More Open Source From Linden Lab

In a move that will interest relatively few Second Life users, [w:Linden Lab] has open sourced some of their web server code. What does it mean? For the average Second Life user, it probably doesn't mean much at all. For developers, it may be good news for their own applications, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with communicating with Second Life other than understanding how the Second Life server backbone works. Sort of. There is more code out there, obviously. This code is written in [w:Python (programming language)|Python], version 2.3 or better.

The code is released under the [w:MIT License] (with no apparent modifications¹), and they felt it necessary to mention that the MIT License is compatible with the [w:GPL]. Why not just use the GPL? There be dragons in that licensing discussion...

This does seem like a bit of a dog-and-pony show at SLCC - it certainly makes sense - but there may be an added benefit regarding the issues which is directly linked as well: Grid Stability. It is quite likely that having people in person jerking the 'why is the grid so unstable?' chain did force some movement here.

Analysis? Uncertain. Maybe they wanted to get Eventful and Mulib off of their chests, out in the open... whatever their reasons, there it is.

Developer Comment

But, you're wondering - what use is the code? Well, it does give some insight into the backbone of the backbone (if that makes any sense to you, you must be a developer). I just ran a quick glance at it, and it looks healthy - but as I noted in a comment, it is difficult to assess where there may be issues in the library without context.

That Mulib is built on Eventlet gives some context to both, but unless someone's shopping for a new [w:Representational State Transfer] ([w:REST]) layer... the use of the open sourcing of this bit of code seems dubious, at least to me.

Any developers at SLCC are probably at advantage on this, which is really no surprise. Hopefully they document it in the wikis.

¹ The MIT License is not copyrighted, and therefore can be modified.