Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

It's not my offer, you'll have to read the long chatlog. Even I only skimmed it but I did notice that there was a hint of backpedaling.

Without even gonna argue if it is right or wrong to do so, I find this act very inhumane towards all those residents that are not capable to pay the extra 50us.

They made people so happy with the low cost Open Spaces. Now they are crushing a lot of people's dream of having privacy and their own space. Those need to resort to overcrowded mainland or parcels on private estates again.

Jack, Lindens, is there any humanity inside you guys? Is the only way to solve this problem the increase that destroys the dream of a HUGE group of loyal users?

I do not have any advise directly how to solve the problem, but my immediate thought right now is put the raise on hold and start a dialog with the residents involved.

This protest thing going on is not doing LL any good and honestly if you guys at LL ignore it, you are playing right into the hands of alternative grids.

A dialog with residents is the only path for a healthy and stable future for SL. Both Linden Lab and the Residents need a stable future for this platform.

Just my 2 cents.

Yes I do have a sim and an open space as well. But, that does not give me more rights to talk about the subject. THAT stupid message (forgot who wrote is) is even MORE disturbing than the announcement on the raise of tier. In this world we ALL have a right to speak oppinion.

i can not agree with this price increase alot of people will lose there sims be cause of this and people will lose buisness because of it as i can not agree others cant agree with it either and i belive sl will lose buisness and people as well becasue of this is that really worth it i think not it seems better to keep the prices slow and keep making money and the people and earn that money

What you are missing, what they are claiming is the problem, is the stress on the backend infrastructure. The servers that have to deliver all those textures and prim properties and script request results and... you get the idea. The OS sims are not the tail of this beast, they are the head

While the overhead argument may be valid the real point is that they engineered the problem with full knowledge of the fact that people were already using OS sims as residential sims long before they decided to repackage them into a more attractive place to live.

This is their mess, they are asking us to pay for it, and I personally find their motives very suspiscious in light of past behavior.

It is your opinion that I am not contributing, probably because I am not contributing what you want to hear. Sorry but I don't have a magic answer for you. I'm not going to pay for your sim out of my own pocket, but if you feel that I have nothing to contribute there is an ignore button available. Hope that helps.

Not quite. They *seem* to be saying that it's enough to push the load up 66%, if the amount of money they're asking matches the load. Personally, I think the amount of money matches some business model, and isn't based on any technical measure at all. I'm not defending Linden Labs, I'm just pointing out that the "1/4 prims is 1/4 the load" meme isn't exactly correct.

1. Provide the original openspace deal 1850 for those who really just want open space and do not allow housing of any kind so people like me who are easily confused dont mistake it for a house and garden project. The easiest way of doing this is to allow only plants - not prims.

2. do not suggest boating as i can tell you from experience this is very heavy load

3. Provide a product at maximum 100 usd that the former openspace owners can use for living space and creative projects from low prim builders as an entire sector of your market is about to leave.

4. Phase out new mainland- noone seems to like the view?

5. If what you really really want is private servers on the grid - simply provide a maintenance account for people to have their islands offline unless they are on - linking this with point 3 would work a treat and would save the impending arguments about the lack of eco cred sl currently has

6. I know there will be a deluge of screaming - but the large landowners have invested thousands - something really needs to be done to help them convert and preserve goodwill

Yes there are too many sims on the grid, but effectively ruling out the people who spend the most time and effort in SL cos they are POOR is not a good overall move - perhaps speed up the linkage with the other projects like opensim and opensourcesim however point 5 would be a better business solution

Fanks for listening

Yes Open Sims are means by which people of modest financial means can express their creativity. And we do use the prims that are made available to us. How is that abuse? Many of the open sims owned by the little people of SL are among the most loveliest creations in SL. By driving us off our sims, you will be driving some of the most creative and committed people out of SL. Why stay in SL when your art is being denied to you.

