CTO Cory Linden Leaving Linden Labs

Rebecca Proudhon, I agree with the spirit of your post and in general agree with most of the suggestions you have made. However I don't see the ability for people to make content, sell it for L$ and then cash out their profits as a problem. Many traders use the US$ garnered this way to pay the tier for their landholdings. On top of that I have no issue with people making a bit of money from their work. Sure, in most cases it's little more than 'beer money' or 'pin money' but that little bit of income also helps generate part of that 'warm fuzzy feeling'.

I'm 100% with you on clamping down on abuse of the system. I could accept a ban on cashing out L$ *IF* residents were to be allowed to pay their tier with L$ and / or US$. In my case that would mean that 100% of the money I make in SL from selling my treehouses and the occasional live music performance would then go towards the occasional in-world purchase my land expenses.... fine by me. I'm no capitalist by any stretch of the imagination but the ability to make a little bit of money as reward for one's labours is one helluva an incentive.

What I do see as a problem is the abuse of the system and abusive people in SL financially abusing other residents. That is an issue that LL has dodged up to now and that really needs to be addressed.

Under a less aggressive change, then the above, in SL, while still banning exchange of the L$ for real money, I wouldn't disagree with the choice of paying a "tier" with Lindens or real money, but with what I am saying, there would be no "tier," anyway, other then personal real world expense to buy and maintain our own computers, one sim per computer. Current Land barons will hate it but if they want to be real estate mogul, they can use SL to sell real land in the real world off their own sim(s) they ACTUALLY own, that resides on their own local computers. Technical challenge, but the only way it would or should work.

The reason for unpaid accounts was that LL found that 70%+ of people were backing out of the registration process at the credit card information step. And I can sympathise with that because I did it too: I first noticed Second Life around 2003-4, but avoided it when it started asking me to give my credit card details without charging me any money, which was a "suspicious" activity (many "dodgy" sites use it for verification) from a company I had never heard of.

What was wrong was that they approached it in the wrong way. A far better way, I believe, would be to do what most other online games do: separate "account" and "avatar", so that you have a single account which manages all your alts. You log in with your real name and then choose which avatar to use. Creating an account can require some identity verification, but then creating new alts is easy because the account is already verified. Most importantly, this would make it clear that each person could have only one account, unlike the current situation, where the fact that a person may legitimately maintain multiple accounts is a huge barrier to catching the people who have many alts for dubious purposes.



libsecondlife already existed at the time SL was Open Sourced - in fact, the most infamous security breach - the CopyBot scandal - happened _before_ the Open Source release.



Did you know that the exchange of L$ for US$ is a resident-created feature? It's true! It was added by residents because they didn't like the fact that they could spend hours working to build attractive areas or stores, but then end up having to pay out of their own pocket for the land fees, because all they earned for their content was L$. Also, in those earlier days, content was of lower quality and thus less specialized - many people could pretty much make everything they wanted and had no use for L$ at all. Nowadays, with specialization it's the other way around - to be a "big name", it's not uncommon of people to have to spend _all_ their SL time creating, and thus have no time to need any other content.



It wouldn't work. In fact, back when the L$ was devalued, there was already a proposal that residents who needed US$ to pay their land fees would simply create their own non-devalued currency that would bypass the whole system (it was called A$), or just charge for things in US$ directly. If you - somehow - banned any interaction with US$ whatsoever, then every land trader would be instantly wiped out, likely destroying LL's current business model for land.



Second Life land is a real-life product that intimately crosses over with every in-world purchase. Because of this, you cannot separate things that way.



You mean the companies that approached SL as a marketing venue for RL products and who are now almost all leaving? We've already seen that SL just doesn't work that way.



If Lindens can't be exchanged for US$ then buying back the existing land with L$ will be worthless. Some of these large landowners are paying tier of US$39000 a month. US$39000. If Linden Labs backtrack them on that investment, nobody will trust them ever again, including corporate investors.



WoW can do it because griefing in WoW is a lot simpler than it is in Second Life. For example, some people on SL actually enjoy being shot and orbited as part of consensual combat.



Your last line is especially ironic. If L$ could not be exchanged for US$, L$ would be worthless so what would be the value of any in-world intellectual property?

So you're saying there should be no grid?

The result would be bedlam. A hacker could easily copy any object or avatar that moved into their local sim. There would be no continuous grid - no flying anywhere - so you'd just have to teleport places. The system requirements for SL would go through the roof.

Maybe Metaplace is a model closer to what you're thinking of?

I strongly disagree with turning SL into The Sims.

Copybot was never a security breach or an exploit. It was simply a tool that significantly lowered the barrier for anyone to potentially infringe on others' copyright.

i think its a horrible idea to compare Second Life to Wow. its a completely different monster. i do not want to see the adult and teen grid merged. if that happens i will know without any doubt that people dont care about rl kids. its the very worst thing that could ever happen. i never understood why kids were allowed to play with adults in wow. it seemed insane to me from the beginning. warm fuzzy people are nice and im all about that. but i really dont want Second Life to become disneyland. that concept pretty much strangles off creativity. and its not realistic, not even preferable.

