Daniel Voyager, Inara Pey and Nalates Urriah have all broken the news that Andrew Linden is leaving Linden Lab. They all provide good coverage, if you want my coverage read on! My coverage owes a lot to Hamlet Au Of New World Notes. In particular I’ve taken material from the following post by Hamlet (which is certainly worth a read) :
Meet Andrew Linden, Last of the Very First Lindens (UPDATED: Richard Linden Still Thrives Too)
Andrew, AKA Employee number 2, has announced he is leaving Linden Lab, tomorrow, December 19th and will be joining his former college pal Philip Rosedale at Hi Fidelity. The word on the street is that Andrew will not be revealing the true identity of Governor Linden or the current location of Magellan Linden as he makes the short journey from Linden Lab to Hi Fidelity. However it is widely assumed that Andrew will become the artist formerly known as Andrew Linden and be transformed into Andrew Meadows in his new role.
Andrew Linden is important, very important. Andrew’s Second Life profile states that he was born 11 years six months ago, however he was at Linden Lab longer than that, he was there in 1999 when Linden Lab hadn’t even decided to develop a virtual world. Andrew was there when, according to the Second Life Wiki, Linden Lab were a hardware company involved with research and development in the field of haptics. However Linden Lab decided they needed a virtual world to test their hardware and haptics became consigned to the dustbin of Linden Lab’s history.
Andrew was the person responsible for giving avatars the ability to fly, which was apparently because Linden Lab wanted to save time creating walking animations.
Andrew was largely a C++ developer for Second Life, but took time out to look at holes in the world, literally. In the snapshot above he’s looking for missing prims. Andrew regularly talked to users at office hour/user group meetings, providing the link between developers and users that many appreciate and which is unfortunately largely lost in the new Linden Lab.
Andrew has proven to be a popular Linden, indeed in the linked post from Hamlet you might have spotted a comment that is very fitting:
“Andrew’s always been my fave š “- Posted by: Osprey Therian. Osprey sadly passed away this month, although, as Hamlet reports, Osprey’s Twitter avatar lives on.
Andrew is one of the last of the originals, the early and powerful Lindens who created the world and watched in horror as it unfolded in a strange direction. I’m not sure if Richard Linden is still there or not, but the old guard are moving on to new things and each one of them leaves a hole that is hard to replace, they don’t make them like this anymore, as the saying goes. However these older Lindens have made a massive impact on the history of not only Second Life, but also in virtual worlds themselves.
Hi Fidelity is a very interesting looking venture, although it’s currently at a very early stage and details are sketchy. The project is certainly ambitious and I’m sure Andrew will enjoy his time there. I most certainly wish him all the best.