Finally a good decision against abuse of the cheap open spaces

Finally a good decision against abuse of the cheap open spaces

How is it a "Good Decision" to screw over every person who used OpenSpaces in a fair and reasonable way? The boating sims, and the islands that used them for scenery and a privacy buffer, the individuals who used them for terraforming test beds, with no scripts or prims at all?

How is it a "Good Decision" to eliminate the education and non-profit discount for OpenSpaces, and force them to pay what amounts to a 266.66% rate hike?

How is it a "Good Decision" to price a product completely out of reasonable range, making it cost L$8.8 per prim per month to have an OpenSpaces region, as opposed to L$5.2 per prim per month for a Private Island, and even less for Mainland?

What this will do is eliminate the OpenSpaces sims almost completely.

dont feed the trolls....

Like I always said..some people are just born stupid..its not their fault I guess.

There is NO abuse !! were just using what was given to us. stop saying were abusing the sims .

Wouldnt suprise me if everyone thats agreeing with LL is a Mainland reseller cause there the only people that are losing out because the cheap openspace prices and they will be the ones to benefit from this price increase in the end

tell me why i don't abuse my openspaces and i must pay more anywhere...

I agree with their decision and am an Estate Owner. I am not happy with the added fees but believe it or not, everyone who bought these agreed to the possibility of rate hikes. It happens and if I was an investor in Linden Labs I'd be happy at the thought that maybe, someday, I will see ROI after sending millions of dollars into this venture.

As for the mainland, you are right that those who invest in mainland real estate will benefit and they rightfully should. Anyone who is going to lose islands or give up can't see this right now, through the tears, but a redistribution of wealth ( as Obama would say ), is going to benefit the comunity as a whole.

Those who can will continue to enjoy their islands and those who cannot but still want land can live on the mainland or on smaller estate lots. Hopefully LL will clean up the ad farm issues and the mainland can get away from its reputation as a ghetto and move forward as well.

And yes, you may not see it as abuse but there was plenty of it. I am disappointed that LL didn't enforce their own rules but they needed the cash. Regardless of the reasoning, anyone who decides to own 20 or 200 OS sims needs to plan for these eventualities and should not cry because of a rate hike -- something common in business. Those people who think that not grandfathering is robbery have ZERO concept of service driven businesses.

Bruno, I must thank you for posting this. So many people are getting fired up about this issue without understanding the complete picture, and its good to see someone giving a level account of the situation.

What complete picture ? The one were many small shops an business owners that are on a OS will be be shut down cause they cant afford the new price ? This will effect the whole Sl economy . hard for people to have a good Sl experience if there not many places to hang out an places to shop for item clothes etc .. Wen so many people lose trust LL they dont shop as much an this effects everyone even those not on a OS .

You people that agree with LL much be rich an money has no effect on you but most us are struggling to get by as it is. A bad SL ecomony probably means nothing to you either. That shop that sells overpriced clothes , furniture an skins you can easily afford so no need to visit the small cheap places .. must be nice.

And to say we can just move to a smaller plot on mainland to live on .. We dont want crappy mainland thats why we moved the private sims. so can actualy have privacy without some stupid newbie flying by looking at us .
If anything is our fault here its that fact that we were stupid enough to trust LL.

Actually a bit over a year ago my family and I did give up our Private Island and move to half a mainland sim. It was heart wrenching to do but quite honestly we have been much happier campers since and have only recently tiered down to 1/4 a sim. If you are picky where you set up mainland does NOT have to be a disaster.

i started second life in febuary of 2006, i was in a wheelchair and couldn't get around much. SL was perfect i could run around and play. most importantly i could be creative here.... so i started a business.
i started my home company from 1 little picture vendor out of a friends small shop and built it up over the years. my company remained small happily catering to people who didn't want cookie-cutter homes. our dream was to one day own a sim, but we couldn't afford it. these low prim sims came along at a reasonable price...we waited. watching to see how these openspaces would turn out. they did well and seemed to have no problems so we purchased one through a land dealer. IT was perfect, i needed space not the prims.
We continued happily it seemed a perfect fit, even when the economy got scary we could still afford to keep it.
NOW we are being told that we abused our sims (they gave more prims cause they didn't sell) nothing was supposed to be on them. their website said light use, but never defined light use ( now it does...). we must pay 67% more in teir to cover this ABUSE.
i can't afford this....and i can't go back to mainland cause it costs more per month with a paid account and teir than it did to pay tier only on a sim.....strange huh?

i checked my files and there are 2,479 people who have purchased homes from me over the years that have lifetime warrenties on thier homes.....where will i be if they need help???

i have no choice but to close my doors for good abandon my sim and let go all my employee's. sadly all the smaller businesses i give free rent to will have to close as well.


when it's all said and done will anybody but big corperations survive in SL? this is only a first step.... LL will raise teirs on all land if this works.all the artist ppl and businesses will close, remember your inventory when u started SL? get used to it cause that's all that will be available when all of our businesses close.

