Ever since Linden Lab let it slip that they are working on a new project, dubbed “Second Life 2” by speculators, rumors have abounded regarding this mysterious project. Hoopla ensued; people were in a panic over whether Linden Lab was going to stop supporting Second Life once the new world was up and running; content creators and residents alike were up in arms over the fact that the new world would not be backwards-compatible and user-created content from SL would not be transferable to the new world.

Recent rumblings in the forums and blogs have indicated that the nickname is Project Sansar. Indeed, patents have been applied for that use the name Sansar, and Project Sansar.

Inara Pey, in her blog “Living in the ModemWorld” (that’s a clickable link) speculated that: “Sansara was one of the early names considered for Second life (being derived from Samsāra, which occurs in both Buddhism and Hinduism, and, perhaps more particularly where SL is concerned, was used by Hermann Hesse in his 1922 novel Siddhartha as a reference to the “world of illusion”), and currently lives on as the name of SL ‘s oldest and largest mainland continent. Whether “SANSAR” is a play on this is unclear – it might just as easily be an acronym.”

Apparently both “Sansar” and “Project Sansar” are being bandied about, and threads point to the fact that both names have had patents applied for by the Lab:

• US Serial no 86593254 – for “Project SANSAR”

• US serial no 86593259 – for “SANSAR”

In addition, in October 2014, Ascio Technologies, Inc., filed a domain name registration for projectsansar.com listing Linden Research as the Domain Administrator.

A few days after this information was beginning to leak out, Linden Lab tweeted:

Stay tuned to this blog; we will post more as information becomes available.

I remain respectfully yours,

~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Blogger/Social Media