Poor Forsight on SL's Part is NOT Abuse on the Residents Part

I do not own any Openspaces, and I was unaware of this in-progress PR disaster before I heard about from others who are involved in SL real-estate. But having read LL's two blog postings on this issue I have to say that Linden Labs seem very skilled at giving themselves PR bullets in the foot if not the head. Despite your attempt to back-peddle in your second blog post, your first blog posting refers to using more resources that you anticipated as being "abuse". That LL failed to properly foresee the uses the servers would be put to is LL's fault, and does not render use which is within the TOS abuse, and your use of this term has undoubtedly engendered rightful anger from those residents you have slandered with your poor choice of words. I find it hard to believe LL's profit margin is that endangered by the "unpredicted" (by LL -- seemed pretty obvious to me when you announced them in the first place they would be used by those seeking land for less) load on the Openspace servers, and in any case the pompous dictatorial tone of your announcement coupled with the large if not profiteering price increases during these extremely hard economic times was about the worst way you could have handled this. There are plans by many effected by your actions to stage a massive boycott of SL, and while I am not effected personally I tend to agree with their view on the subject and will do what I can to support their action. A far less draconian and equally effective solution would have been to impose limits on avatar count on Openspaces. This would still be a pretty unpopular move, but would achieve the desired reduction in server load without making Linden Labs look dishonest, slanderous, and profiteering. Too late now, unfortunately. But perhaps in future LL could (1) do better in forecasting the results of their actions, and (2) show some tact when dealing with the residential community.

I made this point about the talk of "abusing" resources on Flickr, too.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/openspacevoid/discuss/72157608497181675/

I just wish I could summarize all my concerns this well, and still fit everything in a short post.
(bumps)