Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

Winner!!


Fix the OS code instead of raising the price to make Us use less of them.

I was one of the Openspace Sim home owners, who has had infrequent issues with the sim. The Estate I'm in closely monitors performance and issues are swiftly handled.

For no change in performance/features, a 67% price increase cannot be justified, unless LL is now claiming to be an oil company.

I can't justify the price increase on my budget. So I'll be camping from now on, since mainland is unusable much of the time (I had a lot on the Mainland; lag was about the only thing that space was good for!). I'll support the merchants/vendors in SL, but no more land - it just isn't worth the hassles. This is the second (or third) time that LL land policy changes have cost me money. But it is the last time.

As noted on JIRA, this price change has at least one leading business that WAS about to buy into SL now looking at other 3D Internet options, since they have been frightened off by this kind of cost change.

I vote to fix the problem and THEN demonstrate how ANY price increase is warranted. But a price increase without addressing the stated problems in a blind money grab and totally inappropriate.

OK, so LL's response to a credit crunch where in the real world people have less money and the price of property is falling, is to increase property prices?

For those of us in Europe, this amounts to a DOUBLING of price (since the Euro and Pound have dropped dramatically too).

I had assumed prices might come down. I'm absolutely astonished that LL are putting them up. I'm very glad I was cautious about buying - obviously, now prices have doubled, I won't be. Perhaps LL have a long queue of very rich people who aren't affected by the credit crunch lining up to buy their stuff?

Wouldn't it be easier to just implement some limits on OS sim resource utilization? Balancing CPU utilization via operating system scheduling is notoriously time-consuming and delicate.

Regardless of implementation, I encourage people to vote for SVC-3337, which basically requests that LL fix OS sims so that they can continue to offer a cheap, low-utilization sim.
.

Dear Jack,

I never posted before today on the forums. I'm sad, I have loved being in SL. I have invested a lot of time (and a fair amount of money) in it over the last 2 years. I don't treat it like a business, it is an expensive hobby instead, and I (lightly) use my 4 open sims as a garden for my and my friends' pleasure.

But the combination of price hikes on the sim costs, VAT, worsening exchange rates, and now this open sim price hike, will have resulted in a DOUBLING of the cost to me of owning a full sim and four open spaces. In local currency terms, from £3,500 to £7,000 a year. I know things like exchange rate changes are not LL's fault, but the providers of other goods and services I am buying from the US are sharing some of the pain by not increasing their £ prices; LL is doing the opposite.

Jack, even if I decided I could afford this, how can I trust you and LL? Whatever you tell me about the future, how can I rely on you to keep your word? How do I know you are not going to make more arbitrary changes? Trust has to be earned, and it is hard to get back once lost.

I am not quitting SL yet, I will give you a chance to see sense. But if not, it will the brave new world of RL or the Open Grid for me come January.

Love

Euterpe xx

And if LL does this - if they throttle the openspace sim code to keep things within the limits they way - and all the people who live on or have businesses on openspace sims suddenly find their performance tanking, are there again going to be screams of protest saying that LL is trying to [whatever] their customers?

I have spent the past 24 hours reading comments and stories from residents. Jack Linden has certainly succeeded nicely in spreading hate and dissention among residents, dividing them up to decrease the pressure on the Company.
What I am reading is about MANY people who were sold a bill of goods by the same company. They were sold "new, improved" openspace sims. The primary sales pitch was that for a smaller upfront "investment" in setup fees, individuals could own an entire sim sized space with 3750 prims upon it - double the previous prim limits. THAT was the sales pitch.
So needless to say, many, many residents asked for these. And have spent the ensuing months setting up homes, shops, forests, parks, etc. with the 3750 prims they were provided.
NOW when many, many other economic forces are coming to bear on the Grid, suddenly it is announced that all those vague, unspecified "abusers" have been unclearly and undefinedly "abusing" the again undefined and unclear "light use" limits (3750 prims?) on these parcels - without any feedback to date from LL until now. And a solution that makes no sense whatsoever in addressing the problem as defined by Jack Linden. Current OS owners and renters who are under the prim limits are suddenly demonized and scapegoated for the poor performance of LL's servers, and have no idea if they are "abusing" the light use limits.
In my mind we should completely discount the obvious eyewash that Jack Linden is giving for this decision. They obviously have other fish to fry here. And turning residents against each other, scapegoating the customers they were pushing OS sims to a few months ago is part of their spin doctoring.
*disclaimer* I do not own an OS, but I have many friends who will be out a lot of "setup" money and more importanly a lot of love they have invested.
It may be legal, but it is most certainly unethical and Bad Faith.

