You may well have heard of Second Life at some point, the virtual world that launched to the public in mid-2003, but you might be surprised to learn that it's still around, more than two decades later. As a longtime SL Resident, I think that its staying power can be attributed at least partially to the open sourcing of its viewer code (the client software) back in early 2007.
In this presentation, I'll take you through a concise history of Second Life and how it evolved, from its beginnings to the open-sourcing of the viewer and finally to more recent efforts to simplify contributions, with a look at the role of the "third-party viewers" as well (one of these, Firestorm, is vastly more popular these days than the company's official viewer). We'll also examine some of the lessons that Second Life's development might have for other virtual world platforms, starting with related projects like OpenSimulator (and LibreMetaverse) and expanding outward to include the so-called metaverse more broadly.
