Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

I suspect that what LL wanted to do with this was to remove the business situation that OpenSpaces represented - that they were the same tier as a 1/4 sim of mainland, but better in every way (protected, 4 times as big, same prim count, estate tools)

The problem is, a LOT of people had gotten involved based on that model, and refusing grandfathering has essentially destroyed their businesses. Far beyond the idea of this being to do with system load or abuse of OpenSpaces is the huge trust issue it introduces, because anytime someone sees a "good deal" from LL, they're going to have to be paranoid that it will be negated anytime; especially given the claim that LL were selling openspaces on the same terms last Friday.

Moreover, many of the end users of those sims aren't content creators or businesses (who have "lock-in" to SL, because it's the only VW allowing them to make money that way at the moment). Many of them are just people making their own houses, who could move to IMVU without really noticing.

Just thinking about buying land... then you raise TAXES during an economic worldwide mess... what kind of thinking is that? Sounds like a McPalin strategy. What are you thinking?

Maybe if Linden Lab (tm) (copywrite) was on the NY stock exchange people might understand how well the company was REALLY doing and could invest in the whole package or NOT.

we were kinda told to put our opinions here by the Lindens. And, what is considered a Vital blog? werent blogs made to voice opinions? just a Question, dont tear into me.

You might have a leg to stand on if the game worked as designed but it never has.

This reminds me of that classic essay about the tragedy of the commons. Try searching for a synopsis of this phenomenon on wikipedia
The Lindens expected open sim owners to self regulate growth and use without a built-in system for limiting prims and scripts themselves. What did you expect? Why wasn't this even aticipated?
I can't believe that this type of bait and switch practice is even legal. Many of us plan our sim growth and our business plan based on certain expectations. Reasonable cost increases yes, but this type of monetary jump in land use fees will never fly. I anticipate a lot of people abandoning their openspace sims, especially in the current economic climate. Maybe that's the intent?

Has anybody else that is cashing out found that basically your lindens are frozen in SL and you can't sell them and get them back to PayPal?


WTF is this now Linden Lab?????

Edit:

Are you experiencing a huge run on your economy today????

The old bait and switch, eh Jack?

1) Make the OS cheap to flood the market (LL makes money)

2) Raise OS tier fee (LL makes money)

3) People rushing to convert OS to full sims (LL makes money)

4) Third Quarter of '09 - Raise Full Sim tier fee (LL makes money)

Yes, you'll get losses, but the flood of money you'll make from this panic is incredible AND you'll get free land back and grid space available too!

THEN when you raise the full sim tier fees - the same will occur. People will bitch cuz you pissed us off, people will abandon their lands, open spaces will once again occur on your grid AND though you'll have some loss - the rewards will be incredible because those that can afford it will pay - you know that! - and so....

...the rich get richer...

Just checked out OpenLife....not sure if it is owned by LL but they offer 65000sqm for approx 90US and only 30US per month...also have 45000prims vs the 15000 in SL

I hope this is going to be a viable competitor for SL if it is not SL the current SL pricing and gouging is playing right into the owners of this new virtual world.


it is still in beta but looks like it has potential. I suspect as soon as they get the kinks out there will be a MAJOR exodus from SL

www.openlife.com

Announcing changes to the Openspace product
Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 4:45 PM by: Jack Linden
"An Openspace is a type of private island intended for light use countryside or ocean. Unlike normal regions that effectively get a CPU to themselves on the server, there can be up to four Openspaces on a single CPU, sharing the resource (hence them being ‘light use’).

So what is changing?

Openspaces will no longer have to be purchased in sets of four at a time, as they have been so far. They can be bought singly, for a setup fee of USD$415 (note the setup fee was subsequently lowered to USD$250) followed by a fee of USD$75 per month.

All other island services are therefore available for single Openspace regions, at the usual region rates, and Openspaces will no longer have to be placed together on the grid, they can be placed apart.

To purchase an Openspace region you will still need to own a normal island already, however you will not have to anchor your Openspace to that region, it can be placed wherever you would normally be able to place an island.

Finally, we are going to increase the prim count for Openspaces. They will become exactly a quarter of the normal 15000 prim limit for a region, so they will be set at 3750 (to date they have been limited to 1875 prims)."

