Yeah, i read about it yesterday on the Linden Blog... I'm really interested in how thing will play out - LL and IBM are making a protocol that is different from the one developed by the RealXtend team (which is going to be used in the Openlife GAS).
On one hand you have LindenLabs, which are currently the biggest virtual world out there, they have all the users, their own economical infrastructure, but the viewer can't even import meshes or use any type of advanced scripting. On the other hand, the REX system has all the great features like meshes, global appearance and inventory, python scripting and opensource engine, but it lacks the popularity SL has...