CTO Cory Linden Leaving Linden Labs

hmmm. I'm not really sure what to think about this. I don't feel I know enough about it to really comment. And I've never heard of the Love machine.

And that picture of the elastic bands is making me feeling a bit Queasy....

I take responsibility, when I was in SF in September I said I hated LSL and wanted to replace it with C#. Ok joking aside, I think I know what is at dispute here.

LL has taken a very laid back attitude towards management, LL employees can more or less pick the projects they work on in their departments. The most freedom being in those in development. When LL was a small company this worked reasonably well, but as the company has grown this management style has not kept pace. Essentially the old system worked by swearing allegiance to Philip and the cause, and Philip would lead from the trenches. You would follow Philip because you knew him at a personal level. With the size of the company now, Philip likely doesn't have the time to get to know everyone and maintain their allegiance. Everyone was empowered to make critical decisions, and with a small company size it was possible for everyone to keep informed; with the increase of size, it becomes impossible to maintain this.

I suspect that Philip is leaning towards crystallizing the structure of LL, changing how it is managed so fewer people are making critical decisions, that a chain of command be abided by. Cory was one of the core members of LL and if anyone was carrying a torch for the old system it would be one of the core. I think all this revolves around the managerial future of LL.

Of course I could have things backwards and it's Cory who wanted to get people in line and Philip who wanted things to stay as they were.

Oh speaking of new year, I will be taking a sabbatical from my resmod duties at the start of the new year. Aki Linden will be taking over pro tempore.

aaahhhh...... enjoy SL, Strife!

Glimpse Inside a Metaverse: The Virtual World of Second Life
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5182759758975402950

Philip seems to do all of the talking while Cory is demo'ing. He talks about a concurrency of 1,500 so it's a safe bet it's quite old .

Yeah it HAS to be for the better. Remember you said that when Phillip sells SL to Microsoft.

The Love Machine.

I barfed so much when I read about it that I put one of the sycophantic sickies as a sticky in my forum sig.


My "Home Page" in the forum profile is a Google search
http://www.google.ie/search?q=Linden+lab+%22love+machine

I had understood it to be a creature of Phillip's but the latest out of LL indicates that Cory did "the design"?
It's unclear who actually dreamt it up. I'll admit to not have researched that question. I'm not a LL personality watcher. It was simply the corporate culture as a whole that interested me.

That “Thanks for having too much integrity for one single person” is a quote out of one a Rolling Stone interview with Phillip in April last.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/14306294/second_life_the_nets_virtual_paradise_heats_up/4

"Thanks for having too much integrity for one single person," reads one message to Rosedale. "It feels wonderful," he says. Rosedale uses the Love Machine to evaluate employee performance. The more love you receive, the better you do."

"Now he wants to move it from Linden Labs into Second Life, so that Residents can heart the Lindens too. "I would like everyone within Second Life to be able to send us love," he says, locking eyes."

Oh shit!! He's trying to make eye-contact!
DON'T make eye-contact! DON'T make eye-contact!

It does NOT feel wonderful! It will rot your brain!!!!

I'll miss you!.

Of all the various theories being tossed around in regards to the true reasons for Cory's departure, this one appears to me to be the most plausable.

Strife, have a good one!

And thanks for that post. I´m with Travis on this.......
If we´re to go by the two messages reported on that website, this explanation makes the most sense to me.

Hey, enjoy your sabbatical! Kick back and have some much-deserved fun in however many lives you choose! Personally, I'm amazed you put up with this circus as long as you did ...

Oh, and C#?? Are you mad?? This has to be a symptom of burnout *laughs*

Thanks, Strife, for your service. Enjoy your rest!

Think of it - a forum free from strife.

Good luck to you Strife..........

Hey!!

This is supposed to be about Cory!!

Strife is gonna lock this thread if you don't keep on topic!!

*sighs*

Strife IS Cory!!

Don't you get it?
- Cory leaving LL at the end of the year.
- Strife 'taking a break' at the end of the year.

Well, duh!!

For the good of SL, this was overdue by a year or so. I think Strife
has some pretty good insight as to what's going on...

The thing here is that it doesn't matter how good Cory was technically.
He was doing the wrong job by having the title of "CTO".

A CTO needs to be a strong leader internally. They need to be able to dictate
priorities. The bit in the Tao of Linden about "pick your own work" is a big
part of the problem that we see with ongoing stability issues. Is there much
evidence that there was a strong engineering leader in charge over the last year?

A CTO also needs to be the technical face of the company. Cory's Town Halls
were few and far between, and he rarely posted on the blog. When there were
major problems with the service, it seemed to be up to 2nd and 3rd level folks
to post some sort of explanation. That's not good -- you need to learn from
the history of other companies, step up, and explain things from the top. Both
Philip and Cory have been way too laid back on this count. You simply dont
have to make all of the startup mistakes yourself - there is a lot of precedent
in this area to learn from.

Cory will be fine. I wish he was still at LL in the capacity that made sense for
his talents (dont have him write LSL again.. oy!) I hope that a world class CTO
will look at the opportunity for getting SL on a stable track, and will go for it.

respectfully,
Bucky

Strife have a great holiday.

Obviously someone at LL needs to learn how to deligate if what has been posted is true. It is nice to be best friends with the people that you work with but someone needs to know how to run a business and thats not the way that you do it.

After reading the various articles and his "mission statement" I was left with the impression that Phillip is leaning more towards improving the stability of SL and less towards implementing flashy new features. Which may be contrary to Cory's major areas of interest.

hey now!

and look what happened to him.

was that whatever it was with you know who even really love?

No, I don't think Mark Chapman really loved him.

