact ofopen sourcing, particularly the idea that it couldundermine land values and property rights.That is, if anyone can run their own <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong>simulation server, won’t that mean that the supply ofland will explode and prices will plummet? And evenbe<strong>for</strong>e that happens, the open sourcing of the clientraises the possibility of alternate viewers that won’trespect the restrictions that content creators placeon whether their objects can be copied, modified ortransferred to other users. Protecting property rightsis important because some residents have learnedhow to make money selling their digital creations.Others are worried that releasing the sourcecode will make it easier <strong>for</strong> hackers to create rogueviewers indistinguishable from the official one. Sucha tool would allow them to create robot avatars thatpose as real users, undermining the online society, orto overload servers with denial-of-service attacks.When the event begins. Cory Linden, a.k.a. chieftechnology officer Cory Ondrejka, explains thatreleasing the client software as open source wasa surrender to the inevitable, since independentdevelopers had already created a series of softwarelibraries that duplicate functions of the official <strong>Second</strong><strong>Life</strong> client. That software was created independently,without the use of Linden source code, through a processof reverse engineering (working backward fromthe known functionality of the official client to producesoftware that behaves similarly), Ondrejka says.That’s exactly why some are wary. In November,a program called CopyBot was released into <strong>Second</strong><strong>Life</strong> that demonstrated the ability to create multipleclones of avatars, including all their clothing. Amongother things, that demonstrated how the copy protectionthat normally applies to digital objects couldbe undermined.Ondrejka doesn’t deny that there will be problems,but says the challenge of preventing unauthorizedcopies of digital content is no different than thesituation that exists on the Web, where users caneasily swipe articles, source code and images. Andhe says the company is looking at the future andtaking it step by step. “We’ve only open sourced theclient, so fully [open source] discussions are premature,”he says.The server-side component of the <strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong>system that would make sense to open source is thesimulator software used to host regions of the virtualworld and track the actions of avatars within it.Linden Lab senior developer Andrew Meadows saysthe main challenge here will be to create a clear<strong>Second</strong> <strong>Life</strong> residents come deckedout to Linden Lab’s virtual Town Hallmeetings—they’re the place to be seen.separation of responsibilities between simulatorsand other components of the system. For example,additional security barriers will have to be erected sothat simulators hosted by outsiders are treated witha healthy degree of distrust, preventing them fromgaining inappropriate access to the database systemsthat run the virtual economy, Meadows says.And yet, within a couple of weeks after Lindenannounced an open-source client, a primitive, independentlydeveloped server compatible with thatclient was released. So, the future may be comingquicker than Ondrejka expected.After the Town Hall meeting, Linden Lab CEOPhilip Rosedale materializes as spiky-haired avatarPhilip Linden. He tells his admirers, “The mostrewarding thing is just that at this point, the fire islit. Whether Linden continues to lead or not, we gotthings started.” —D.F.C.Courtesy of Linden lab34WWW.BASELINEMAG.COM
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