After reading the above, I’m struck by the fact that the RealXtend viewer, while open source, is being developed by a private company, which implies economic stakes of some kind. What pleased me about OpenSim was the idea that anyone could pick it up and make their own grid, and I imagined home-brew grids sprouting up everywhere.

A project to create universal transferability of avatar and inventory is interesting, and one can see how companies might stand to profit from mastering this process. But we’re probably going to see a new generation of home-brew virtual-worlders seeking the most accessible yet complete out-of-the-box free implementation (just add your own servers) – the equivalent of WordPress for virtual worlds. As is usual with open-source, profits will only come from providing custom applications and services for a minority of power users, while the majority of users will glom onto the free stuff.