Is SecondLife2 LindenLab's "Osborne" Blunder?

This past week during a Linden Lab (aka LL) weekly open office meeting LL CEO Ebbe Altberg made a surprise appearance.  But, Ebbe's appearance at the weekly meeting was the least of his surprises he had in store - not only the meeting attendees but also the greater SecondLife® (aka SL) community.

I am not sure if Ebbe's surprising announcements at this meeting were a horrible misstep on his part or if he purposely went into this meeting to release this big news.  Unless you are Ebbe or his senior management, everyone else can only guess and provide their theories as we all don't know.  My guess is that corporate news like the announcement of a major new generation of a product/service does not often come out from a CEO in such an informal "ohh by the way..." manner.  So my guess is that Ebbe let this news slip and did not intend to release this new - it just happened.  Just my theory.

 So HOLD ON !!  What were these big surprises that Ebbe shocked the entire community with?

FIRST - the Biggie - Ebbe revealed that LL is actively working on a completely new SL2 virtual world platform that will be built from the ground up with all the latest in virtual world (VW) technologies, techniques, and I am also sure lessons learned from all the mistakes made during the long life of SL1.  No concrete timelines were given as it is supposedly still in very early development but dates of 2016 are being thrown around.

SECOND - a followup shocker - Ebbe stated that the development of SL2 will NOT have "backward compatibility" to SL1 a development priority.  The explained reason was that they did not want to hold back the full modern day capabilities of SL2 by being forced to be compatible with older limiting inferior technologies and content of and within SL1.

THIRD - development of SL2 would not be Open Source.  It would be a close source code.  This would mean that there would not be spawned competing clones of SL2 as there is with the current SL1 where open source is available.

Not surprisingly, this news right out of Ebbe's lips of a new SL2 being developed by LL spread faster than wildfire throughout the SL blogging community and into the SL forums and social networks.  Also, not surprising AT ALL has been the massive and growing volume of interpretations, speculations, excitement and fears generated from the extremely little that was stated by Ebbe and also Oz regarding SL2 at this meeting.

In a few short days after Ebbe's shockers I have read a lot of concerns, fears, and doom regarding the decisions (more so the "not backward compatible" news).  I have also read many bloggers trying to calm the fears with stated reality checks about how little has been announced to seriously get scared about at this time.  And even bloggers that seemed to have taken on what should be LL's role of damage control from what I believe was a serious LL / Ebbe misstep in announcing such huge customer impacting news so early, so informal / unofficial, and with so little details.  These bloggers have speculated their own "positive spin" theories on why the SL community should not panic and not stop investing in SL1 because of this news.

But before I talk about LL's possible re-enactment of the infamous classic "Osborne Computer" business mistake, let me mention a few of my thoughts on what actually was announced.

Why did LL desire the need to develop an SL2 as opposed to continuing to improve upon the current SL1?  Well I am speaking as a Senior Systems Architect for over 25 years for large enterprises - for both vendors like IBM and multi-national industry segment customers.  When it comes to developing a new I.T. system, product, or service (like the SL sims and supporting systems and clients) it is always an System Architect's dream (as well as Engineers, software developers and even product managers) if they are given the opportunity to develop a NEXT GENERATION solution with no ties to the limitations, backward incompatibilities, and existing needs of the user base from the previous generation.  

I think its obvious for all to understand why, but just in case you are not aware... To develop a new fantastic state-of-the-art solution that must also be shackled with the burden of supporting the existing legacy code, content, user data of old long-in-the-tooth current systems is EXTREMEEEEELY DIFFICULT.  Compromises would have to be made and some great design concepts and technologies would likely have to be abandoned or watered down.  

The first generation of SL that LL keeps enhancing and improving upon is based on an architecture that is over 11 years old.  Many of the foundational components (both technology as well as operating policies and rules) of SL are far out-dated yet near impossible to overhaul without destroying the overall fabric of what makes SL operates as it does now.  It is like a house of cards - it stands but it is fragile and replacing a card at the base is nearly unthinkable.

As such, this dreamy "perfect" development environment of starting from scratch is what LL has decided to bestow upon their SL2 development team.  I envy the LL team for being given this rare opportunity.

