New type of group "corporate or Business group"

VGI is a SL company that has recently incorporated in RL as Virtual Games LLC. Our purpose is to bring innovation, and high quality content to SL via programming, and solutions to common problems. One of the largest gripes lately in SL is that people want jobs to earn money here. I think people should be able to have jobs, but it is very difficult for business owners to keep track of employees, pay, titles, and jobs. So VGI has come up with a solution to the problem, but we need you all over there at LL to help us out a bit.
To increse jobs in SL, we first need to make it easier for businesses in SL to employ and keep track of employees and jobs. This can be done simply by creating a new type of group that is seperate and different from the typical group type that has been around since the start of SL.
We need a corporate or business group that of course has all the features of normal groups, with but with a lot of extra features such as subgrouping for emplyees where you can add different titles to the employees that pertain to their specific job and the ability to set a daily or weekly paycheck to the employee can be an automatic payment, or manual payment through the group options.
To do this we would also need to allow the group to retain money and act as its own entity as a normal business, and be able to be managed by the corporate officers. The group should also be able to recieve and pay out money to people. For instance, a business wants to operate a casino, so the group owns the games, and the money is paid to the group and taken from the group as the games are played and won.
Having a corporate group would also open up opportunities for in game business stocks that can bought and sold in the game, or even on the SL web site. the value of a businesses stock will be in accordance to the amount of money the group has on hand, and the average value of their land holdings. the corporate groups could also choose to give dividends to stockholders, and a business can more easily raise capital for any projects it needs by selling its stocks. Control of the corporate group can also be in accordance with who owns the most stock in the company.
I know this would be a very difficult undertaking, but SL businesses would pay thousands of L$ to upgrade their group to a corporate group, or start a new one. It would create a massive flow of jobs where employees can feel safe about working and not getting stiffed on their paycheck. It would also allow everyone to see the financials of a company and feel more compfortable when doing business with them.
the corporate groups would also be able to compete for the SL fortune 500 list where they are shown to be the most succesful and powerful businesses in SL.
Just think about the possibilities this would bring into SL, and all of the doors it would open! Business week would be all over SL. "Business Booming in a Virtual World!" Isnt this what we all have been striving for here in SL? Dont you think this would boost SL up to a whole other level of virtual worlds? Without this corporate group, businesses won't be able to go any further. we need something more to operate here. you boast busines in SL, so help us make it real!

It's bad enough that a corporation is a legal entity in itself in the USA (look whre that's got us so far). I'd rather not see a company having the same status as a person in any way, shape, or form within SL. For the sufficiently intelligent, it is perfectly possibel to run a company without giving it the status of a person. That's been done for centuries quite well.

In order for business to succeede in SL, and allow employment opportunities that people need, we need a group structure like this. I know there are people who hate corporations and business, but without them, you don't have jobs. If corporations were ever devastating, then there wouldn't be any. SL needs this. it is the missing piece.

There have been corporations and jobs long before they had any formal recognition within teh framework in which they do business. It isn't needed.

I think that groups need to be improved but I see no reason at all why LL should build group tools to simulate one, very narrow, definition of what one sort of group could be like.

Businesses have been in SL for a long time yes, but with very little tools for proper operation. what I am proposing is to keep existing groups as we have now, and create another TYPE of group specifically for businesses in SL. I don't see why any business owner in SL would not want this feature. I still don't see a good explination from anyone on why this would be a bad thing.

If what you are really asking for are more group slots to facilitate commercial activities, then I would tend to agree. For instance, if we were limited to x-number of social groups but with unlimited "commercial" group slots, that would be a major improvement and I'd vote yes. As for a "legal" entity definition within SL, I'd say no. Leave that to the real world.

Edit: You just clarified that's what you are after.

If teh group can hold money in its own name, then it has effectively become a legal entity. I honestly can't see any need to waste programming time on that.

Unless i missed something everything you are wanting is already capable in Second Life with no further workload needed on the programming team. You can impliment payroll scripts that track both name, uuid, title and payrate. That on scheduled times are capable of paying such employees with the llGiveMoney() function call and the employee UUID as target.