Then they didn't fix it right =)

I have long been a LL supporter but I'm sorry I can't agree with this move. I have sims and OS's and strictly use the OS for special events etc. so I definitely fall into the light use category and I stay well within the prim limits. For the amount of the increase they are suggesting the prim count needs to be raised as well if they really want to do that otherwise it is unreasonable as they are almost doubling the maint. cost with no added benefit.

I am 100% in favor of cracking down on those who abuse the OS's for things they are not intended to be used for but that needs to be handled on a case by case basis and not by jumping everyone's prices with no benefit just to pay for more equipment to support those who are abusing the system.

I support having the browser show if you're in an open space. I've been in a lot of sims that I thought were sims that turned out to be open spaces and are running high on prims. They have vendors and are being used as malls.

I support this because it'll stop sim owners from using low CPU computers for the Open Space and increasing lag. There's been more then once I thought it was me, then ported out and ran fine. I can give examples of high use open spaces.

So, no matter what anyone says higher prices will keep sim owners from trying to screw the system by making a sim in to 4 open spaces and then trying to sell land on them and making malls on them.

Because I see it this way...

The only ones who'll abandon their open spaces are the ones who abuse it and know they do. Once those are weeded out then the prices will more then likely drop again because the demand will be low and the prices will be too high.

Plus it's LL's world even if we pay tiers. Ultimately the choice is thiers no matter how many JIRA's are opened (which is a stupid way of using the bug reporting system).

/me applauds

So, uh...

Have you noticed yet that this is unpopular?

Maybe? Is there a chance of that?

Hah.

I make myself laugh. ^_^

Went to vote on the Jira re this OS price increase .. but Jira is down .. laughs hysterically

Actually, it will force out the people NOT running an OS for profit first. Unless they happen to have deep pockets. The profit people have at least some money coming in (for now).

Firelight

i see it this way....

The people abusing OS sims have plenty of tenants on them to cover the price hike, so they will stay abused.

The honest hobby (lite use) user will dump his/hers come January because one person will have a harder time covering the difference.

Like so many this is really the last straw for me, I just converted a full sim to 4 open spacers and now have 2 full sims and 10 openspacers, I did that because no one wanted to rent land from me on full sims , and i was finding open space rentals worked well for me, well! thanks a lot Linden that's that one blown also now, no one is going to want to pay a 66% increase,well, my loss is your loss, theres now a very good chance that you can wave goodbye to 15000 dollars tier a year come January. see how a few thousand plus users doing that hurts you Linden!

fed up with it, i pay enough already,
once you set a price, you just can 't do this
Someone made a big mistake at Lindens calculating....
If i do that in my job i get fired, and my business will have to suffer the losses, not the clients...
its just about you guys getting richer
tell you what, you can keep my open sim( where i just have my own home, thats 2 (TWO) persons), and my premium account, and the Lindens of my business on another full sim, making lots of US$ for you guys, you want more? you might end up with nothing...

Simple Question: HOW does it help setting the price to 125 USD to increase OS performance?
I don´t think LL will buy state of the art server hardware for that money!

Not at all, it will do the exact opposite. Those few that survive this disaster now will say "if I have to pay THAT much money, I will use it to the max!".

Since LL is cheating everyone out of money they need to make the conversion free

and stop scaming people for money they have forgotten its us people who made SL what it is today and with out us SL will become nothing again

Honestly... what the hell you think we are LL?
Dairy cows???
Whats the purpose of this tier raise?
Appart from driving all the people that cant afford much out of SL? i know the world economy is going bad and everyone is severely hard up.
Dont you think it s unfair to the legitimate users who stay in the TOS to foot up the bill for YOUR errors and INCOMPETANCE to provide a decent service (not to meantion the griefer and hackers attacks you never seem bothered to deal with...).
All you ve done so far is create MORE BUGS, a crash happy client that crashes as soon as a fly farts...
Seriously IT S TIME TO WAKE UP! and start fixing the serious issues before you drive your selves out of buissness.

As for the raise, i m objecting to it as it is to my opinion TOTALLY unjustified.

It really irritates me that LL has pitted resident against resident in this scam to line their own pockets at the expense of residents. This is not about abuse of resources by certain residents as LL would have us believe.

1. LL sets the prim limit on all sims open space or not and thus has been in full control from the onset as to what could be done with Open Space sims.

2. LL released a product at a price per prim - ie... 250 usd to purchase and 75.00 usd per month to maintain. They flooded the grid with this product and as they continued to sell them there is absolutely no way they could not have seen how they were being used. Thus by the way of their continued sale of them approved said use.

