JISC is the Joint Information Systems Committee, based in the UK to help the use of ICT in education and research. They fund a series of mailing lists to benefit learning, teaching and research.
I’m on a few of these mailing lists as I work in the education sector, one of the mailing lists I’m on is the Second Life mailing list.
However today the issue that has been raised is regarding renaming the Second Life mailing list due to Linden Lab’s trademark policy. The proposal now is to rename the mailing list to “Virtual Worlds” to avoid any problems with the trademark policy and also to open the mailing list up to the discussion of other virtual worlds. Some people are piping up that this is a good idea with OpenSim based grids popping up and others are saying that they’re not sure what LL’s game is with the trademark policy.
However it seems likely therefore that a mailing list dedicated to the promotion, discussion and use of Second Life for educational purposes, will now also promote, discuss and use alternatives. Whereas this was likely to happen anyway with other virtual worlds popping up, it has certainly been accelerated by Linden Lab’s failure to be clear on the trademark policy.
So a move that was designed to protect their brand (which they have every right to do)looks likely to reduce one stream of promotion of their product.