You could even manage supervisor lists and such by using various strided lists. All this can be tracked in LSL already and with scripts you control can be tailored to the specific business if slightly different needs exist per group.

If this isnt enough the employees have already said/hinted at several times that a rewrite of teh group management code is already underway to provide a bit more functionality. Just be patient for the new group code, or go ahead and write your scripts. All the functionality you need is there for your use.

EDIT:



Umm.. how many thousands? =-) make me a reasonable offer and i'll do the scripts myself.

Games, Nice piece of writing! Indeed a new grop listing would work

Why would you see it as a bad thing for a group to be able to effectively manage its own money? Basically what you are saying is that you prefer SL businesses to be sole proprieterships only, as only one person can handle the money for the business, and its all on thier account. As for business management scripts that were mentioned before, I think you need to go back to post #1, and re-read what I suggested. it can't be done with scripts.

I don't see why a single human can't manage money as effectively as a group entity. Essentially, it's still a human authorising any payments made.

Currently, if an avatar somehow finds a loophole and 'cheats' the system, that avatar can in principle be banned from SL. Suppose the group does this. Would you be in favour of banning all the officers of that group, whom presumably made teh decision as a group to do that 'cheating'? Why? Or why not?

With a single avatar ultimately responsible for any payments, the issue is simple. Giving a group this kind of power complicates things enormously.

First of all, a group as an entity just handles all the money and transactions, and manages officers, managers, emloyees, stocks, land, etc.
Have you had any experience with business in the real world? If a group manages to cheat the system in some way, or operates in an unruly fashion as a whole, then that group can be deleted by LL just as it can now. I still can't understand why someone like you would be so against some good added features to create more jobs in SL by making life a little easier for SL business to operate, and create a fair working environment for people.
Let us look at a situation here. lets say you want to run a business in SL where you build apartments to rent out. you make a bunch of apartments in multiple sims, and own a lot of land. to get a little more land, you contrubute all your tier to the group for the 10% land tier bonus, and deed all land to the group. Now you need people to help manage your places. they need rights to certain features of the land to return objects, bann people, and so on, but there are only 2 options for them. either they are an officer and have "ALL" land rights, or a member with no land rights.
Now lets say your partners in the business want to know how much is coming in, and should get a percentage of the income. rather than use your personal account to keep track of rental income, and make sure you split the money with partners, and pay employees, all your rental fees can go directly to the group where it can be better tracked and managed, and then you can either manually pay the employees, and split the money to the partners, or have the group do it automatically. This is opposed to the group as it is right now just evenly distributing all money to group members at the end of the day.
If this example ist sufficient enough, I will provide another example on how the new group type would make things easier.

Hey, you're only looking at the benefits, without seeing how this can be gamed. And like any feature, if there is a way to game it, it will be. I'd rather any new features minimise that potential before being seriousluy considered. So far, all you have suggested is that teh group gets deleted. That's no penalty at all.

I repeat the question. Suppose the group does something that, were it an avatar doing it, LL decides justifies banning from SL. If teh penalty is merely to delete the group, then you're only down 100 lindens, and free to make another group, rinse, and repeat. If you ban all the avatars who were officers with sufficient authority to do/decide on the questionable act then, what do you do if one of them claims he wasn't involved in that act? And if no avatar is banned for the act that would normally result in a lone avatar getting banned, where's the penalty for cheating the system?

This is a serious question that needs a serious answer before groups can be incorporated as money-holding entities.

Please give an example

Consider the guy currently trying to sue LL after getting some land at an unusually low price. Imagine a group had done that instead.

I think you are misunderstanding what a group entity would be. A group entity is not a character, but would have a Key like another avatar. A group cannot buy land by itself, but an officer with land management rights can buy the land for the group with group money. in a case where the group owner or group officer "hacks" the system, then those individuals can be banned or suspended. It would just be like enron.

Ok you said re-read and doing so...



Nice intro to your point. Expresses a desire well. No request or solution yet...