"I hope LL gets back to policing the world and protecting the normal residents and creators."

i have always felt that Linden Labs never did anything to protect the innocent here. Comparing Second Life to the wild west was right on the mark. They cant get back to protecting us if they never did in the first place. The only people i see protected are the ones who create Ar parties to gang up on a resident or those who personally know a Linden they can brown nose for favors.

its the truth and i dont care what anyone here says. i been here 4 years. i know how Linden Lab rolls. i didnt like it 4 years ago and im not any happier about it today. The only thing i see thats changed is more people feel like i do, more people are disillusioned, discontented with the path this company and game has taken. And following this trend, without miracles, its gonna just keep getting worse in worse. When Second Life had competition there is gonna be a mass exodus unlike any ever seen in the gaming world.

Well I don't know if it's changed recently because I haven't checked the WoW forums lately but I know that at one stage, scams such as asking people for materials to enchant items and then the person running off with the goods were against the rules on WoW US, but WoW europe considered it roleplaying and told people tough titty. The European forums weren't very sympathetic to people who complained about such scams.



Your world, your imagination. This place should be in theory big enough to find what you're looking for without you imposing your will on everyone. Some people like cesspools, some people like the wild west, let them have it.

Ripping up the economy and starting again? I'm sorry, but there would be no coming back from that. That would be the biggest ever land swindle in the history of Second Life. That would make Ginko look like a drop in the ocean, that simply is not a viable option.

I agree. Removing the L$ to USD means that many content creators would be leaving and with just reason. Why on earth would LL want us to pay them in L$ if it's not worth USD to the users?

My scenario is: LL cuts out the L$ to USD exchange. They become the sole provider for L$ on the market and the L$, but the demand for L$ has gone down, because the content creators have either left (Many of our favorite content creators actually MAKE a living from this, remember?) or aren't accepting L$ in order to compensate for the loss of the exchange. With this, why on earth should LL accept tier payments in L$, if it's worthless to their users?

Second Life might not have been based on the premise that we could sell the in world currency, but it is now. In fact, that's one of LL's selling points for it.

And isn't this thread supposed to be about Cory leaving?

So, on topic: The idea behind the Love Machine and the Tao of Linden was sound, but only for a small company. It doesn't hold out very well for a larger company where many of the people don't even know who the CEO of the company might be and will probably never meet said CEO in person.

I think the Tao especially does not work with a project whose scale has exploded the way SL's has. It requires more focus in order to keep the platform stable and the user base happy.

(I was trying to make a point with the following but its pretty much a bunch of random thoughts now that I read over it)

Strife's description probably hits it on the money. This isn't a unique situation in silicon valley or any other area full of new technology business. Lots of drama, lots of brilliant people with brilliant ideologies (weather we agree or not), but in the end, the venture capitalists want their money and they dont want to wait. Theres also a handful of companies offering some brutal competition in the virtual worlds, and we all can probably agree that LL's environment is starting to get dated and needs a change, fast. Form my experience, LL developers are bright but also young, which requires a very special type of executive team. (note: im 36 and still need management!) They are also located in San Francisco, which has a very liberal and competitive workforce. A brilliant engineer in the Bay Area doesnt have to worry about any kind of company loyalty, so people leaving isnt that common and not necessarily a sign of a bad thing. It means the company down the street offered better pay and options. Then, this person pulls a bunch of his freinds over to the new company as well. These engineers dont want to patch bugs, they want to buildd new things with the latest tools.

SL is looking dated, I think we can all mostly agree to that. In 2 years I havent "seen" much of a difference, other than the windlight beta. Avatars are looking antique, new introductions of features are more like elegant hacks than new features, such as sculpties. While SL was a brilliant enough idea to take over the current competing Virtual Worlds, time in technology moves fast, and 2 years is a long time to introduce not much more than new skies, water and bitmapped-sculpted objects. The next 2 years are going to move much, much faster (anyone read Ray Kurzweil?) and some serious changes need to be made to keep people interested.

I heard a lot of buzz about a year ago about Second Life switching to a different framework, Mono, so more can be "ported" in, such as ability to use Python to script, etc. I never heard more than this rumor, but a lot of others heard it to, and lost interest in the future of SL as that buzz died down. The inability to provide an environment to the hardcore professional 3D artists, IMO, is seriosuly stifling the development of SL and I hope that LL has this penciled in on their to-do list after the dust has settled.

What I hope is figured out, and often isnt, is switching from a failing agile development model to a planned one, if development problems are the issue at hand. In many situations, development gets bogged down by internal processes. Hopefully they can achieve a model like Netflix or Google that (theoretically) allows the developer a lot of free time to explore and get curious.

The less "dated" SL looks, the lower the number of actual people who can use it.

It wouldn't hurt for the gamers to take off the cutting edge tinted glasses once in a while.

Hardcore gamers wouldn't really be the principal target audience of SL anyway.

The principal audience would be the people willing to spend Real Life money to play house in a virtual 3d world and those wanting to cater to them.

The hopeful audience (from LL's side) would be people willing to use the 3d space as the next internet.

