Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

Earlier I said in this forum that I didn't understand the fuzz as it has always been clear what open sim was for.

Until I did a google search today. It really made me wondering if LL did research this properly before they made the announcement. LL is selling Open Sims through there website with the right information but there are many third partners that sell those sims as well and their sites make it look like you're buying a "normal" Island in SL.

I think the real problem are sites like this http://otherland-group.com/real_estate/landmainA2.html?gclid=CMXJ2I-yz5YCFQmKMAodFTRl3g

Poppet, a lot of people "have" (are landowner) of a total openspace sim which is "in real" owned by an Estate. The landowner pays the estate owner the tier + a margin.
Ofcourse this is called by them as "owning" a sim. It is only a technicality but I asure you that it feels as their home for them. So the renters, leasers, landowners or whatever we call them, are currently in the exact same situation.

Tricks to avoid VAT would be a very riski thing. I am quit sure the serious larger estates, who are a realworld company, would not take this risk.

Ofcourse this "owner" thing is all bull as the ONLY simowner is Linden Lab. Everybody else is renter as the so called buy sum is in real a setup fee. Although serious Estates do buy back from landowners, LL does not.

First of all,I agree that LL should be going after abusers instead of everyone. If usage was an issue for the servers, why then did LL double the amount of prims useage on the open space sims last spring? It feels as if they created the problem and now we have to pay for it??? Take back prims..it will lessen lag and server useage...

Yes! Now that is another kind of abuse.

When we bought open spaces, we followed the spirit of them I think because we always made them contiguous with our own estate. People who "bought" land on them (and we always used quotes) were buying a part of our estate.

I had no idea that people have been selling them as you can see in that otherland website -- but I note that the fact that OSs became "detachable" last March, that people could turn the responsibilty for paying for them over to the OS "owner" rather than the estate owner who owned the qualifying island, and that OSs have always been widely used for residential land, even before last March --- those facts ALL lead to the kind of thing you see in that website ad. Admittedly, that usage pushes the limits.

Considering that a great many people still chastise the rest of us by saying "openspaces were NEVER meant for this" truly underlies the amount of interpretive wiggle room there has been.

Yes! Exactly my point. In fact, my interpretation has always been that I owned and was responsible for the land I purchased. Many estate owners did NOT know that you could transfer ownership to a second party the way people have been doing. I did not know this was possible until day before yesterday! The fact that people needed to own a full sim before owning an OS meant to me that no one who did not own a full sim, could say that they owned an open space. Turns out, though, that there was this other program happening, that wasn't advertized anywhere, and certainly wasn't brought to my attention in any of my many dealings with the concierges over the last two years.

Dear Mr Linden.

I enjoyed being able to rent out sims to your customers. I bought islands, they made communities. I and my friends were proud of your customers and felt good about the fair offer we made. We offered a nice place to live, with enough rules to keep it safe and simple. People loved it. I grew the business to a dozen islands. Then this year, our customer started to leave, in ones and twos and then more. They were going to open sims. You were selling them so cheap and with the uneven playing field, USA sellers were selling at 10% profit, far less than the tax of 17.5% I had to pay. I could not compete.



As my islands emptied I sold some at a loss to other players or gave them away or even had them switched off. You were getting over 4000 USD a month from me, solid payments and I was just a small fry. I, and others like me, more than paid our way.



Permit me, but your biggest mistake was failing to come to the land owners that had been earning you the money first and explaining that you were having an issue with loading of the Open Space sims. I feel terribly confident, the skills gained by others like myself, would have been able to create sound and simple objectives to enable you to redefine the way sims are used and charged for, and we could have done it without the massive disruption your announcement has created.



It is too late now of course, as the gaffe is blowing up now badly, but then my island holding has dwindled to one full sim and four voids. You have hurt me a great deal. You have hurt many of my friends and competitive enemies alike. We have lost faith in your ability to manage the second life experience to any positive degree Jack. I am hoping I get to sell what few sims I have left so that I can gracefully face a reduced holding without losing too much money. Jack, you didn’t communicate with your customers. Something we have been asking for since day one.



