Philip Rosedale, Chief Executive Officer of Linden Lab (the company behind Second Life), announced today that the Company has begun to search for his replacement. First reactions [on Reuters] are mostly positive, appreciating Rosedale’s job so far but also with expectation for a more operations-oriented CEO.

There are a lot of strategic tradeoffs to be faced by Second Life – one of the most consequential will be the choice between a corporate-friendly model or the metaverse vision (or continuing to pursue both).

I wonder if today’s announcement is going to have an impact on the intention to release Second Life’s source code with an Open Source license, as Linden Lab has already done for the client and somewhat promised to do for the server. It is not a matter of geek appeal, or a nice but ineffective move: it would represent a fundamental step towards the goal of making Second Life a public platform – such as the internet is – and not remaining a private space: free to access, live and modify – but closed.