Second Life

Rob Lanphier and Mark Lentczner, Linden Lab

Rob Lanphier, Linden Lab's Open Source Busybody, and Mark Lentczner, who directs a software engineering studio at Linden Lab, will talk about the release of the Second Life viewer source code: what that means, what it might mean, and what it doesn't mean. He'll provide a brief overview of the technology and history of Second Life, discuss the astronomical growth in use of Second Life, and explain what Linden Lab is doing to cope with the ever-increasing stress on the system. He'll discuss some key improvements Linden Lab is making in the protocols used by the product—utilizing a Web services model to increase scalability and to decouple versioning between clients and servers, as well as server-to-server communication.