I look at this webpage and see its not a WHOLE lot different from the web pages I looked at 10 years ago.

Some websites are more fancy but many are not.

not referring to gamers, im referring to 3D artists, and the tools provided to create within SL, not the action that comes out of it.

In regards to websites, the limits or preferences of a modern website is limited to the abilities and preferences of the builders, but there are a vast amount of tools and languages available to build the websites.

One reason why I brought this up is, after spending hours, days, weeks, even months on a build, the build is sandboxed into the client and not portable to any others. Of course there are tools available to get around that, but teh conversion process is far from exact. Add to that: how easily creations can be stolen weather they are copy-protected or not (which has caused many talented sculptors to leave).

When LL announced partnership with IBM, on of the stated plans was to increase portability of SL so it's compatible with other worlds. Other new worlds are being developed in Lua (warcraft's language) and that's very dangerous to LL if they dont get compatible with it. Lua is rapidly growing in popularity, its a talent that can keep people employed, and future virtual world users will look for one that fits their requirements. In turn, these builders will create things so beautiful that users will start abandoning virtual world A and move to virtual world B. Satisficing doesnt win in the end, or LL wouldn't have taken off in the first place. We'd all still be "There".

Ahh I see now.

You want SL to be more compatible with the rest of the current 3D type tools, etc. that are used.

That seems a smart move to me.

sort of, i mean, SL will never be Maya, (but maybe it could be like Bryce). I want it follow a universal standard of design.

There is a difference among users of SL which is more than likely reflected in LL itself.

Among users, we have basically two different camps. One camp, of which I am included, really doesn't care one bit about cool new features. We want SL to work in a reliable and consistent matter. This, to me, does NOT appear near to top of LL's priorities, other than something to give PR and lip service to when the natives get restless.

The other camp, while somewhat interested in performance, is far more interested in more cutting edge type features and "cool, new stuff." These items seem to be high priorities with LL.

We don't KNOW of course, but its possible this split of opinion may have been at the core of the Rosedale - Ondrejka disagreement.

The big question I have is which camp won? If the "fix the engine and get new tires before we go for the paint job and new chrome" camp won, then I suspect that SL will improve and will be ready to take on the inevetible competition. On the other hand, if the "I don't care how badly the car runs, let's make it look nice" camp won, then I suspect SL will get worse and worse, eventually failing.

Thoughts?

Sooz

I don't think the Love Machine is good even for a small company.
The Love Machine just reinforces posing, manipulation, insincerity and bullying.
The concept is rife with emotional blackmail. It's gamed.

It's gutless management. Phil and co didn't have the balls to look people in the eye and discuss their performance with them. They came up with the Love Machine so that they could abdicate responsibility. "Sorry you got no/low bonus this month. Not my decision of course. The group doesn't love you enough." That's disgusting.

In that sort of environment, anyone who does their job professionally and points up any difficult problems risks being unloved into submission.
Brown-nose the boss. Brown-nose the bigger chickens in the yard. Ingratiate yourself with the forceful ones.
Don't even mention the fact that the last update reintroduced a raft of previously fixed bugs - yet again!. You'll annoy the dead-beat(s) responsible, who will mark your card for your troubles. Management is shit-scared to take them to task. Keep your head down. Smile at the deadbeats. Maybe they'll send you some love.

The system is geared towards suppressing bad news. It's "shoot the messenger" season all year round.


They had a form of the Love Machine in-world. It was known as Ratings system.
LL pulled it. It was gamed to Hell and back. It was useless.

I don't think that was it, Sooz. Everyone at LL knows that if they don't fix the engine along with adding shiny hood ornaments, SL will be headed for the junkyard.

I agree; more a fear of emotion than encouraging honest self expression.

Especially when executed in bright yellow hot pants...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz4n1hUesGM

I would hope you're right Ray, but I see no real credible evidence that this is the case.

Sooz

Yes, that *should* be obvious.

But if you accept Court Goodman's opinion .......
"A brilliant engineer in the Bay Area doesnt have to worry about any kind of company loyalty, so people leaving isnt that common and not necessarily a sign of a bad thing. It means the company down the street offered better pay and options. Then, this person pulls a bunch of his freinds over to the new company as well. These engineers dont want to patch bugs, they want to buildd new things with the latest tools."

........
The software prima donnas might *know*, but do they *care*?
It's the job of management to provide clear goals and motivate. It sounds like the style in LL is to put a bunch of high-bred monkeys in a room, feed them expensive bananas, give them mirrors to preen themselves in, and hope that what comes out of the room is usable.

As we well know, some good stuff comes out of that room, but so does a lot of crap.
Someone needs to potty-train those monkeys.

Neither camp should prevail over the other. If designed well, different camps should not be affected whatsoever. Otherwise a simple shift in demographics would kill them. I love consistency too, no doubt about it! An adaptation into a more universally-compatible client should not only add more features, but make the core features rock-solid.

I just want it to work - consistently and reliably. It does not right now and hasn't for quite some time.

Sooz

but we do have some shiny new hood ornaments.