Ive' Been reading threads for the last few days, But decided not to comment untill today, I Own 109 regions, 70% of which are OS sims. most of which are residential. If the excuse is abuse on them.. why offer 3750 prims, and another line of illustriuos options open sims can bring to lure people into buying, and then a few months down the road say "oh we didnt expect you guys to use all 3750 prims, and put your homes there". LOL.. Ill quote Jack Linden on this one "Based on analysis performed in August and September, Openspaces are being used about twice as much as we expected, in other words being loaded with double the content/avatar load than we’d expect for a region that is supposed to be light use". What does light use mean to most people with 25% of a full sims capability? it means using 3750/15000 prims is light use, and will use it as they see fit. Sounds like someone didnt plan for the future but just the idea of loads of cash coming in to LL at the moment, which has in turn haunted the entire SL economy. I have a Solution to the entire problem, and its not to raise the tier and cost of open sims, but to fine the estate owners who let the abuse go on..50 usd/each violation. after paying a few fines.. they will get their act together. Also you will have less flack from all of the residents from the obvious price gouging. But.. thats my take on it.. And for all of you OS sim owners upset and just giving land back to SL.. i dont thinks its a smart move..convert to fulls..(but only if this entire idea of raising openspace tier and prices sticks) ...But thats just my take on it.

Dollaz "The Nice Guy" McMillan

The problem is no one.. likely not even LL knew..or knows even still what constitutes "abuse".

We have 2 regular sims.. one at a 195 tier and a 295 tier one..both of those are used for business purposes.

We.. just not even 2 months ago decided to get an OS sim. That is closed off to the public. has... um.. 3 scripts running maybe? and is used for our own personal hang out place.. and we do build there.. but by build, I mean.. we build a bed, or a fountain.. to be moved to the other sims. I can have a freaking forest.. but I cant build a couch there? I can have a sail boat... but I cant run a TV there?

While we didnt use it to make our land pretty.. its kinda like.. a den. But we only have ONE..so in the long run it doesnt hurt us as badly as many others.

My ONE experience with someone renting out land on an open space sim... was very good. and they were VERY (I even thought kinda panicy about it) aware of resources being used..and scripts running..and lag... handled it personally WITH renters.

Quit talking about abuse. What exactly IS abuse?

Shaking his head
Jake

Maybe we should buy openspace sims and not use them. No wait, hear me out..before you die laughing. What if open space sims came with 1024 prims and allowed only 2.5ms of script time,(figures plucked from thin air as an example). What if they were connected to your 15k Prim sim seamlessly, so you could fly into and out of them with consumate ease, you could then use them to join regular sims together, cool, you could create horizons then, with more sims in the distance, linked by OpenSpaces with the odd three tree island scattered here and there for flavor. Sounds daft to me, but...


I think an incomplete concept was never fully worked out, but it hit the market anyways and I think one half of Linden labs knew little or nothing of what was really happening. They were engineering real solutions for 'down the line' and doing the advertising bit, shaking and moving in corporate America, oblivious...

The other half, not only knew what was happening, but was not getting support form their LM's, or their HOD's so they carried on letting it carry on, they knew it wasnt working, but could do nothing.

I beleive, meanwhile back in a server office somewhere, a net-techie was not getting their primary work done because they were messing around fixing other problems caused by an out of control issue of Open Space sims/Servers/connectivity/loadbalancing/et al.

Some one has asked, "why are your tasks so late", and she said , "because of the pressure to keep the opensim servers cool, it takes all our time""

Some one said, "Huh!"

She said, "The open sims gee, they are reducing our ability to get on with the listed tasks running around trying to keep our asses afloat over the open space sims.

Some one said, "What about them, a few sims should not be an issue? should it?"

She said, "Huh, are you kidding me, we have thousands of the darn things and ther is no way we can keep up unless we spend serious mullah rhulla here to keep the systems going!"

Some one said, "No wait, its only a few openspaces."

She said "yeah, a few thousand".

Some one said, "Since when."

Did you hear that?

That was the effluant hitting the fan.....

Its costing some one a lot of face for not staying on top of an issue that was lost in translation and communication. In the interim, a knee jerk reactive measure is about to be implemented. We know that its not been christened yet as Linden Labs are adroit at cascading financial bomshells on the users over night, they only give warning when the rest of the Linden Labs Management are blissfully unaware.....

Thats what I think...

The problem I see with the open lands abrupt price increase, is that honest users have to pay for a minority of abusers, as if abuse was the norm. This is very unpleasant for the majority of users, who will have to pay for others (Or to quit SL, if they cannot afford higher prices)

So please revert to the former price, and actually enforce the limitations of open lands, to avoid unexpected costs or cross-sim lag.


And I would like that all Lindens get it that what attracts people in SL is not some nightclubs or land speculation, it is the variety of uses and creations. Please check that the bans on casinos or paedophilia may have attracted much more customers and business than they drove out. Ban on creation will attract nobody.


