Open apology to Merwan Marker and the Second Life community

Well Apothesus I agree, Your unbusninesslike emotional reactions that led you to handle the situation with Merwan the way that you did deserve an apology and more. Since you have locked your partner out of the site and also refused help through a meeting with Linden Labs in world and refused to talk to him about it. There is so much blatent dishonesty going on here that I am totally shocked. How am I to trust you with any thing else if this is how you treat the man that has given you his faith and trust? I am a virtual stranger to you. He was the man that spent hours planning the business together and working with you as a partner would in all aspects of the business.

"Merwan, I deeply regret the way I went about this. We should have had an open dialog, gentleman-to-gentleman. I am sorry."

I am aware of the pat answers you are giving your merchants, as I, as a merchant imed you last night and received your copy paste ahead answers. Well, you are going to, as I said ...do alot better than that with me. Trust is an issue here in Second Life, and in First Life for most folks. Believe it or not Apotheus, not everone in the world is motivated by money. Some people actually do things for love !!!

I can attest to all of the hard work and hours he has spent helping the merchants to list their items, answering questions, telling everyone how the terminals worked, placing terminals and offering support in any way he could. True to his partnership with you !

I have dozens of pictures in my possesion taken at the opening event that was beautifully handled by Spellbound. The event that Merwan kicked off to open SL exchange with. Pictures of all who attended, all the first merchants that bravely decided to trust here. Something new for all of us. It was Merwan, not you, that people put blind faith in and trusted to try out this new endeavor.

In that event Merwan referred to you as his "partner" that was probably the first time that many had even heard of you Apothesus.
I must ask you this.....Why apothesus if you state that Merwan was not a partner in SL Exchange did you allow him at this event to call you his partner and why did you allow this from inception in many other events, postings ect? Now all of a sudden the "wording" has conveniantly changed. Makes ya think community doesnt it?

This is a very slick thing you are trying to pull here.

I must point out that I don't know Apotheus, Merwan, or Cubey personally. What bothers me is there was a rash business decision made without thought of the consequences. I have been doing quite well on SLExchange, once I heard this news I immediately withdrew all my funds from SLExchange fearing for the worst.

Apotheus & Cubey I need to say that SLExchange was not yet an established trusted name, it was definitely getting there. With this I hope you guys realize that your actions from now on will be closely scrutinized. If not yet, I think many believe you are on shaky grounds. My advice is be very careful in what is said and done, be rational.

I'm not a merchant. I don't make or create things, just run around and talk with people I like. However, we don't have access to a lot of the information thats internal to sl exchange.

I haven't seen Merwan post anything at all on this. It seems like everyone is hanging Apothe-I forgot the rest of his name out to dry for an internal business decision that noone that is not in the business has access to or any knowledge of.

For instance, noone seems to know if Apothe-... was the CEO, or whether it was a partnership, or even the internal business structure of SL exchange.

These are the facts that I have gathered from reading this.
1. Merwan was heavily involved with marketing SLExchange
2. Merwan was heavily involved with customer support / service with SLExchange.
3. Merwan no long works for SLExchange.

We don't know why, and without Merwan coming up and saying his side of the story, we probably won't know why.

I guess I am saying, don't be so quick to judge. Right now we have a ... somewhat cryptic, business statement from Apothe... and thats it.

Noone knows the internal structure of SLExchange or whether Apothe was in his right to do that to Merwan, and Merwan hasn't provided us any answers as to what happened.

Right now everyone is assuming a "partnership" which is exactly that, an assumption, in other words, we don't have any of the needed facts to come to a clear, rational, decision concerning this matter.

As for taking away Merwan's access that is a reasonable thing to do.
If you work for a company with any level of security, and are terminated, you are escorted from your office (to make sure you do not take any company related materials), you are asked to hand in your security cards, and are generally escorted off the premises with no notification so that you can't retaliate against that company etc... it's common practice.... especially in a technology / science / engineering company.

Just my two Lindens
Just voicing my opinion

Jess

I have to say I have missed all this, I am not often up with SL politics, it all sounds as usual like money and cash earning from this exciting world we all visit became more important than the thrill and beauty of creation, or the satisfying mark of making ones way work to the approval of others. A shame that friends will fall so.

I am sorry Merwan for whatever has happened to you even tho I do not understand it. In my case I most surely went to place my art and goods there because of you, as I am sure did many.

Good luck and how we all wish that such things were rarer than they are in SL.

afterthought - I was one of the first group of vendors invited by Merwan at the launch, it was a wonderful idea, i never met the other person and didnt even know they were in this.
I think I shall remove my items from the Sl exchange while all this is going on and perhaps others who feel strongly will do the same. After all, what is the idea without the people who sell goods and those who buy?. If you do not agree or like what is going on or it makes u uneasy, its best to get out and if enough do, maybe there is some power there.

