On The Demise of Google Lively

I don't have a lot to add beyond what has been covered by people like Sibley, but most people aren't calling for Google to do the right thing and open the code and content. From my comment on Sibley's post:

There’s another important aspect of this shutdown: What will happen to the Lively content and code.

Google is encouraging people to take screenshots and make machinima to save their work, but that’s pretty weak for a company with a track record for opening both content and code.

Google should immediately open source as much of the platform as possible and set out a clear path for developers (inside or outside of Google) to run Lively spaces on the Google App Engine.

They may be smart to shut down the Google managed 3D spaces, but they have an opportunity to completely change the face of 3D on the web by releasing Lively to the community.