YES, I said rare!!  In my 25+ years working on countless solution / system designs and architectures, I have only worked on a handful of large scale projects where the next generation system is allowed to be developed with no priority or regard to the backward compatibility AND user base of the current aging system.  Most times the reason is that the current user base is too valuable to be disrupted, or not trusted to join the new system and lose them, or risk them losing their critical data and start fresh.  

Having no backward compatibility to offer internal or "captured" users is risky enough as the business has some control on this population.  But to to take this risk with an external paying user base - i.e. your primary customer - is either very brave or very stupid.  Only time will tell the final tale of LL was brave or stupid when everyone observes what the current SL user base - primarily the builders / creators of SL - will do.

Building SL2 based on a CLOSED CODE model?  Well there will be those that argue good or bad on this point but I have always been one in the SL community that believes LL should never have embraced open source as the strategy for SL1.  Maybe this decision was made to meet more of a community minded or philanthropic objective that Phillip and/or his initial designers and developers had.  But, I think it was a mistake for business reasons as it openly forced LL to assist in the growth of competing open source grids that took customers away from LL/SL1.  It also was a major reason that griefing was and still is a massive scourge on the SL grid.  Finally it meant LL lost a lot of control of its fat client to 3rd party viewers. Personally this was good for the user base of SL since these viewers introduced competitive spirit and a better viewer, but for LL it was a loss of control of their own destiny of the SL1 product.

So, personally I nod my head and agree with LL's decision to develop SL2 based on closed source.  No one but LL knows to what extent SL2 will be closed.  To me the wise approach would be to close and keep proprietary the SIM and SERVER code but expose a common standard SL2 Client API that 3PVs like Firestorm could use to develop awesome SL2 viewers.  Some have speculated SL2 might not even have a fat client viewer.  I personally do not see this as feasible because I believe an effective SL2 with real time animations and engagement with a VW needs to leverage the shared system resources of both the server and the client PC.  But I could easily be wrong.  We will see.

NOW... regardless of the announcement details that Ebbe appears to have let accidentally slip this week.  The bigger issue is if Ebbe and LL has executed another Osborne Computer Blunder by announcing the next generation of their flagship cash-cow VW service SL2 with such a harsh "no backward compatibility priority" statement so early before its release?

If you have never heard of the "OSBORNE EFFECT" or blunder or business case, then I will provide you a wiki link with all the details CLICK HERE FOR OSBORNE EFFECT DETAILS.  Basically, it is when a company prematurely and with poor timing announces their next generation of product which causes a serious negative impact in customer demand / response (i.e. collapsed sales as they wait for the new version).  For Osborne computers, it bankrupted them as their cashflow dried up before the next version could come to market.

In essence this appears to be what Ebbe and LL has done in similar fashion.  Ebbe announced the next SL2 grid that still appears to be 2 years from showing up and has informed his flagship base of customers that their content and investments in SL1 are not a priority for SL2.  

As mentioned earlier, the explosion of fear and concern by the community should have been expected and are fully warranted concerns.  LL has had a history of making many knee-jerk poor decisions that have often hurt their own SL customer base.  So their track record of protecting or being concerned about the interests of their customers is not stellar.  Therefor I am a bit surprised at bloggers that cannot understand why there is so much fear and concern about Ebbe's surprising early casual announcement of SL2.

I am not the CEO of LL but if I were Ebbe, regardless if he slipped or fully intended to release the news of SL2 to the world, I would seriously be concerned about how my move mimics that of the OSBORNE EFFECT.  I think it does.  If so, I would immediately engage in serious damage control with LL's cash cow SL1 customer base (especially the content creators that are the #1 reason why SL1 is the leader in VW).  I would be making a formal BLOG release on the SL Forums to clarify with much more details the vague information I released at a small weekly user meeting.  I would be having open interviews with the blogging community and media to provide HARD REASONS why the SL community should not be affraid to keep investing in SL1.  Not just the LL "favored" bloggers but even those bloggers that can ask the hard questions.

The time for LL and Ebbe to go into potentially LL saving damage control is now - before LL potentially becomes the next Business Case victim of the OSBORNE EFFECT.