Linden Lab's decision to open-source its grid as reported by zdnet here suggests a strong belief in its user generated content. It suggests that it can eliminate competition by the already established user generated qualitative projects, content, and user pace.
In a sense this move reminds me of wikipedia since while it is true that everybody can host a wikipedia like website getting the user pace and the submission rate to match that of wikipedia is hard.
On the other hand, in the past users have been very keen to move from a dominant provider to the other based on the quality of service competitors were providing. For example for a long time Yahoo's search engine was powered by google, and while Yahoo had a large user base the number of people switching to google kept getting higher.
I believe that although it is a bold move by Linden Labs it could very much be the right move. It can create enough hype in the opensource community to generate a flock of experienced developers to improve the quality of the engine/grid while at the same time linden lab can still charge for connecting to their grid with its already established user generated content.
On a technical side note: This should significantly reduce Linden Labs bandwidth requirement as they can distribute the servers all across the world without having to maintain them nor pay for their bandwidth requirements. In a sense Linden Labs will become what a tracker is for bittorrent.
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