(due to hugeness of this thread I cannot check for replyes. Please drop me an IM inworld)

Govt or Business ...management is management...public relations, marketing and long range strategic planning --the concepts are the same for all whether business or government run....you dont alienate your customers...At least in govt if we disagree we have the opportunity to elect different representation.

And even if a business finds abuse is affecting there bottom line such as a landlord finding out that someone is abusing there land or rental house they dont raise the rent on every rented house they have. They examine each rental separately to see if it is profitable.

If Linden labs did not think that selling OS at the price they offered was profitable then they should not have ever sold the for that rate.

I'm skeptical if Jack or any other relevant Linden is even reading at this point, they're certainly not "discussing" as Katt's title promises. But just in case they are, a few points and ideas to consider.

* It seems like the real abuse is commercial useage, or heavy (splitting into several lots) residential. Logically, one or two homes supporting 1-2 avatars each is no less "light use" than a few avatars using scripted sailboats, powerboats or airplanes - all of which apparently do fall within the "light use" acceptable category. Given that - a couple of ideas:

* It seems that a relatively easy way to kill all commercial use of openspace sims would be to simply disable resident-resident $L transfers on all openspace sims. All commercial useage by definition consists of getting people to give you money in exchange for something. If giving you money while on the sim is locked out and therefore you can't make any money - presto, commercial useage will die immediately of its own accord. There is very little need to give or accept $L while at your home, and I think that having to go somewhere else to give your partner or a friend $L would be an acceptable compromise, while being an easy solution to TOTALLY stop commercial use.

* Full sims already share a server - 4 regions to a server. The load sharing/balancing ability (we're told) prevents one region which abuses with ridiculously high script or avatar loads from affecting negatively the other 3 regions. This is EXACTLY what needs to be done with openspace regions, but which Linden Lab hasn't bothered with yet. Utilize loadsharing/balancing technology to ensure that if one openspace region abuses its resources, the result is that region itself becoming heavily lagged, but the other openspaces sharing the CPU being protected - just as is done with full regions. I don't know exactly what software LL is using for full regions - I'm guessing homegrown or opensource since they always seem to take the inexpensive route rather than the best route - but whatever they're doing with full regions, implement the same thing for openspaces! If abusing your openspace causes your own region to lag dramatically rather than stealing resources from the others and causing lag across all - that will be self-policing - just as it is with full regions.

OMG youre still here being the drama queen?

this thread should be named after you.

I applaud and condemn this action on many levels. Firstly it was a bad business idea to open a inexpensive parcel with 3K+ prims, but now the cat is out of the bag. Secondly. Bad business to give something then come and ask for it back without consideration. Like so many have echoed in other blogs, it looks as if the intent was to prompt a wild west behavior... and there is nothing wrong with that... If there are OS users / owners that are now in the habit of complaining about performance --- perhaps offer a different CPU (with a one time migration charge) this will effectively load balance the bad from the good actors. It is well understood by all the consumption of resources requires some payment - I don't think you will find any argument with that.... However, I hope your RL landlord or mortgage holder does not come and knock on your door and tell you OBTW - next year your interest rate/rent is going up by xx%... I believe that would cause major unhappiness - regardless of the justification.

I have been to some fabulous and very beautifully creative OS areas and several are very low budget RP groups barely hanging on to what they have now, this action will most likely kill them and I will miss watching and learning from such marvelously creative folks. Fact these places are my main reason for being IW at all, most times. I have also been to some extremely laggy, over built, and terrible OS areas. Now that I have a deeper understanding of their physical impacts, I can see why some actions are needed. However spanking all the children for one that misbehaves may be unwise on this occasion. I also sure hope this is not an intelligent management of users - to force more users onto Sims or Islands where they may rent space for their activities -- pandering to the large land barons'......

Now might be the appropriate time to have the LL grid grow past its LL monarchy style of governance. Sure business is business, and money must be made to have a business; but if this fantastic in world experience is to prosper and grow beyond a fadish game / business model (which I do believe has unbelievable possibilities - LL pull your heads out of short sighted nickels and dimes) then perhaps its time for a new approach, a more democratic approach perhaps. (for the grid by the grid) --

1. Sim/Island Holders could form a governance board from which seat holders could be selected, from which a executive partition could form for review and consolation of issues that concern the grids well being with the gods of LL -- IE: Greek democratic foundation, and these folks do hold a monetary stake in this world.
2. Land holders and renters could be given a vote to all actions proffered to the community (populist consent or descent)
3. non-paying residents (we will do what we do now - BLOG)
4. Of course LL owns the grid... will maintain veto power (hard to fight the gods)

This way when issues of this nature hit the radar screen -- the grid can address it and offer petitions / solutions to the LL leadership who can then chose to go with the grids recommendations or not - And the same would apply in the other direction.... Hay - you guys we have some monsters out there chewing up your CPU time -- what do you think we can do?? Managing the possibilities ......

