Published at LXer:

Linden Lab, the creator of online virtual community Second Life, released its viewer earlier this year with a GPL 2.0 license, adding a clause called the "FLOSS exception," which releases developers using certain open source licenses from the requirement that any derivative works be licensed under the GPL. Linden added the exception to make it possible for many more developers to create new applications from Second Life viewer code. "We had the sense that Second Life has the potential to be much bigger than Linden Lab alone," says Rob Lanphier, Linden's director of open source development. "We needed to figured out a way to let the world build this into a much bigger thing."

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