LLab's is setting a dangerous precedent!!!

There is no doubt that fixing bugs is critical - inventory going missing costs the user money, and wastes vendors' time in customer support, and the amusement of my hair getting stuck to my butt when TP'ing to the mainland has worn off.

But.......in reading this thread, and a lot of others, much disatisfaction is not bugs, but the lack of features and quality(realistic) content.

Corey's blog post states that about 72% of development being focused on bug fixes mentioned in the letter. This is a bit scary - the impression is that feature development is going to slow way down because the reasources are going to bugs brought up in a public letter. So if we something from LL, we just get 1500 people to sign a letter posted on the web?

There is no perfect software and there will always be bugs. In the grand scheme of things, LL has been doing a good job. But the concern is that for the creator community, features that we need to produce high value content may fall to the way side as LL responds to this public letter.

For the residents, who cares about features when the system crashes all the time.

In reality, this is the paradox of computers and software.

I would like to hear from Corey, how he plans to manage reasources to address the two apposing forces features vs. bugs.

A knee-jerk reaction to a public letter by a small number of people in a community of millions, is sending the wrong message. If I get 1500 people to sign my letter demanding unicode support in the script editor, will you put 72% of development resources into giving me my feature.........if so, my letter goes up right away, 'cause I know I can 1500 people to sign.

Corey needs to make it really, really clear how development priorities are set and how reasources are managed to serve both bugs and features. Because, now, a relatively obscure public letter has turned into a news worthy event, even though nothing in that letter wasn't already known issues which have been responded to on multiple occassions by the Lindens.

If Corey doesn't put his foot down, everyone will be posting letters......

Put your letter out. If it states a case worthy of attention, it will be attended to. Bugs and features don't need to be "Oppsing forces". (Why must every discussion bring in some form a devisiveness and categorizing). They should be treated equally based upon need. If said bugs are basic features that aren't working properly, then they should be addressed, and FIXED. Not just paid lip service. Same with features. If a proposed feature is of a nature that will benefit the community as a whole and not just a niche group, that should be prioritized as well. So much has been said that the Lindens do only what they want to do. Are we now saying that this letter made them suddenly get religion? Anything that gets a group of residents to get together on any point and present it to the Providers is a good thing. Draft your letter. Propose your feature. I may even sign it myself.

It's nice to say 72% or whatever target number we pluck out of the air but in reality it wil vary a lot either way depending what is in demand, what people are good at what and are available.

What good is a feature that we cannot use? As for high quality content, oh my, we have not even begun to push the boundaries of what SL offers already.

I explore this strange world with much enthusiasm, and not only is it already chock full of amazing stuff, more than can be explored already in fact, but also the potential for more is already there. I myself am often blown away by how much I could already be doing if I had more time inworld to do it. I've got a list of golden ideas already executable with what is there now, and struggle to stay on task with it.

When that little precious time gets cut into with server and software updates, lost inventory (even my THiNC printing press disappeared!), crashes, etc, then there is a problem. This is the root of our frustration. We cannot walk away, but cannot abide with teh current mess.

New features will arrive in plenty of time, but as of now, well over half the world is not even acclimated to Second Life, as they've only been here for a month or two. The argument that features will be held back at our detriment holds no water.

It is so only because we have been grown as mushrooms into accepting it as a stupid monoculture, no thanks to Microsoft, et al.

There's really no excuse for the poor level of engineering quality in the IT industry. It is why the government has seriously considered, on more than one occasion, legislation foisting responsibility and LIABILITY back onto IT companies and individiual developers for poor products. I've always fought it, because I believe the industry can eventually regulate itself out of these stupid infantile growing pains, but there's a part of me that longs for someone to step in and deliver a reality check to the likes of Microsoft and SAP for their lousy development practices.



There's a well-known idiom that comes to mind: "Put your money where your mouth is". Post your letter. Let's see the votes.

By the way, there's nearly 4,000 votes on the letter now.



I think he's started, based on his blog post already. I also would not call that letter "obscure". It most definitely was not "obscure", in any reasonable interpretation of the word. It was meant to be made public and to get their attention from the day it was mailed and posted on that site. I think it achieved its aim.



I can't wait. I'm only envious because someone beat me to it.

features are great but theres not been all that many great features added to the world

theres some new script functions and theres the new sculpted prims, theres the possibility of mirrored surfaces soon and thats all great

thats all been within the last quarter tho

meanwhile for years we get these "eh ok whatever" features (i call them post-it-note features) that really dont add too much to the experiance

new snapshot thing
added crap to llDialog messages
new icons for inventory trees
anti alased hovertext (that you cant read)
ripple water
detachable menus
fading pie menu
and so on

ive litterly sat around on this world watching post-it-note features that do little to nothing quickly installed into the world / client often times causing extra downtime as they fix or refix the halfassed quick coding

and those i am against, while bugs that were around in 2003, when my old roomate started, continued to 2005 when i started, and still exist today, and new screwy bugs are introduced every upgrade, with a 30% (see ll i can do that too) chance of ever being looked at before the platform dies

I doubt LL are going to completely hold off on features. You'll notice that the blog post about the letter mentions "Performance improvements", thus not ruling out features such as Mono (to improve script performance) or Havoc updates (to improve physics performance). I've been fairly happy with LL's bug fixing of late, the updates recently have had considerably more bug-fixes in them than previous ones, the main issue ultimately is the lack of broad enough testing that is resulting in crashes that are not found until too late.

While new features are nice, they're completely worthless if the game isn't playable enough to enjoy them.

I think the letter had less to do with bug fixing than people give it credit for.
I'm pretty certain that if we got that many signatures together for fixing certain long standing bugs, nothing would happen. Pick a bug that is already being worked on though, and you come out looking like David beating Goliath when it's fixed.

Group IMs not working couldn't really be allowed to continue, inventory loss is always being worked on (otherwise they would have never fixed the asset servers in the past), stability is an ongoing operation, item delivery failures are unlikely to go unnoticed by LL. None of the demands were radical. Would the letter be claimed as a success if it demanded that LL employ more phone operators and bring back live help?

If you want to put up your own letter though, make sure it has an insecure signing process with no verification, just so we get a fair comparison of how many people want new features over bug fixing

The similarities between SL and Linux* and all you comment on are a very close comparison.
I have used Linux only, now for 5 and more years and through each generation, through various distributions, the exact same issues have arisen.

"Fix the bugs before new features or apps." has been the call througout many of the forums. But if the Linux devs had listened to that, we would still be waiting for new features and apps. People will always have issues and not all are related to the software being used. (We would not have that funky 3D desktop that out performs the main competition.)

All through this time I have had to bang my head to make things work on occasions and some steep learning curves have been encountered but I would never have give it up. Even though I may have said so. There is nowhere else to go.

But, in the last year or so this has almost become a non event. Errors and bugs are few, brain energy is directed elsewhere, not on getting things to work. Nowadays, it just works out of the box in most situations There are still problems of course because: "Perfection, is something we can only strive for."

So in conclusion I would submit that LL will, and should, continue as they are, on a road to delivering a unique experience that in the not so distant future will be, mostly, bug free and have given us the 2nd world for which we are so passionate about. Just like Linux.

*GNU/Linux, Non distribution specific.

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I gotta stop posting for I know not what I talk about.