A hot topic during the questions and answers section of Chairman of linden Lab Mitch Kapor's keynote address "Second Life and Disruptive Innovation" at the Life 2.0 convention being held inworld all this week, was the future of the 3D web, and Linden Lab's role in that future. It's long been Linden's stated plan to release their server code as well as the already open sourced viewer code for the SL platform, but where will that leave Linden?
Though Kapor was playing Linden's long term game plan close to his chest, he did say that the ultimate goal was to play a much less central role in the 3D web. I can't imagine people being happy with one company controlling any one part of a commons, as the 3D internet needs to be if it's to gain anything even resembling "universal adoption" (Mitch's words, not mine!) so hopefully that's an indication that Linden will work on finding other ways to be profitable as their code makes its way to the masses via the open source community and Linden are no longer needed in order to operate within the Metaverse.
Kapor was, as you'd imagine, extremely confident in his address, though he did, like others before him, aknowlege stability and scaling issues for the platform. It was generally agreed between grumpy cynics (that would be Mike and I) in private IM during Mitch's speech though, that the phrase "universal adoption" was very poorly chosen, and that much Kool-Aid was being virtually quaffed at the event.
You can read more of Metaversed coverage of Life 2.0 all this week as it happens.
I think Linden Labs needs to sell Second Life to Google or gasp Microsoft to truely achieve the type of experience and global use that every one is hoping for in creating a new type of internet.
Second Life Update
http://www.secondlifeupdate.com