If this means the demise of the Tao of Linden, then huzzah.

I'm not so sure about Yoko either.

Either way, they better find the middle. That it polarized this far has to be proof that there is blaming going on within.

IMO whoever was in agreement that they rushed to open up SL to unpaid accounts, is most responsible for the problems today. If they all agreed with this then they are all to blame. Rushing a business has killed many businesses and endeavors. Knowing the online audience is full of griefing monsters and bloodthirsty exploiters, should be findamental and common sense.

Whoever pushed the most for going to the extreme, with the idea of non-involvement with resident disputes, crooked dealings, avaricious business, or glitches, allowing scams to proliferate, is to blame for the issues today. One reason Blizzard is so successful, is that they right wrongs, reimburse victims and track down offenders to the ends of the earth and still aren't considered to be overly despotic.

Whoever pushed for Open Source the hardest is more guilty. Maybe they all are guilty. Either way, without extreme security as a backbone of SL, no sensible, REAL business or serious individual business people, will be comfortable with SL, when the security is so poor.

Second Life needs to be a fuzzy, warm place, not a real world jungle or wild west. it should NOT be like "the internet," which is a cesspool. Otherwise, all the work they have done to create SL, is doing nothing but creating a technology that will be ruled by scammers and exploiters, rather then the warm fuzzy kind of people.

Washing their hands of policing SL in the most basic ways, is idiotic IMO. It is lacking common sense, to imagine, that they can use Open Source in a real world as we have. It strikes me as very naive to think Open Source is smart and whoever most pushed for volunteer programmers to be part of the loop, is very guilty and very naive about the real world. Sandboxes can be fun, but to allow a sandbox mentality to dominate SL is absurd. It has to be roped off.

When dealing with "governing," SL, they have to find the middle, between the extremes. When dealing with the economic reality of SL, they have to find the middle. The Linden$ should be strictly for in-world virtual purchases, while real money should be the currencies for real world business in SL, and the exchange of Lindens for real currency should be entirely against the TOS and bannable. It is overeaching, naive and megamaniacal, to do otherwise.

Although I am nobody but a private resident, who dreamed of virtual 3D worlds all my waking life I am using this shakeup to voice my opinion.

Because I think the best thing about SL is the creative aspect of the 3D world itself, and the social aspect----- to protect the good, from the encrouching RL maze from hell, and the in-world scammers, the hackers, the compulsive anarchist children, the internet parasites and spammers, that see it as a scammers and/or griefer's paradise, the best move would be to make buying or selling Lindens against the TOS. Enforce the TOS with a severe banstick like Warcraft does.
I hope LL gets back to policing the world and protecting the normal residents and creators. Forget Open Source and Jira's forever. (Hire people) and instead make security and privacy paramount. Get rid of volunteer programmers and the elitist offshoots. Each account comes with one sim on the residents own computer so they can have a single player mode, with far more prims then we get now, to do their building and testing etc., on their own hard drives before signing onto the grid. If a person needs/wants more then one sim then the resident just adds another computer at their own location and makes a alt. till they use up their sensible Alt maximun.

Businesses and corporations can sell their own real life products using fully secure, existing, real life methods. Lindens only for in-world purchases.

Paid accounts only and actually service the residents. Strict third party, Real life (not online), in-person, age verification to enter mature grid. (i.e, Like notarys, bank officers or affidavits) that require nothing but but age verification.

Tie all alts to the master account and limit them. Each alt can have a sim and is played on a different box. Period. Prohibit second accounts for the same person. The Linden market will go underground just as Warcraft gold does, for those individual who wish to risk a ban.

Fight the third party Linden sellers/buyers as best as possible, just as Warcraft goes after gold sellers and buyers. Totally prohibit bots. Enforce clear and detailed anti-harrasment, anti griefing with Immediate support and investigations, with suspensions and bans, as Warcraft does. Make up losses residents suffer from theft of Lindens or items due to cheats, crooks or technical glitches. It really isn't brain surgery.

The creators will then be able to create, the socializers will be able to socialize and even fictional gambling would then be just fictional monopoly money. Strictly enforce laws, regarding those committing illegal behaviors, with full investigation and lifetime bans for offenders as well as providing evidence to RL police. Do not tie it to Google or anyone else.

Among some of the weak criticisms of this will be:

"It will cost to much we don't have the money to change all that--we'll go broke!".....fine get better investors--with a secure way for companies to sell their real life products, off their own local sims, they own. Those people will fall all over themselves to invest.

"But we will have to shut down Second Life, to redo it."---fine do it. So what. Better to do this then wait till it explodes in your face with RL legal problems.

"Big landowners will complain, I have so much land I own, I will go broke. i'll lose everything---"--so buy back the exisitng land with Lindens for when the grand re-opening happens two years from now and of course save all objects for transfer into residents own property on their own computer(s). Master Accounts will be on hold. People can start new alts or tie their old ones to their master account.

"How do we take sides in reisdent disputes and reports?"---its not brain surgery, use log files and investigations. Harrassment and griefing is not that hard to spot. Spell it out. if Warcraft can do it so can SL. Earn your darn money will you! respond to all reports immediatly and solve it immediatly if possible or in the case of complex investigations--take 2 weeks at the most.

"oh but this is all too hard to do" --"security is impossible"----so what, you are supposed to be such visionary geniuses--saying "it's impossible" or "I can't" or "we can't," just means you aren't such visionary geniuses afterall. Earn your darn money will you! Hire a TON of ethical business and technical people. Partner with real, more mature tech companies, MS and Apple. Strictly support Intellectual property and suspend or ban all offenders,

So let it be written, so let it be done.