Second Life Grid: Selling Open Source
In an attempt to expand their wallets and get out of the customer support business even further through business diversification Linden Labs announced that they will be selling their open source Second Life Grid platform. I personally think this is a genius business practice and will become quite successful. Will Linden Labs have an Initial Public Offering of stock soon or merely sell themselves to Google for 4 billion dollars? A new website Second Life Grid.net will provide information to business organizations on the open source Second Life Grid platform. Technically Linden Labs is selling the technology platform which includes the infrastructure, tools, services, and features. Linden Labs is hoping that this can be used to create private communities for anything and everything including product simulation, collaboration, research, and movies.
It is interesting that the implementation of this seems to direct you to some outsourcing companies rather than Linden Labs who probably just collects the license fee from you and their outsourcing companies. There is mysteriously no mention of price anywhere although I would expect the $10,000 to $100,000 range. Expect IBM to start their own and have a smaller presence in the “regular” Second Life.
This launch is tied to the Community Gateway Program Launch which allows a unique registration and Second Life orientation method.