3. At the time LL obviously needed the influx of cash from sales of thousands of low prim sims and they got it.

4. Once again they did this at the expense of the hand that feeds them. This is one of a series of such actions.
a. LL flooded the grid with mainland without regard to estate owners and their need to cover tier through rentals and land sales etc and without regard of the mainland owners that saw their own land values go down because of a land glut. ( Why? to keep the cost of land low for their beloved clients? NOOOO because they need tier- tier keeps the wheels turning and its not likely that people who invested thousands in island estate sims will abandon them- they will sell them at a loss and get out and others will buy them at the discount and be happy they got a deal and LL will still get their tier so why not open the mainland and flood the market they have nothing to lose the residents are gonna carry the burden.)

b. Then, LL across the board and without notice or consideration of the estate owners devalued their assets by 40% by lowering the cost of a full sim to $1000 instead of 1675$ USD. Why?? Cause LL need to sell sims- needed more capital. At the same time they made individual low prim sims avail at $250 uS- Why? because they wanted more parkland? No ... because they wanted more tier and they knew exactly what would happen- people would flock to own a low prim sim- a whole sim of privacy for what they could have previously had a 1/4 of a sim. and they sold thousands of them to estate owners who couldnt rent their full sim properties but were hounded to get a low prim sim for residents who wanted the space.

Full sims selling for 400usd because people cant rent them. Everyone wants a low prim sim. Sim owners trading in full sims for 4 low prim sims so they could rent them out.

LL had no consideration for the estate owner in this. LL is concerned with one thing- the monthly tier they collect and the influx of cash through sales of sims low prim or otherwise when they need it cause they know that whether you pay the tier on that sim or someone else does ... someone will.

Here is the thing LL.... while you continue to line your pockets and bite the hand that feeds you other grids are opening up and technology is improving and one day you will not be top dog I assure you of that... so enjoy the ride while you can as it will not last forever.

I have been a resident here 2 years and I have learned one thing. You cannot do business with a company that changes policy, rules and costs of doing business willy nilly. The only thing consistent about LL is its propensity for doing just that without regard for the residents or the businesses that have so earnestly supported you and this project over the years.

How please tell me how a legitimate developer sells SL as a viable opportunity for RL business or non profit projects when the rules and policies are subject to change overnight without regard to the consequences, impact, or effect on the stakeholders.

Many of the residents here are business owners in RL. Please tell me how many of them would stay in business if they produced and sold a product in which the buyer agreed to a monthly fee for maintaining that product only to have that price increased by 40% because they had used the product to its full potential. Especially knowing that you were selling it to people who were doing just that in the first place.

Truth is when LL agreed to sell sims for 250 usd for 3750 prims with tier of 75 usd per month they had an obligation to maintain them for that price and at the very least those that bought under that agreement should be grandfathered.

I do not believe for one second that LL did not know what the effects on the grid would be when they decided to release these sims. The truth is they knew and needed to sell the sims anyway and they knew they would have to deal with the fallout later and they are now doing that at the resident's expense and they are further accomplishing it by turning resident against resident to support their actions- if they can get all of us pointing fingers at each other and accusing one another of abuse they will take the attention from themselves and divide us enough to prevent a mass exodus of Sl for other open sim project grids.

Frankly, if anyone really believes this about anything but money at LL I think they are naive. And there is one thing we can be assured of... those that will gain from the loss of others in this deal... those who will buy the low prim sims that will be abandoned- given away or sold for a fraction of their cost as people unload them... well their day will come .. the day will come will another LL willy nilly decision will turn their SL upside down as it has those that came before and they will see their assets devalued or their industry closed down without notice or yet another land glut as LL looks out for LL without regard to the residents that made them successful and the cycle will continue and they do say a fool is born every minute don't they?

Thanks LL for the education!

I live on an open space sim being in game 2 years I have lived all over the grid... I have enjoyed the privacy as most say on here.... If you did not want them used for any thing then open space you should have set them up with like 500 to 1000 prim to only allow for trees etc... Most people in Sl use them for residendts its us players that just wanted privacy enough prim and keep it affordable.... Now to double the tier with little notice kills the poor estate owners.... this is like back in the casino time when folks in game lost sims because of your over night policy changes... Rather then working with folks to fix a problem slowly and work together.. You once again kill the little guy in game... Very sad Linden this will once again cause massive land issues in sl..... Hold on to your hats folks I figure next will be all other tier being hicked..... I for one wont be doing any land buying or renting in the next few months... I will however be giving up my open sim cause I am not going to pay that kind of tier hick its a game its not worth it to me for just my home.. So in the end i end up hurting my estate owner so sad... However I am going to now make the time to look into open source and bring my own cause with the way linden changes policy I cant afford to keep up in cuirrent day times..

You can provide URLs to sims that have been gamed? You can provide proof of an Open sim degrading your enjoyment?