So the Lindens decided to sell single open spaces with the ability to place them anywhere on the grid and not attached to a full sim, then raised the allowed prims to 3750 (doubled from the previous limit). Please tell me that they really thought residents would buy these and place them in the middle of the grid, not attached to another sim and leave them as open ocean or countryside? Linden Labs knew exactly for what purposes these would be used. As far as usage guidlines I have only ever seen the limits of 3750 prims and 1/4 the resources of a full sim. Any reasonable use of that space would then be under 3750 prims and 1/4 resources of a full prim. To me that means 1/4 traffic, 1/4 script use, etc. Am I wrong?

I did research before I decided to invest in an open space sim. I'm tired of people here referring to myself and others as abusers. I have stayed below the 3750 prim limit and have also been carefully watching the script use in my open space. I read somewhere that 15-20 ms script time is max for a full sim (I have never seen any guidelines for an open space), so I have been monitoring mine and it usually stays below 2 ms (well below 1/4 of a full sim). I use the debug menu in region/estate controls and not the statics bar from the view menu because the statistics bar always shows a very low script usage for some reason.

What are the guidlines we need to follow? It would be great to have them listed somewhere in concrete numbers. Also I am always more lagged in the mainland regions that I own (1/4 sim) or in other mainland regions that I visit than I have EVER experienced in my own open space sim. What steps are the Lindens taking to ensure a positive experience for residents in Lindens own laggy mainland sims (take the log out of your eye before complaining about the splinter in mine please)? This is afterall the reason stated in Jack's original blog as to why they are making these price and policy changes for open space sims isn't it?

This morning I woke up thinking I had this horrible nightmare, that LL announced they are increasing our tier 66%. I am in shock that it was not a bad dream that I could wake up from. Linden Lab really has taken thousands of dollars from us, and after thousands of hours of work developing these sims for thousands of horse riders and others to enjoy, we will have to delete these sims which were so close to being finished.

The SL Riding Club depends on sponsors and volunteers who fund and build miles and miles of riding trails, over adventurous terrain and wilderness. Our tier overhead was already $2000US a month funded by three groups who worked tirelessly to provide unique terrain and proper use of OS sims. Anyone could come and ride their horses, fly aircraft in open skies, and motorcycle on miles road prims across 16 sims.

Our admins monitored every script on our sims to keep them running below 1.5ms, to allow for a low lag exerience, and not to lag those sharing same server. Although a high percentage of OS owners had abused them, we are not a rental company building private homes/islands for profit. We developed these recreation sims for our groups to enjoy, and provided public access for other equestrians, pilots, motorcyclists, and boaters.

I am still hoping I could wake up from this bad dream. After we gave, and gave, and gave, this is the third time in two years we are taking huge financial hit over developing and funding a expansive public access multi-sim developments. This pattern tells us the risk is to high to keep re-investing time and money into Secondlife.

So avatars of SL, come out and experience our 16 sim Halloween Trail Map Ride we spent so much time and money on for you all to enjoy. It is our last contribution to SL. There will be no Winter Wonderland Trail Ride, sleigh rides, canoe rides, bicycle tours, biker runs, road rallies, air races, or any other adventure experiences we planned for you. We cannot give any more. No one can afford to keep this up with this insane tier increase. Maybe another grid will appreciate us more.

We would like to thank those for the compliments we received daliy, the countless positive pictoral blog articles and YouTube videos featuring our trail rides, the sponsors who donated small and large amounts of tier support, and our volunteer staff and admins who greeted, assisted, coordinated, terraformed, built, guided, and just plain worked their butts off to keep the community going. Take lots of snapshots in your travels people, because thousands of sims are going to go offline over the next couple of months.

It's not owned by LL at all, but they've been in beta quite some time.

I checked this out a while back and left. Too many kinks to work out. We could barely log in, building was close to impossible. Yep, it's beta alright. But I'm hoping that soon it will have all the kinks worked out.

I sent my last post to support, and the reply was "All relevant info is in the blog." It isn't.

You didn't say how people with openspace sims can convert them to full sims four at a time. If they can't do that you are really hurting them. Please tell us whether you are going to allow that. It makes a big difference to the person who rented me my OS sim. People will be abandoning OS sims all over and probably abandoning SL as well if they can't convert.

I want to know because I would be willing to buy a full sim to avoid losing the money I spent buying the OS sim. I should be able to dig up three more OS sims from somewhere and convert, if conversion is allowed.

I am sending this to support on the same ticket number.

Estoppel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel

See if what you are looking for isn't found there . . . .