This business could easily be worth USD $120,000 in six months time. Just look at the spreadsheets.

In one month, the earnings jumped 10 fold. In order to become a $USD 120,000 business in six months time, the earnings merely need double and a very tiny bit each month for the next six months.

This is easily done, given they have their own growth compounded by the growth of SL, which is doing so at a very fast clip.

We are not talking about peanut lindens here folks.

If Apotheus thinks he's making 14 cents / hour off this business, then he didn't buy out Merwan at an appropiate value.

Merwan was obviously a partner of some kind. Anyone can see that plain as day.

I don't think it is plain as day that Merwan was a partner. I think thats an assumption based on little-to-no facts on hand.

Jess

Agreed, but I wouldn't attribute it to Merwan being non-controversial. I would attribute it to Merwan being an extremely classy guy.

Anyways, I had a conversation with Merwan when he was still involved. And he sounded like a total partner.

My only concern is that Merwan is too nice of a guy and just chalks this up as a lesson learned not to trust people.

That's the wrong lesson. You can trust people. People are not slimey like this, and the ones that are need to be punished to the full extent possible.

Yes Kate, you're absolutely right. I just meant that he doesn't seem to be the sort of person that likes washing his laundry in public. It's to be admired.

I've had much success with online infrastructure including vendors with on-line reporting and hybrid in-world out-of-world voting machines. My next goal is to create a competitor to slexchange with significantly reduced pricing -- free in most cases. The slexchange fees are just ridiculous for the service provided.

If anyone would like to join me in this endeavor, send me an email. Now that elections are over in Neualtenburg (and the voting infrastructure is done) I can focus on some new tasks.

~Ulrika~

Perhaps you might want to check out secondserver.net, as they are already free.

Unfortunately, the probability of SLExchange suffering from this unless Merwan persues his legal options are very small. The network effect is way to powerful.

Content is there, so that's where customers go. Where customers go, retailers will follow. I'm sure Apotheus understands this.

No, the only ones who can beat out SLExchange is LL themselves. Hopefully after this insanity they will feel absolutely zero guilt in doing so.

That is not to say that a high-quality, professional, ethical endeavor cannot erode some of the market share. If the financial gains are truly that high, a parallel endeavor with a fraction of the sales and cost could still be quite worthwhile. Frankly, the competition will drive down costs and benefit all consumers. Are we not obligated to take on such a task for the benefit of all players?

~Ulrika~

Easier said than done, I'm afraid. The work it takes to set this up is pretty immense and convincing people to list their goods on both sites is about 100x as hard.

Now maybe if you enticed Merwan to be your marketer, it might work ..

As someone who spent a considerable sum of Lindens on SLExchange...based solely on my trust and respect for Merwan, and knowing a little of what went on in the background of this...


I won't be using SLExchange any longer



Yanne Proudfoot

As much as SLexchange gives me visibility, and i will continue to list there more or less just for this reason... I hope this will persuade more people to use secondserver, where all the money you pay goes to the one that created the item you buy.

I thought it was made pretty clear here:



A sole proprietorship is very clear in terms of legality and structure. To quote the IRS description:

"A sole proprietorship is an unincorporated business that is owned by one individual. It is the simplest form of business organization to start and maintain. The business has no existence apart from you, the owner. Its liabilities are your personal liabilities and you undertake the risks of the business for all assets owned, whether used in the business or personally owned. You include the income and expenses of the business on your own tax return."

From what Apotheus posted, it sounds like Merwan was a hired employee. Creative differences occurred between them (something that happens a lot in business, in my experience), and Merwan was let go.

Now we just need Merwan's perspective...

That's not how it works, John.

You don't simply declare yourself a Sole Propietorship and let your 'employees' figure out their status for themselves.

You tell them very very clearly up front what their relationship is when they join.

No one should have been confused that Merwan was an employee or partner. Apotheus should have made it very very clear to him.

He obviously didn't because he didn't want to demotivate him as Merwan's reputation and marketing skills were obviously of paramount importance to him. Unfortunately, he will soon have to pay the piper for this.

It comes down to whether or not they were treating this as a formal business partnership, or a more informal partnership based on mutual goals and interests. It did certainly seem that they were partnered fully on this - the site is even listed in the fan site's section as Apotheus Silverman's and Merwan Marker's SLExchange, and their partnership on the site existed before the marketplace - it has been there since the original launch. It seems there was not a formal business partnership, but screwing over a friend and partner on any level will come back to haunt someone, regardless of the legal status of the business. For better or worse, this site grew on Merwan's reputation and connections, not Apotheus', and I think it will sink now without that, as strong as Cubey's repuation is. It's too soon to tell - people have short attention spans, and like money, so who knows, but I certainly won't sell through the site or buy from vendors through it - I will buy from them directly.

