10-29-2003 06:18
I'd like to propose museum sims. A museum sim would be a sim which hosted structures for very low taxes but with no ability to build, little or no physics, and perhaps even no avatars (disembodied cameras only) in order to reduce server costs.

The goal would be to provide a cheap home for the accomplishments of SL citizens that didn't lock people into a stressful "tax or death" situation. It would be cheap for Linden Labs if the minimized functionality of the sim allowed them to create a stripped down server which could run on cheaper computers and consume less bandwidth. And it would be cheap for SL citizens if it allowed them to preserve their best builds without struggling to pay taxes on more and more land.

Museum sims would benefit Linden Labs by decreasing some of the constant tension between the Lindens and their customers over taxes (e.g. Americana), because people would be less afraid of losing things they had invested their time and energy in making . It would also help preserve for new or potential customers the best, and often the biggest, accomplishments of SL.

I don't really know if it's feasible, but I thought I would put the idea out there.