You ARE an investor, you buy islands, you paid for hardware, you've invested money into LL through your business on it. You've invested your own time to make it a better product. If you sell and buy products, you continue to invest in it. If you create the products, which LL requires in order to have any content on their SL Product, you have invested.

Everyone spending money here is an investor and many expect to see an ROI and their investment. But you can't walk up to your VCs and tell them that their donation requirements are going up without a well defined business plan, a lot of butt kissing, and wine'ing and dining.

They're basically robbing one group of investors to pay the others.

Good is a loaded word.

If I decide that everyone must stop driving cars today for the "good" of the planet, is that the best decision for the overal population, despite it lowering pollutants introduced into the atmosphere?

No. You eliminate or change the problem vehicles, not all of them, and you redesign vehicles to be more effecient for the future.

The way to deal with "polluting" OS sims is to shut them down or charge them more, NOT all of the OS sims. And then redesign the system of systems to deal with the usage.

Come on, think it through.


If not now, when? If not us, who?

Thousands of SL residents will suffer under this new LL ruling on Openspace sims. If you are one of them, or know one of them, and they are moral, support them. Write a message to every Linden you can find on search, and IM them a copy of it; put the message in a notecard and drop it in all of their profiles; post the message to this forum, with additional comments; post your message ini Jira; open LL trouble tickets and post your message; find blogs about SL and post your message there again and again.

Define the message and repeat it to all who will listen and to all who will not.

It worked for Gandhi.

Give it a shot.

Yes by all means burn the suckers for using what LL allowed them to pay for and use.

Well, not burn, but fix the problems, not the blame---and don't fix what ain't broken, like most of the OS sims.

I appreciate your point, though--don't give prims to people unless you want them to use them.

In one place it says "not for building", and in another it says 3750 prims. Those two statements are contradictory. If it was truly intended only for "landscaping", as in rocks and trees and open water, the prim limit should have been set to 500 or 1000.

As it was, its set to 1/4 the prim limit of a full sim, with 1/4 the monthly fee. The common knowledge that SL players had (including me) was that openspace was just like 1/4 of a full sim, except for the extra elbow room.

Jack Linden's statements that "we didn't expect people would use it" shows a total lack of understanding of human nature. Of course if I was paying $75 a month, I would try to make the most out of what I was spending, whether thats a nice build for myself, renting out home lots, or whatever.

Exactly.


If not now, when? If not us, who?

Thousands of SL residents will suffer under this new LL ruling on Openspace sims. If you are one of them, or know one of them, and they are moral, support them. Write a message to every Linden you can find on search, and IM them a copy of it; put the message in a notecard and drop it in all of their profiles; post the message to this forum, with additional comments; post your message ini Jira; open LL trouble tickets and post your message; find blogs about SL and post your message there again and again.

Define the message and repeat it to all who will listen and to all who will not.

It worked for Gandhi.

Give it a shot.

1/4 of the cost to buy the OS, 1/4 of the monthly fee, 1/4 of the prims. I spoke once with customer service and they told me the suggested max number of avatars was 30. BTW this is the text of the conversation:
<hi b. one question... the openspace sims can hold about 3800 prims... how many avs can enter at same time? B.: Hi Annemarie, you can have up to 100, but I would recommend a maximum of about 30, as the performance I think will suffer after taht>
What about this uh?

So where is the abuse. The reality is that 4 OS and 15,000 prims will cost $ 500/month instead of the $ 295 of a normal sim. Of course this is pure greed. After offering for few months an appealing product LL is now raising the price. And this in bad economic times and when the USdollar is up and everything will cost more for the Europeans.

I own 2 sims and 7 OS. I am truly fed up and I am just waiting for their final decision. I don't think they are going to see one more penny from me after december.

Does anyone recall a company name Control Data (CDC)? It was founded in 1957 and was recognized as one of the pioneers in the area of supercomputers, and for most of the 1960s it built the fastest computers in the world by far. The CEO from its inception was a guy named William Norris. It chief designer was, a guy many have heard of, Seymour Cray. Unfortunately, under the Norris decision making model CDC got a moniker assigned to it that was known throughout the business world as 'Ready, Fire, Aim.'