Yours

http://rivers-rock.blogspot.com/2008/07/paying-vat-to-linden-labs.html

http://rivers-rock.blogspot.com/2008/08/incoherent-communications-from-lindens.html

http://rivers-rock.blogspot.com/2008/05/mark-linden-takes-over-linden-labs.html



River Ely

CEO Rivers-Islands.Com

VAT Registered

I've used SL as a hobby, much akin to having a model train layout, that allowed me to build and modify my virtual space. I'm not into the social networking aspects, I'm too old for virtual relationships. I own a private island and jumped at the chance several months ago to purchas three OSs bordering that island. I have used the OSs to res items that provide my island with great views and I also use the space to build my own "models." I have spent a lot of L$ accessorizing and enhancing my OSs, contributing to the SL economy. I have no need for "open water" or unused land so raising my monthly tier from $225 to $375 makes the OSs unreasonably expensive (as opposed to just expensive, as they are now) and lowering the prims destroys the purpose for which I purchased them. I do not sell or rent land nor do I place anything in my OSs that attracts other members. Any feeble commerce I attempt is always on my full perm private island.

If LL maintains their stated position then I will also be forced to abandon my OSs and while I hate to think of the expense of starting over I will also probably examine alternatives to SL.

Adjustable rate tiers with no terms or conditions. Hmm, that worked well for the US mortgage market. We the tax payers are forced to bail out the banks for their incompetence. We don’t have to bail out Linden Lab for economic ignorance. Consumer consumption is down 3% this quarter, the biggest drop in 28 years. Brilliant time for a 67% price increase. What do you think would happen if our new president decided to raise taxes 67% after 3 months in office?

In my calculations made when the conversion date and for not equal to the salaries of tiers of Openspaces will advance more than 15 days the values of 2 Openspace, it is more than unfair, having to redo all the buildings and still pay for it . I'M very annoying

With so much having already been said, I'm not sure I can add anything "new" other than my personal response; and I certainly cannot speak to the technical aspects of the discussion other than to say that I have seen very little on how the increase in fees will be used to solve the problem of OS misuse/overloading. And if the idea is to generate capital for hardware/software/infrastructure development and improvement, great! However, a 67% increase across the board is punitive at best.

Certainly there must be ways to identify and monitor those regions that are abusing usage and cluttering/overloading bandwidth (insert any more appropriate technical term here-I'm an artist/businessman, not an IT grid tech). What about a tiered usage model as has been suggested in other posts? What about identifying Estate Owners with plans of future expansion and ensuring that their OSs get placed on the same CPU. I realize this will require more available hardware and greater operating costs for LL, but I'd gladly pay $1000 for the entire CPU in advance if I then had control over when I bring my additional OS online and begin paying the monthly usage fee. Then I, along with LL, have a way to monitor usage on the CPU. I will know if there are performance issues, the first place I need to look is in my own creation.

And where are the technical guidelines regarding OS usage? Especially for the technically ignorant. What my partner and I have learned is the result of very time consuming digging on the SL Wikki and in the SL knowledge base. When purchasing, shouldn't there be a more detailed sales agreement that more clearly outlines what script times are and what to watch out for? I've noticed in the Region/Estate tools that the "?" by "Get Top Scripts" tells me that 25ms is a number to watch. Is that a number for a full prim SIM so an open space should likely not approach or exceed 6.25ms (1/4 of that)? I know and understand that the performance issues go much deeper than script time and prim load from my own research and other posts here and elsewhere. But spell it out for me and others who don't have the technical knowledge and experience! Show and tell me how to monitor the performance of my OS and what to do if I am overstepping my bounds. The last thing I want to do is create a poor experience for my renters and visitors or any resident or Estate owner anywhere on the grid.

I am a very new Estate Owner -- and user, for that matter -- but fell for the SL experience and business opportunities "hook, line and sinker." Along with my partner (who got into SL before I did), I co-own and operate a small, niche oriented graphic design and photography business in RL in a small town in PA, USA. We purchased 3 parcels on the same OS and established a residence and two fine art galleries. Not long after that, we had the opportunity to purchase a full prim SIM from another resident but realized that it would not allow us to completely realize our vision of bringing our business into SL. We immediately purchased 3 OS SIMs to allow us to create more of a community experience that would not only feature our business, but through rentals to other creators, businesses and artists, be a community gathering place for shopping and services as well as living and leisure experiences.