I do not use to write at forums, but this issue concerns me directly as OS owner. First at all I dont beleive any word of linden since now. This is a profit issue, as they only want that people go back mainland. After two years of living here, I have seen many decissions from Linden, all wrong!, each time you do something you f*** it!.

Now the thecnical issues.. it is impossible to have 6000 prims at an OS, there is as far as I have seen no prim bonus.. when you reach 3750 objects ... there is no more room ... is that clear?Lag?... mmmm.. have you gone to mainland?...oh!yes!!! there is no lag there, I forgot, and my sim... 2/3 of it are sea... is the main lag creator of all SL!

Well.. I Leave.. I am not gping to pay any cent more to SL, you are gpoing to loose 5400$ per year, and my premium. I will stay here as you like as a camper.. no more buys... no more things to create... and when all SL will be a nice water desert.. I will go..

You did

My guess is about 90% of landowners in SL feel the exact same way about Jack and his many failures in his tenure. LL has run the economy into the ground by it's horrible mismanagement many times.

Time to step up to the plate Jack and do your job properly or step down.

It's time for someone at LL to realize how to manage customer relations and policy decisions that have such adverse effects on the longevity of SL and so many of its customers.

Why make people wait all day for another response? Just shows how little you care or know about customer service.

Competition law
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Antitrust)
Jump to: navigation, search
"Antitrust" redirects here. For the 2001 film, see Antitrust (film). For laws specific to the U.S., see United States antitrust law.
Competition law, known in the United States as antitrust law, has three main elements:

prohibiting agreements or practices that restrict free trading and competition between business entities. This includes in particular the repression of cartels.
banning abusive behaviour by a firm dominating a market, or anti-competitive practices that tend to lead to such a dominant position. Practices controlled in this way may include predatory pricing, tying, price gouging, refusal to deal, and many others.
supervising the mergers and acquisitions of large corporations, including some joint ventures. Transactions that are considered to threaten the competitive process can be prohibited altogether, or approved subject to "remedies" such as an obligation to divest part of the merged business or to offer licences or access to facilities to enable other businesses to continue competing.
The substance and produce of competition Acts vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Protecting the interests of consumers (consumer welfare) and ensuring that entrepreneurs have an opportunity to compete in the market economy are often treated as important objectives. Competition law is closely connected with law on deregulation of access to markets, state aids and subsidies, the privatisation of state owned assets and the establishment of independent sector regulators. In recent decades, competition law has been viewed as a way to provide better public services.[1] Robert Bork has found that competition laws can produce adverse effects when they reduce competition by protecting inefficient competitors and when costs of legal intervention are greater than benefits for the consumers.[2] The history of competition law reaches back to the Roman Empire. The business practices of market traders, guilds and governments have always been subject to scrutiny, and sometimes severe sanctions. Since the twentieth century, competition law has become global. The two largest and most influential systems of competition regulation are United States antitrust law and European Community competition law. National and regional competition authorities across the world have formed international support and enforcement networks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust

Same problem here in Canada,our dollar is about 78 cents and to convert in paypal canadian to US costs more than that so we are about 25%also,so that $163 tier fee i'm about to pay for my OS island really amounts to much more with the exchange.which means i will be paying close to $200 monthly tier.as the old saying goes s**t trickles downhill

I will lose my OS sims then, Linden will lose a customer for good!

You can convert openspace sims to full sims.


https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=4235

Converting Regions into Openspaces (and Back Again)
If you wish to convert one regular region into four Openspaces, you can, so long as you still own at least one regular region after the conversion. Similarly, you can convert four Openspaces back into a regular region if you wish. Either way, there's a conversion charge of USD$100.

Caution: As part of the conversion process, content on the region is wiped. We cannot transfer existing content to your new region. Please remove or return anything you wish to keep before the conversion.

Why would Antitrust be relevant here? With OpenSims available, you would have to go a long way to prove that LL are a monopoly. At best they would be a Network Effect Monopoly like Microsoft and any enforcement of antitrust against them has been weak.

Hey Lindens, your going to ban your self aswell?

"Linden owned OS 637 prims left on it"
"Taken by Abby Callisto at Space Base, Mos Ainsley (169, 152, 103)"



light use my ass

Can not teleport region full.

I think this might mean there a bunch of mad people there Jack, mad you ripping us off !!!

You're expecting rationality from this crowd?

I encourage all SL users to cash in their Linden dollars and transfer them out of the game. Make a run on the Linden bank! They don't have the capital to cover a massive withdrawal of real dollars.