Hoist the Mainsail and head for the high seas

I want them to stop the crap that it isn't favouritism. The sailing sims were amongst the worst hit over the openspace issue, they complained, now Linden Lab have provided them with a get out.

USS isn't all about sailing, they do rentals too as do a shed load of other people.

I think we can safely say it's mostly about sailing ..... otherwise it would be called the United Sailing and Rental Sims .... ?

No they do golf, music, rentals and shopping.

They have the only working golf course in SL.. s small shopping arcade at the Hollywood sim, a rather fine boat shop (as per the theme of all the sims) and rentals.. come on... you are grasping

Tell me another community on SL that could have worked as a partnership in this way who has as much entrenchment in this particular sport?

So, when i rename my estate in "ZoHa Islands SAILING SIMS" I get 50 more OS sims for free too ?
We have 41 OS sims here and we will keep them.
(We had 57 before the price announcement)

If LL had been open and upfront about what they were after? Quite a few others would have offered soluitions.

Sorry, but this is largely an openspace issue and LL have bailed this community out and to say it's not favouritism is absoloute balderdash.

Choosing the right group for the job is favouritism?

I call it good sense

Jack, I think LL should consider Aminom, Juicy, Gigs and Ciaran's arguments VERY seriously as Linden Lab is starting to cross the line in my view in the choices made lately. It's either that or LL's management has no clear immediate strategy of what it wants to become, and act in such unconscionable ways as a result.

What do you have to say Jack to other sailing organizations inSL?
"Sorry but we have decided to make USS more successful and undermine your business as a result??"

Is LL shifting back to be a content provider, doing press releases on its favorite places against others, and offering discounts and preferential treatment whenever you feel like it? Are you entitled to compete with your "Holiday Marketplace" against your own customers? (at your own loss I might add?) Is it okay to have a Selective Second Life Showcase without them actually having to pay for it? Is it LL's role to fill the gap as SL news provider, spending the resources paid for by Residents for "Stories from Second Life: How Languagelab gave language learning a new lease on life". Does that qualify as taking the tier money from other Residents to promote another?

These conflicts of interest are legitimate questions to be raised. Promoting non-profit campaigns is perfectly fine, but be wary however about stepping beyond your boundaries as a provider in the future.

Should you LL be reminded of the statement: "Second Life is a 3D virtual world created by its Residents (people like you) that's bursting with entertainment, experiences, and opportunity. The Second Life Grid™ provides the platform where the Second Life world resides and offers the tools for business, educators, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs to develop a virtual presence"

The two services being provided by the same company with slight conflicts of interest in between is an inevitable aspect one can tolerate. But you can't have your cake and eat it too either. I.e. Providing opportunity, only to interfere with it later is not opportunity...

If "Linden Lab does something involving a subsection of the community" it should think twice about its mission statement before engaging in such acts. LL should be focusing on its core business and stop getting in the way unless the action is justified to protect the platform as a whole.

At a minimum, please don't go denying and rejecting obvious facts please. Doing so implies that you or LL are either blind to these notions or not willing to be transparent about it.

How do you know they were the right group for the job? Nobody else had a chance to bid for it. It's favouritism, no if's but's, why's or wherefores and we both know it.

I don't know of another group that is as devoted to sailing on SL. Not only were they the best choice, in this case they were the only choice.

I am not affiliated with USS in any way btw, I have used their sims for sailing, and have searched for other sims of the ilk, but never found any on any private estate.

Please show me any other group that could have done this better than the USS, I'll bow to your greater knowledge

They don't do just sailing. All of their sims are being moved. Are they really better at residential rentals than Anshe, Desmond or Prok? Are they better with malls than the countless other people who do malls? Are they better at games than mad peas?

Sorry, if they'd just moved their sailing areas you may have had a point, as it stands everything they do is being moved and as I said,had it been open to offer someone else may well have offered a better solution. Even the people behind USS recognise this is favouritism.

The residential sims are mostly water and are used as active race routes.... so it might have been a bit difficult to move just the water sims

How about this. Perhaps Jack can articulate some sort of roadmap or criteria, insofar as what makes sense going forward.

I have to say, I'm not sure if joining Caledon to the mainland directly would be a smart move. Maybe. Putting it next to a sea certainly enhances value, of course. Devil's in the details. Even competing auto dealerships cluster together when they can - it's competition alright, but also generally better for overall business.