We are just at the point of "opening" to potential renters and the pricing/fee hammer drops! Even though we are renting parcels/shops on 2 of our 3 OS, we have been careful about prim usage and script loading and our OSs are "open" in the sense of not being densely populated by land, buildings and skyboxes. In fact, we won't allow skyboxes and floating signs and special effects signs. And we'll closely monitor our script time and have policy in place in our rental agreement as well as our Estate Covenant to prevent use of high lag scripts or overuse of scripts that may increase lag. Prim usage by renters will be closely monitored and we've allowed an ample buffer of prims even if renters utilize their entire allotments.

As is the case, I'm sure, with many Estate owners, the quality of experience to renting as well as visiting residents is of utmost importance. If the experience is bad (i.e. laggy and slow), they won't be back--merchants, artists, creators won't be selling anything and visitors will cease to come. Yes, we should be able to generate a reasonable profit from our investment in both full prim regions and OSs. And LL should be able to generate reasonable profit and revenue for reinvestment in R&D and expansion and infrastructure, but come on -- is 67% across the board honestly reasonable?

Walter, before you start accusing Estates please be sure you have all information. Besides that LL knew already long before how private estates use the openspace sims, (Only LL herself uses openspaces as pure water),
WE DO MENTION AND HAVE ALWAYS MENTIONED THE LIGHT USE at the page where people go to buy(pay) the land.
You are referring only to our google result:"landing page". We also mention the light use in our talk with potential customers and for example tell that temprezzers and this type of sims do not match.(mainly because of often wished temp rezzing waves around tropical islands.)

A longterm thinking serious Estate is in the busniess of tier. Fast moving in and out of customers is not in our interest. We do everything to only have happy customers that like to stay. This means we tell about this type of sims and watch the burden always. Nobody likes lag.

It really hurts me when we are being accused of not being open and honest. We do not pay our managers per sale like some others do right because we only want customers who can be really happy with living in our Estate. We advice totally open and honest and also advice to buy elsewhere if we think a potential customer will not be happy with our covenant. We are not here for the fast dollar. Please do IM me if you have really serious doubts about our intentions. Sure we can make mistakes but this accusation hurts.

Sylvia Sonoda
Otherland Estate

Okay this is a BAD move from Linden Labs. I don't own an OS. Thank gods. I was thinking of getting one, originally, before the big price fall and prim increase too.

Linden Labs is gonna charge the tier cost of almost a full sim of mainland to the OS users who get only a 1/4 the resources or less.

Anyone owning private estate land can see where this ugly trend is headed. Hundreds if not thousands of us have finally made the Premiere Membership and Land Ownership plunge because private estates suddenly became AFFORDABLE. Now LL is almost DOUBLING COSTS. 75 buck tier jumps to 125. That's extremely UNETHICAL, in a very obvious way.

They've changed the payments by such a HUGE difference, most OS owners will not be able to afford keeping them. REFUND THE OS PRICE to all those people who bought OS in good faith. LL is the one at fault. The OS owners, most who ARE using them EXACTLY as LL intended the OS to be used, should not pay for LL's gross incompetence and mismanagement.

Linden Labs should offer to REFUND the OS price to all OS purchasers. If not, every OS owner should abandon their OS as of DEC 31st. Let LL suddenly feel the weight of ZERO INCOME from ALL OS.

I know this will cost a lot of people personal money, but it's a fraction of what they will lose due to increased tier cost. If you paid 250 for an OS, compare that cost to the increased tier of 600 dollars MORE than the original 900 you would spend yearly. Let LL have Zero Dollars instead of the 1500 they greedily plan to gain... because they were not content with a fair pricing, and instead went for robber pricing.

Every OS owner. Save your 1500 US in yearly tier and give LL Zero US Dollars in OS tier, if they do not do the Right Thing and Refund your money.

Bliss

At this point I think most everything that can be said has been said. Many proposals and ideas have been offered by the SL users. Not much more can be said without repeating others posts.

So now I think it is time for LL to make a decision. Will they take any of these recommendations or go forward with the price changes as originally announced?

