Clearly Linden recognizes the need for HTML in Second Life, as they’ve now made this promise in several forums. Competing against Qwak, Croquet, and others for the educators requires HTML embedding. Philip said in his interview with Reuters from Davos that “HTML on a prim” would be available by May 1st, though stopped short of promising that for more than the Beta Grid or in test roll-out (which is good…last thing we need is a buggy launch).

The Lindens also made specific promises around open servers, and have said that “in the future there will not be one grid but many”.

There was another interview that outlined development plans for 2008, and I’ve tried to summarize their overall improvement plans : http://dusanwriter.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/schedule-for-second-life-improvements-mono-lightweight-client-open-servers-html/

This includes releasing a lightweight client, open architecture plans, and Mono.

I think you’re right about a house cleaning, but this might go deeper than deleting old accounts (and we know they won’t do THAT, it would mess up their ability to claim 8M users).

One of the striking questions is whether they’ll ever allow interoperability – say, seamless integration of Google SketchUp models or 3DS. If they did, it might kill the current in-world economy but might benefit the platform in the long run. My suspicion is they might build a pipe in once they open up the architecture but only allow full integration with current and common 3D modeling environments once they can disconnect those objects from the main grid.

Regarding your wish list, if SL is a utility provider (something I have an issue with as I think it lacks strategic depth but I digress) then I imagine that the Estate Tools idea would be left to other providers, much like WebTrends is a plug in to the utility of Web hosting.

And finally, I’m curious as to whether you think the Linden’s intentions would ever be to split off the Teen Grid entirely if they go ahead with their open sim plan and then, knowing that others will be hosting SL grids, remove the restrictions? The Teen Grid could still restrict those going to it, but the main grids, being open, would allow individual users the ability to make their own choices about access.

Keep up the wonderful posts, your blog is one of my required reads.