I would say: the USS regions were put in a very, very, very bad way by the openspace mess. I lost a fair amount myself (roughly 10,000 USD) but was prepared.

Should I lament the fact that one of us that was egregiously harmed by the openspace mess has been helped? Or should I consider that something was done, for at least one of us with others to follow.

Like all things it's complicated, with the specifics making all the difference.

Dear Toxic Menges,

How about if Linden Lab hadn't done this, a very big part of the Second Life community that provides a significant income would have vanished. The only other reason they would have offered this to anyone else would have been for the same reason it's not because they are a sailing community per se, the fact that they are a sailing community and probably because they have so many redundant servers presently that providing open space water sims to them is a very cheap alternative option.

I am not sure that the USS are changing their configuration in any way.

LL added a fair few new ocean sims around the new part of Nautilus recently anyway, before the OS issue.

So, perhaps it's just because it's very late here for me, but I am not sure what you are getting at

wow a selective bailout, lindens must be praticing for political careers, our sailing community was devestated by the OS debacle and have had to reduce our resident funded sailing seas by 75% going along with the linden gameplan of converting them to full sims, now i hear of this bs.. guess it's time to get a lawyer and sue for my free open water sims too

Have you considered simply asking LL if it's feasible for your sailing community to have a similar setup as the one that USS have negotiated? While I'm not privy to the all the wheelings and dealings that led up to this, I'd be willing to bet that it wasn't LL who initiated it, but the USS owners suggesting it to LL and making a persuasive case for why it would benefit SL as a whole to happen this way. Rather than going "waaah, I feel all left out!", wouldn't it make more sense to simply contact LL the same way and propose a similar mutually beneficial arrangement for your sailing community?

Can NCI have forty free sims, too?

You'd just blow them on stuff like new user experience.

It's that damned golf course that did it, you know. All big deals are worked out on the back nine.

for those suggesting favoritism, let me say first that you do have a point, sort of..... technically, it could be regarded as favoritism -- but its a complete waste of time to argue over such semantics.

if this is indeed favoritism, it's only the same kind of favoritism real-life businesses engage in. the best ones get the best hook-ups. the biggest, smartest, most flexible & most popular businesses are gonna be the ones on top.

darwinism applies to any competition of systems -- including business systems -- its simply survival of the fittest. its a waste of time to complain about it - while some waste time complaining, others will move ahead: adapting and evolving.

We all pay our tier and our fees so that LL can use the money to promote the individuals they want to.

It has always been thus, and will ever be thus. To claim that's not favoritism and cronyism is to insult the intelligence.

coco

I will definitely be taking my customized flying tako, named Greenie, out on the Blake Sea. Hope to see others out there!

the one thing I wish, though, would be that the major continents actually linked via a sea of some nature.

The comments I've seen from USS people suggest you'd lose that bet

USS have been given a boost, there's no denying it. Is it a good move for Second Life as a whole? Quite possibly. Is it favouritism? Most definitely.

Guess what jack...someone already made the sims on line...and it failed.

We dont need theme lands from you, though it may be the only land left soon due to your lack of any type of ethics, brian power or vision.

Anyway, it's not like you have any respect left to lose.

To managment...Look at this guys track record and can him before he insults/rips off/favorites your last few customers to death.

To the sailors. yeah yeah, whatever. you got free land and a nice deal the rest of us have no chance of getting. You are the special ones and this case is nothing but pacifcation and PR. In other words... a pile of crap.

You rock Jack!

The reason this second life community was at risk of vanishing (and also why LL had so many redundant servers) was the increase in openspace costs. So LL has priced openspaces so that many smaller privately sailing themed sims have been forced to close, and then taken the servers which used to run those sailing sims and given them free of charge to USS.

In essence, the openspaces price increases are being used to subsidise a free ocean for USS. This adds insult to injury to those still struggling to hang onto their openspaces.

USS now have the monopoly on sailing in SL (no-one can afford to compete) - creators of sailing and nautical items will all want a presence on the USS sims etc.

Other types of openspaces (forests, landscapes etc.) have been lost - will those communities also get subsidised free openspaces?

As mentioned fairer solutions to support the sailing communities would have been:

i) price openspaces for sailing use at a level that people could afford
ii) create a mainland themed sailing area which any SL sailing group or even resident could volunteer to help develop or support

Matthew