The point here is that Norris lost touch with the marketplace CDC served. Through his acquisition strategies, and his refusal to listen to both internal and marketplace feedback Norris led CDC into ruin. By 1972, Cray had left CDC and started Cray Research, in 1974 another lead designer, Jim Thorton, left CDC and founded Network Systems. As you can guess CDCs sales plummeted. By 1982 Norris recognized CDC and become moribund and set up a spinoff, ETA Systems, to develop a computer able to compete with those of Cray Research. In the mid-1980s the Japanese entered the field and by 1989 ETA ceased operations. In 1986, CDC, to raise operation capital for the ETA venture sold its commercial credit subsidiary which went on to become Citigroup.

Also in the mid-1980s CDC, through its Magnetic Peripherals unit co-developed the ATA interface with Compaq and Western Digital. However, CDC misread the market again and spun off the Magnetic Peripherals unit in 1988, which Seagate Technology bought one later. In 1992 CDC spun off and sold its services business which became known as Ceridian Corporation, effectively ending CDCs existence.

The point here it that a pioneer and major venture with unlimited potential to dominate both in the supercomputer and personal computer markets managed to destroy itself with short-sighted and unwise business choices. It was so erratic through its behaviors internally, and in the marketplace, that it managed to lose both its customers and its investors.

If one looks closely at LL you can see the same erratic behaviors coming from the LL Ivory Tower. They create something good, they don't consistently stick with any strategy for more than 6 to 9 months, they don't fix the inherent flaws in their product, they have pricing strategies that are seemingly developed on a whim and that go up and down like a yo-yo. They seem totally blind to the fact that both the small customers and the large investors can see their erratic behaviors, and that one day soon a competitor will enter the market. This competitor will have a stable product, and they will be selling their product to a marketplace that LL has managed to alienate through inconsistent product delivery and pricing. In effect LL will have educated this competitor on how not to run a business, and that competitor's success will be built upon LL mistakes.

Is the change in Open Space pricing a smart one? I think not. SL is a wonderful and novel idea, but it is not real life nor can it ever present the myriad of options that RL has to offer. It is a two dimensional world. You can interface TO AN EXTENT with other people, you can view neat graphical creations, you can shop for items you cannot really use, some people do make money in SL, you can pretend go to school and maybe actually learn something, you can pretend build, you can pretend going to a 'live' concert, you can pretend dance, you can pretend having a real relationship, you can pretend having sex, you can pretend doing a lot of things. You can do very little for real in SL as much as LL might like us to think we can.

Here is what LL is missing. The fun wears thin after while. Most land owners, whether private estates or mainland, barely break even, or lose money every month. A handful of merchants make money, but will no longer once the supporting structure breaks down around them. Just what is the supporting structure in SL? It is the break even and money losing operations that helped to create the SL that exists today. What happens if this large group of SL 'investors' give up and leave SL? The infrastructure begins to shrink and SL becomes smaller and less attractive. It is happening right now. Land owners, club operators, and other are ceasing to do business as they have in the past because they are tired of losing money in SL. Sadly, this makes SL less enjoyable, and a less attractive to visit.

The biggest thing SL is missing is that people that get fed-up and leave SL talk to other potential SL users. They write in blogs and books, they spread the word on the difficulties in dealing with buggy viewers, and they will talk about all the inconsistencies in the management of SL. Alienated users will also spread the word on how unstable the corporate leadership is behind LL. Users in SL that are trying to make a profit need consistency in order to develop their own long-term business models and to implement them. In this regard, LL has failed almost completely. The Open Space pricing change is just the latest example of LL erratic behaviors that will have a significant impact on the user base they rely upon to build the same product that LL sells. This is flat our short sighted and, frankly, quite stupid.

Has LL noticed that there is a global recession underway in RL? Has LL noticed that there are fewer live concerts in SL because most venue operators cannot possibly make any money holding live music events? Does LL know that a year ago we had lag problems crossing sim boundaries and now we have lag crossing LOT boundaries on the same sim? The technical problems are all tied to SL functionality. The profitability issues are tied to the price of land, tier, and maintenance fees. Both of these apply equally to private regions and mainland. Has LL noticed that there needs to be a third class of membership that recognizes the value that private region owners contribute to SL. Has LL noticed that the conflict between mainland land owners and private region owners has been created by LL in its neglect to govern and balance land supplies in SL?

As to Open Space sims, LL has cited that the 'unexpected' use of Open Space sims has required more resources. How is that? They state in the Open Space sim agreement that they will not support any problems arising on Open Space sims used for anything but water or forests. With four Open Space sims to a server, there are still only 15,000 prims per server. So just how are there more resources being used?

