Linden needs to share their roadmap if they're going to be a platform play.

You can't be a platform play and not share your roadmap with your users.

How can you develop for a platfrom as an ISV if you don't know what's coming down the pipe?

Someone is building a modelling tool. Sure, I want to as well, but why bother if Linden Labs just comes out and builds a faster better richer one in a few months time.

All that wasted effort.

Platform plays like Microsoft and what not give their ISV's due notice about what they have in mind. Linden labs needs to do the same.

Otherwise nobody who doesn't have time to waste (nothing personal) isn't going to bother developing for their 'platform'.

not to sound disrespectful but LL doesn't always know what is going to happen. LL isn't a big company. By now i would expect most of their goals have been accomplished; and the ones that aren't are limited by hardware and subscription numbers.

To the thought that SL should take on a life like the Metaverse depicted in Snow Crash (an online world where it's a big street with buildings housed on servers; a city): i don't think it's a good idea. By setting the game to a genre it dooms it to a smaller market share. LL has taken the correct path by not forcing a theme. If you were to ask me where i saw SL in 5 years i would only be able to point out the issues that will shape it's future. Where the tides of mass subconsciousness will take SL can't be gauged; but the best guess is more of the same.

I do have to agree that knowing what is currently in the works would be nice. But it would also be nice if they told us what they changed (change-log is good but it's censored).

SL is trying to be a platform. Everything that comes out of management's mouth is "platform this, platform that."

You can also buy your own SIM. Doesn't that sound like a metaverse to you?

a metaverse yes; but not the one invisioned in the book. One major difference as of present is that the owner of any size of land has little authority over it. In the Metaverse it was apparent that each server was it's own entity that had been specialy setup by the users that is integrated with the system it self (users could govern the laws that effected the parts of metaveres). In SL there is little way for a land owner to govern the Laws of nature; the two are just on different governing scales. SL is on it's way but still has a long way to go. The difference is who holds the keys to the kingdom, at present it's LL but for the Metaverse depicted in Snow Crash to come about they will have to relinquish most of that power to the users.

Another major difference is erban sprawl; SL is a great example of it. The metaverse didn't seem to have it so much.

I could go on for hours but i must sleep...

Those who do not learn from science fiction are doomed to repeat it.

That said, very few things appear in the precise form that the original author envisioned, either due to technical, personal, or economic factors. This means that your nitpicking isn't exactly useful... because you have already acknowledge the core of the argument, that SL /does/ have enough aspects in common with the Metaverse of _Snow Crash_ to be considered in the same light, as valid.

And on top of that... the entire SL-as-Metaverse idea wasn't even introduced in this thread by the original poster. I am interested in the topic that the original poster made, not the SL-as-Metaverse debate that is only a red herring from a real, important idea. I'd like to ensure that this concept is given the time and attention it is due.

To whit: Linden Lab has decided upon SL as the means by which people become employed by them. What does this mean? It means that LL is using SL as a platform for real-world transactions. It's in their best interest to realize that other people are going to want to, and make it possible -- as the original post in this thread pointed out, they don't have a roadmap available, so fewer people are going to feel comfortable enough to be willing to spend their time developing for it.

(How is it in their best interest? Well, let's see... aside from "exposing more talented, professional people to the toolset" so they can have a wider pool of candidates who might want to work with them to create a better SL... it also enables them to have a business-to-business model like Intuit, Microsoft, RealNetworks, and every other large service-software oriented company.)

Yes, I agree we need to expose all of our forward design thinking as clearly as possible as an evolving platform.

We are trying to figure out how best to do that. I think we've done a pretty good job so far, and have been very open about stats and plans. As mentioned here, we are a very small company still and often just haven't had efficient enough tools and time to communicate with them.

The forums seem to have a lot of problems in terms of being effective for this sort of directional communication. We are thinking about other options - wikis, blogs, plan files, etc. Thoughts welcome.

Thank you for taking the time to respond, Philip.
I too would like SL to take itself more seriously and become more platform oriented. I develop for a number of private simulator owners, and have a hefty investment in one myself.
On the topic of Linden<->User collaboration, something I would really like to see is:
1) A feature voting system
2) Open bug database

Then every once in a while, the top requested features / reported bugs could be ranked by LL on a priority scale, with labels such as "Being actively worked on", "In planning", "Being considered", "Maybe Later" or "Unfeasible". It would only take 30 seconds to peruse the top 10 and flag them.
An official SL wiki would be great, though! We could have articles on SL history, tutorials, known bugs and workarounds, etc.
But ultimately, SL really needs a system for voting on its future. Currently what we have is that the louder you whine, the more attention you will get. Which is hardly democratic.

<- agrees with Eggy. Again.

Note that one issue I do have with a voting system is that it excludes, obviously, all the people currently *not* using SecondLife.

The reason you dont want to exclude these people is that they are exactly the market you want to capture in the future. Everyone else is pretty much here to stay.

(So, what this means is that its important that Linden "owns" the vision of SL's future, but a spreadsheet/xml webpage with all feature requests and bugs on and a planned date and status would be extremely cool).