This much is covered by a normal officer/member situation in a group. Nothing new required to meet your demands yet.



This much can be handled with scripts. Again you can set up a list variable in a script that keeps groups employee data such as their UUID (payroll id woot!), avatar name (or use llKey2Name as needed), pay rate, pay frequency, immediate supervisor name/uuid, job title/position.

The script can also keep a list of what positions has access to payment funds and which people are allowed to promote others or to alter jobs. That is a really LOW LEVEL scripting requirement of basic data handling.



Nice Ideas !!. Still basic data handling requisites. The CEO or person initially starting the group as a basic setup cost CAN PAY THE 10$USD for an alt account that holds the group money. This is no different than "... pay thousands of L$ for...". You said it was already worth it after all. Again scripts mentioned above can control which employees of the company are capabale of making payments out of group. They would use a terminal on the group land owned by the CEO with debit permissions. They just give the command via dialogs or chat interface of your choice for the target UUID the payment to go thru. Or they could specify themselves as target and pay the person manually. Either way works. The 'games' in question are either owned by the CEO, or have debit permission from employee so that funds are immediately transferred to the CEO account. Payments are made same way by the machine paying the person direction via debit, or by sending a specially formatted message to a server incharge of making payouts. All still script possible functionality.



OK track an internal value of how many shares your company splits its asset rights into. Then determine how much of that you wish to be up for sale. Basic integer tracking so far. Since the business tracking script can fairly trivially adjust its known 'balance' of funds by adjusting said value as deposits / payments are made you can use that value to determine your stock price by any means YOU want. As long as you track the funds via script as deposits are made at terminals you're good. Then just allow people to pay the stock terminal to purchase shares and have a list in that terminal that stores UUID and share balance. STILL basic integer skills. If you pay dividends on a schedule use the list to determine who gets how much.



covered by methods already stated, lists and integers and the employee privledges script.



Or an undertaking that a group CLAIMING the can "bring innovation, and high quality content to SL via programming, and solutions to common problems" should be willing to take INSTEAD of putting the entire responsibility off onto the admins who are already doing their jobs in the direction they wish to take the world.



It would support the current jobs to have that systme available and possibly encourage a small percentage increase agreed. It was a very nice proposal of yours !!



OK while you're making this make an SL Fortune 500 tracking script too. Integrate your main server scripts for each business to broadcast some set of data to a MASTER server that displays the info for anyone to see.



And in closing that statement to me reads "Dear LL thank you for providing me with ALL THE TOOLS EVER NEEDED to do exactly what I wish. Please take this entire proposal as a thankyou and NOT as a request for more features."

And i agree with that.

OK do you really NOT realize that if a group member buys land for the group the group STILL OWNS IT. Thus her point is quite valid.

I don't agree.

I think ALL groups should have their capabilities extended.

ALL groups should have a group inventory and group treasury, and more roles, as well as better group management capabilities.

The "officers" versus "members" distinction should be replaced by "permissions". The group creator would have _all_ permissions, and the ability to create "roles" and grant them permissions. The permissions would be something like:

Manage membership.
Manage roles.
Assign roles.
Manage land.
Edit land.
Manage treasury.
Manage inventory.

Manage membership would let you eject or invite members, and change the group from open to closed or back again, and set the price for membership.

Manage roles would let you create a role with a subset of the permissions you have, and any title you want, or delete a role that doesn't have any members assigned to it.

Assign roles would let you eject members from or invite members to a role.

Manage land would let you buy or sell land for the group.

Edit land would let you edit the group land, but not buy or sell it.

Manage treasury would let you pay members from the treasury, and set treasury policy.

Manage inventory would let you open up the group inventory as if it was your own.

All users would be able to pay the group treasury, give objects to the group inventory, and take copies of copyable objects from the group inventory.

Scripts owned by people in the appropriate roles would be able to perform analogous functions.

I believe this would allow you to implement your "business groups" functions, and solve all kinds of other group problems at the same time.

/me agrees with Argent but mentions most those features are actively being coded / tested by LL already.