Land pricing in general should be going down, not up, to reflect what is happening in RL. Get with it LL, don't be another CDC, be proactive and open your eyes and minds. SL is not a real world. We do not have to be here. We don't have to pay for this if we want to quit. Again, it is not like RL where a person has no choice but to survive. What most of us spend here is disposable income, and in the present state of the world economy, HELLO, there isn't as much disposable income as there was just 12 months ago.

If any of LL actions appeared rational up to this point, then one might think the change in Open Space pricing was to control the supply of land in SL. However, one would also expect that we all would have been told that this was the reason. If this change had not been implemented on the 'ready, fire, aim' approach that killed CDC, one also could expect that the pricing change would have been conducted in a rational manner that might include a grandfathering of pricing for existing Open Space sims versus newly ordered ones come January, 2009. Instead we get insulted by Jack Linden trying to sell us some story about server usage. Please, 3750 prims of asset server usage is the same regardless of where those prims are put into use. If this is true, once again it only demonstrates the deficiencies in LL management putting a product into the marketplace and not planning properly for its use. READY, FIRE, AIM!

If LL wants to reverse course on the CDC model, I see a few things they need to do:

1. Fix the platform on which SL operates. This means no more bells and whistles until you fix what you already have in operation.

2. Quit making new land until the value of existing land increases.

3. Quit changing the rules and pricing every 6 to 9 months so users can plan for their own growth and profitability.

4. When a change in pricing is made grandfather it in.

5. Equalize mainland and private region pricing.

6. Understand that of the 60,000 users on-line at any given time, only a relative handful are large corporate clients and profitable SL endeavors. The vast majority of users are the little people that create all the eye candy that attracts and keeps people in SL, and that the majority of these people are barely hanging on in SL financially.

This reminds me of one last CDC story. In 1985 CDC started a venture called Rural Ventures Growth. The concept behind this company was to sell high priced software to farmers that would help them manage and operate their family farms more efficiently and profitably. The sales model was to be multi-level marketing. The idea behind software support was that the farmers that used the software, and became involved in the sales of the software, and any other user that figured out how the software worked, would provide product support to all the other farmers. In other words there was no effective plan to teach farmers how to use the software, or to solve their problems once they arose. To add to the brilliance of this plan, CDC seemed to miss the fact that in 1985 rural communities were faced with a major farm crisis where family farms were being foreclosed upon on a daily basis. One final thing, the software had so many bugs in it, no one could use it.

You how this story ended for CDC? Does this all sound vaguely familiar LL?

That the Lindens themselves used the open space sims beyond ocean for sailing a boat...I would have to say the "rocks and tree" theory has been blown out of the water:

http://mistyisforeverlost.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/dear-governor-linden-tm-copy-right-all-that-good-jazz/

click on the pictures to take you to my flickr and you can chose to resize to ORIGINAL and see that it's not just "residents" of the grid who are using these spaces to build' but also Linden Labs themselves.

I have just aquired an openspace sim which i use as a little place for myself and my partner. We login only twice a week, so although we are using about 2000 prims its all for show and the avatar activity is certainly not abusive. I will not be able to afford the increase as I pay in lindens to an agent therefore already pay around $100 which has to be converted into UK pounds, so already there has been a %25 increase in real cost due to dollar rate.

My only recourse will be to give up the OS. This is a GAME which i pay good money to play. I don't make money and i will have to make the decision if i can be bothered to play it any more. I can pop in and have a chat with my partner maybe, but I will not buy anything or contribute to SL in any further way.

Its people like me that keep SL running and it about time LL realise that. Out of the 60,000 that are online now how many actually contribute to LL?

As for the resources used, I have always been told that its prims that define CPU usage and 1 CPU is resourcing the same number of prims being 1 full sim or 4 open sims. The other resource usage is avatar activity, so why cant LL limit the number of AV's on an OS. If a full sim can support 100 AV's then a OS should be able to support about 25. And if its bandwidth on single servers that is a problem why do popular dance venues not have to pay more for their sims, as they can have very high AV activity. Also total bandwidth is dependant on the total number of logged in users which i have noticed has risen by another 10,000 on average in the last year, if the system cant cope with that number of users then why should the OS owners be singled out as solely responsible.

Lastly and I think this has been mentioned before, if OS were intended not to be used, except for a few trees and water then why 3800 prims?

A message to the trolls and mainland fanboys : The 67% price hike is likely just a finger in the water to test it, full island and mainland prices will likely follow, probably at less than 67% so everyone is "grateful" for paying less than OS increases.

I guess more people at LL have interests in alternate grids than we know.