If I remember correctly, and if it hasn't been wiped from the archives; the very first dialog between Merwan and Apoth on this venture was communicated in these very forums.

It might give a clue as to who was doing what when, or at least how the idea was born, who approached who, etc.

If someone has 15 minutes to browse the forum, the initial business-contact might shed a clue.

Agreed. People do have very short memories. Also, the forums unfortunately make up for a very small percentage of SL users.

My guess is that one or two things will happen: Merwan will get his fair share through court, and/or Merwan will simply partner up with Gigas or someone and everyone will just migrate based on his marketing skills alone (and the sympathy of everyone).

Either way, Apotheus is about to learn a very painful lesson.

So if I am understanding you correctly, you didn't want to be partners with Merwan before SLexchange launched but decided to not bother to say a bloody thing about it to him until he had drawn in most of SLs premier vendors and got you well on the way toward a significant market presence and then cut him out of the partnership because you thought that 100% of this pie was better than the 60% you were getting. Calling that a "mistake in judgement" has got to be the most absurd euphemism for screwing your partner totally and completely that I've ever heard.

What? Where does Malachi come off with this information? Well, for 6+ months I have been providing gratis business consultation for Merwan and Apotheus at their request both in game and out, largely because I liked what Merwan was doing for the community. Apotheus has mailed me and spoken to me on the telephone about aspects of prior ideas they had had and more recently about SLexchange and their policies on Intellectual Property, principles of copyright, and DMCA issues.

I know Merwan about as well as one can know another in SL. To my knowledge, no one has ever accused Merwan of anything worse than being too jovial. According to what I was told, there is a written contract between Merwan and Apotheus that codified the partnership, laid down the ownership rights (60/40 as mentioned above) and required 30 days notice between parties for serverance of the contract. As Apotheus noted in the thread start, he gave Merwan exactly no notice at all and has been maintaining through this thread that Merwan was hired help. Have I seen the contract? No, I have not. Do I wish to engage in a he-said/he-said battle? No, not at all.

As you have solicited my advice in matters in the past, Apotheus, I am now going to provide some unsolicited advice. Even an oral contract is completely enforcable although - as you might imagine - difficult to prove the existence of. As the only assets that SLexchange has now that are recognized in RL courts is goodwill, you can reasonably expect that it is not worth your partner's time, money, or angst to pursue your prima facia breach of contract. This doesn't mean that he might not choose to do so in the future, though. As a member of the tech community, you may well be familiar with the principle that it isn't worth pursuing contractual issues until such a time as there is something worth recovering. However, depending on the statute of limitations in whatever venue may be appropriate, you may find yourself being pursued for this publically admitted breach sometime in the future. If your recent skullduggery doesn't kill SLX before it even shows its potential, that is. I am NOT speaking for Merwan, I am simply explaining what you could expect. I explicitly don't know Merwan's intentions, but like many of the posters here, viewed SLX as equivalent with Merwan (but also know that you have made a large technical and time investment in the partnership).

I wish you luck with your newly siezed "sole proprietorship" of SLX and hope for your sake that it doesn't bear the fruits that some in this thread have extrapolated. Why? Because working hard for a year or more under the constant spectre of a breach of contract suit is likely no fun at all. Cubey, if you are as ignorant of Apotheus' actions as you have claimed in this thread, you should probably ask some hard questions of your new business associate.

As I said, I don't know the truth of the matter, but obviously find one side of the story far more credible than the other. Regardless of where the truth actually lies, there is more than sufficient cause for me to cease to be an SLX vendor and customer and have accordingly removed my vendors and deposits from SLX.

Something my great-great grandpappy once told me...

"Girl, you can't copyright an idea. God knows if that were true, I would have copyrighted sex and just sat back and let the royalities roll right over me."

This may be a prime example of both individuals having the very same idea or concept at the same time. That being said, you then have to think of the creation and execution of the idea, the costs associated with the creation (time, labour and equipment/supplies), and on-going costs associated with keeping the creation working once it's up and running. In this case, hosting costs, web-page and database design -- not to mention advertising costs, testing scenarios etc.

Another thing my great-great grandpappy taught me.

There are three sides to every lawsuit -- "His/Her's and Ours"

Very nicely said, Malachi.

I do know how it works. I assumed that a standard employee contract existed between Merwan and Apotheus.

If a contract *didn't* exist....well, that's bad. Very bad. If one existed and was broken, even worse. And as a sole proprietor, that means Apotheus is personally liable for anything to do with his business (no corporate protection). Which means all his personal assets are completely up for grabs if he is sued.

OK, I'm going to stop assuming that all of this was handled professionally and according to standard business practices until I hear otherwise from Merwan or Apotheus...lest I assume too much yet again.