Azelda

I'm not sure that an open bug db gets us what we need. The problem, as Philip rightly points out, is that Linden is small and I imagine that after the There debacle, Philip is rtaher more interested in growing organically rather than making huge investments in people. We all know what the bugs are, and which are the most important and I'm sure Linden does too. Their problem is that, just because we all agree that a bug is important, doesn't necessarily mean its going to be the first one in the queue. For instance, its obvious that bug fixing have severely detracted from Linden's ability to implement Havok 2, to the point where Havok 3 might be out BEFORE they release SL with Havok 2.0.

I agree with Philip's comment about the forums not working correctly, however, I think we need to analyze why and that's msotly down to Linden not having the time or resource to moderate the discussions correctly. Again, I am not blaming the Lindens, if anything they are victims of their own success, and the same would be true of some other system, unless its not open to the users.

To be honest, I am not sure I have an answer to this right now, but here is a thought. Maybe what Linden need is a user development council. It has to be Linden invite only, and it needs to be made clear to everybody that this is a Linden owned thing so no forum-why-is-blah-a-member-when-I'm-not bs (yes, i know that will happen anyway). I would actually suggest three councils - a SL business affairs council, a technology development council and a future directions council.

Business affairs:
Discusses current state of things vis-a-vis content rights, land, l$ etc. etc.

Tech development council:
Upcoming feature lists, major bug triage, gives Lindens a chance to discuss how they need to apply their resource vs/ how we would like them too.

Future Directions:
2.0 and beyond. Wher eis the metaverse going?

Important things to note: these are ADVISORY councils only, Linden needs to reserve the rights to accepty/modify/ignore and suggestion that has ramfications for their business (i.e. all of them), although at some point the tiger has to have SOME teeth. Initially each council member will be invited by the Lindens but at some point in the future, they may want to allow public voting (currently I don't believe that politics works in any way except negatively on SL). All council discussions are priviledged and may be subject to a Linden NDA if they are to be truly useful. However, Linden would agree that holding back any information except on the grounds of business would be retrograde

And I agree with Azelda that the council memebrs need to be smart enough that they are making descions for people who aren't even members yet.
<Ducks behind wall and waits for firing to start>

I would love to see a bug database but know that will *never* happen (there is great evil lurking in the deep dark places that would best be let alone). I like the idea of the councils (not just because i want to be on one); the best solution would be to give the people on the councils new accounts with a special lastname. Be harder to find out who was on it while still leaving the council members accessible to the public.

(would be interested to be on tech council but not the future council as thats not my skill)

I'm not sure how a feature voting system would work. I'm guessing that it would be difficult to get anyone to vote. Like what happens with group votes.

*so glad this topic got back on topic*

I dont want other people to have any power over me. I have a business relationship with SL and thats it. I do not have to answer to you or anyone other than LL. Imagine if other people using my colo would get a say in what I can or cant do with my servers.
Please review the mass hysteria surrounding "self-government" and Robin Linden before going any further along these lines.
"Self-government" would be a fine idea for a game. But SL is not a game.

Eggy; I couldnt agree more with your post, however a technical council is something of a different nature, that self governance. Despite the fact I dont like the language itself, Java has a council which liases with Sun to direct the development of the language. Something similar as a advisory role to LL may be of worth.

(Consider how many features at town halls get 'Oh, didnt know you wanted that. - Add to list' responses.)

-Adam

Adam, please read my post about the open bug/suggestion database
EDIT: Ok, I will make this a little more clear.
I am *FOR* widespread player intervention in a non-personal, automatized way, as described in my post above.
I am *AGAINST* any sort of council made up of arbitrarily selected people that will probably meet behind closed doors, and not include the majority of the population

Well... I was trying to think of similar situations in RL where lots of people's ideas are successfully consolidated.

For me personally, I'd say that large corporations are not so far away from this: you have an idea, you tell your boss, he likes it and tells his, it goes up the line, if its a good idea.

If its a bad idea, it'll get filtered out low down. Life is tough

*Maybe* we could have something like this in SL. Yes, it's a form of government, but perhaps it could work. I'm a scripter, I work for non-scripters who generally own land. I tell them what I need, they are more than happy to pass this information onto the Lindens.

So how about, just throwing out a random idea here: sim owners get to decide what happens in SL? They're the ones with the money, they probably have a good overall picture of SL (not skewed towards scripters or animators or buildings specifically for example), and they have a reasonably vested interest in making half-decent decisions.

Under this scenario, if we had a list of current sim owners, we know who to campaign to, which saves a lot of forum pain, saves the Lindens time, and probably is fun for many of the sim owners.

And, of course, its an an additional incentive to own a sim.

Opinions?

Azelda

It's an interesting idea but easily put aside by thousands of years of history. What's good for big land owners isn't always good for small land owners or nomads like my self. If the councils were made up of *just* sim owners i would be *very* worried about the direction SL was going. Money should not equal power.

To Eggy's dislike of private meetings I suggest have public hearings/meetings?

Azelda,

<<So how about, just throwing out a random idea here: sim owners get to decide what happens in SL? They're the ones with the money, they probably have a good overall picture of SL (not skewed towards scripters or animators or buildings specifically for example), and they have a reasonably vested interest in making half-decent decisions.>>

If your aim is to reduce Second Life to a ghost town, that's a great idea.