Andrew Meadows was Linden Lab's first employee before Linden Lab had even created Second Life, and this week, as Daniel Voyager first blogged, he told members of the SL community he was leaving Linden to join Philip Rosedale at Philip's new startup, High Fidelity. I believe this means Richard Nelson, an engineer who joined Linden Lab in 2001, is the only remaining Linden employee who started from that era. Ciaran Laval has a good analysis on his blog, asking, "Are Philip And Andrew Going Back To Their Roots?"
Here's some of the case he makes there:
"The move reunites Andrew with Philip Rosedale, with whom it all began back in 1999 when they were both at Linden Lab. The Second Life wiki tells us that Linden Lab originally started life as a hardware company involved in the research and development of haptics... However Linden Lab abandoned the idea of being a hardware company after the software they created to bring their hardware to life turned out to be more fun. That software morphed into Second Life. The Hardware? Well that was something known as The Rig, and rumor has it that it sits in a box at Linden Lab HQ... Whether Andrew has taken The Rig with him to High Fidelity is unknown."
Speaking of which, I interviewed Andrew at length for The Making of Second Life, where he talks a lot about the Rig and those very early Linden days.
The specifics of what High Fidelity is building are still unknown to the public, but Philip has already announced, "Our mission is to create a new kind of virtual reality platform." Whatever Philip's building, Andrew's an ideal guy to have on his team.
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