Sure hope this does not kill off us poor gird rezzidents

The issue is very simple. Many want to own land that's private so they can enjoy their lives, but the product offering doesn't match. Open space allowed us to have privacy - lift an island and enjoy peace but now its purposely beeing made expensive.

Create an offering that the average person can afford and you will have happy customers. Keep jacking up the price, infuriating your customers (the users of SL) and you will simply drive them away.

Remember - second life is a business too and you need an offering that people desire for them to come here. Currently it seems to be very ""Ebay" in that your assuming you own the market and people will always come, but that can change too if you dont step back and consider your customer base.

This rise is wrong..... and to the detriment of users. Shame Lindens Shame. Unprofessional and unbusinesslike.

Still no word from Linden Lab on anything that is going on why wont they talk to us this is getting out of hand, massive grid attacks everywhere welcome areas flooded. People in welcome areas cussing it's completely out of hand.

My OS sim that I rent in a very nice estate will be going away due to this. I will be renting already-existing land from the same estate instead.

Net result for Linden Labs?

-$75/mo, gone.
-my respect, gone.
-two months of my work on my very non-abusive build, gone.


Not only is this a bad idea, the way it was presented, and the attitude displayed show a disturbing lack of professionalism and customer service. It seems as if you are *trying* to appear incompetent and greedy.

I love Second Life, I really do. But damn...get a PR department.

I think this point has been made once or twice, hon

Yes "right". What kind of math are you using?

You have to sell your OS for $350 just to break even (initial setup fee + transfer fee applied to the original owner's account). You're assuming charges that don't exist (see Firelight's quote). You can't even sell it at cost since the transfer fee is applied to YOUR account, not the buyer.

The new owner will "score" a new OS at a reduced rate with a recurring cost of $125, $50 more than what they would pay for the same amount of prim on a private estate with better performance--without "abuse" lingering over them for using prims made available to them to use.

In the end, you still pay more for an OS per capita than you do a private estate.

The only thing you "gain" with OS:

*More land space
*More lag
*More time under the "abuse microscope" for using abilities/features LL provides for you

So how is this a wise investment again? Sorry, but I can't see the average person paying for land at a greater cost than private region prices for restricted land. The return is zero because they simply won't sell.

Do the math.
1 region = $295 tier for 15k prims
4 OS sims = $500 tier for 15k prims

To be honest, this isn't even my argument. I don't care about the price increase, I think it's a smart business move that doesn't continue what it was originally doing--killing mainland and on private region real estate markets. My issue is not grandfathering not only those who made an investment with no possible option of making any type of return, but also the OS owners before the "sale". Where is the fairness in that when there are grandfathered class 5 sims still?

I welcome anyone to educate me on how this change adds any type of value or even an incentive to maintain an OS sim.

The fact is there isn't supposed to be any value to OS sims. They're there to be used as an accent to an already existing region/estate. Instead of correcting those who have abused the intent of OS sims, LL's "police with money" now forces everyone who owns one to pay a higher cost, making OS sims even less of a financially attractive option to use as a region/estate enhancement; it's intended purpose.

It's simple, LL doesn't have the manpower to police the grid let alone ensure that OS sims are being used as intended. They now will rely on the new cost to kill the market (which it already is doing), putting the loss in the pocket of every single OS owner on the grid.

A loss based on their lack of ability to correct those abusing OS sims.

Purely in the interest of enhancing people's bulletin board usage skills, I offer the following elaboration on how to get to this magic button:

- in the left hand column where the poster's name appears, click on that name
- from the drop-down list of choices that appears, choose "View Public Profile...
- about half-way down that profile page, in the left-hand side of the blue bar, look for the link called "Add xxx to Your Ignore List"
- You'll get a screen asking you to confirm; click the confirm button.
- You are done.

Actually, some of the people complaining were using Open Space sims correctly. And there are also a couple of people complaining who don't own open space sims.

Firelight

Are they giving the full refund, really? If so, that's good.

Firelight