We have all been waiting with baited breath for the final decision on this.

Please LL let us know now, so we can move forward with our plans to either abandon our OSS or accept the price increases.

Prolonging this serves no one.

2 Qie has made a good post in the blog. I've already posted some in the blog too, so I will keep this short.

PLEASE, please stop the panic, and announce that you are reconsidering!

Then, look at all the responses here and on the blog, visit the many places where residents stood to protest, meet with the OS owners, take the time to make an informed decision.

Stay here my rejection registered, the Linden should give us some benefits to cancel our losses.

1 -) conversion of the 4OPENSPACE TO 1 FULL ... FREE

2 -) With 3 Openspaces or less, return of investment or aid to buy a complete 4 for conversion.

3 -) choice of date of the new tier of the island that will be formed with more than 30 days after the creation of it.

The customers come first. SL is like half way there. only 40 ppl on a sim max, heavy lag, espeically at stores. I had to roll back my Nvidia drivers. You should put in the work to make SL what its suppose to be then ppl would pay for an exceptional experience. Not a lack luster one. Linden has hardly any help. You should follow Tokons lead and put how to tutorials on YouTube. The AVs jump around, voice in voice active areas only work with a lot of work. SL 1.21 was a nightmare, you want us to test your clients for you.

I say, make the area worth the money first.

Laurel Renfold

Jack,

While you are working out a new deal for estate owners with OSRs, please inform us of any upcoming price changes, if any, to private islands. It has been rumored that there will be a tier increase for them and if it is true, you will only have a repeat of all this madness when you announce that. It would be best if we have as much notice as possible for any planned tier increases in 2009. Thanks.

That's the thing. There really aren't any.

I'm honestly surprised. Linden Labs isn't magic, and what they're doing isn't magic, and when I joined three years ago I didn't expect their effective monopoly to stand. After all, there were at least two other companies with more restricted setups (ActiveWorlds and There) that would surely see the demand for a more open Virtual Reality game, as well as lots of game companies with the kinds of expertise to get into it.

What happened, or rather why has nothing happened, over the past three years except for the slowly developing OpenSim clone of Second Life's servers?

Only we can not assume the entire loss.

1 -) conversion of the 4OPENSPACE TO 1 FULL ... FREE

2 -) With 3 Openspaces or less, return of investment or aid to buy a complete 4 for conversion.

3 -) choice of date of the new tier of the island that will be formed with more than 30 days after the creation of it.

I was sold my open space sim by a thrid party, I pay my tier to that same third party. I was originally told that i would be able to use this space for anything that I wanted to , except for use as a club. I shall therefore expect my landlord to make up the full difference in pricing by LL.

Hi Sylvia..........i just took a look at your site and must say you do point out that opensims are light use and in a very explained manner (probably better than LL)

Walter does have a point just his example unfortunately wasn't a good one.

However if you look at some other estate websites you will see a differant story......on those sites there is no mention of light use etc etc...............I even found one advertising.....I quote " Brand New Class 5 Island 3750 prims........." at the top of the page.........further down they say......." For residential or Commercial use........" and further down ....."with no restrictions......."

This is only one example, and I will agree that majority of estates are honest business people who don't mislead. But as you can see from the above quotes I made there are a number who more than blatently mislead.

BTW I haven't taken the quotes out of context ........they are listed like that word for word

Does everyone realise that Linden Lab have Open Sims in their showcase that are built with prims to serve as shops and commercial ventures?

Further to their cries of useage of Open Sims, isn’t their endorcement of such useage of open sims part of the Showcase an indication that Linden Labs have really got this decision wrong?

I won’t name individual sims on this forum - but anyone can trawl through and see the amount of open sims acting as shops in the Showcase!

Lesson: Discuss the change with your customers BEFORE making a final decision.

Otherwise you end up with services that fail to serve the correct niche, and even more complaints when you adjust that service without customer input.


If you (Linden Lab) expect us to respect your company, give us the courtesy in kind, yes?

I have a question...

Has anyone actually tested an OS to see what it would look like if they followed LL's recommendations? Only water, land, and 3750 trees... I can't imagine a full sim with that many trees.