Trying to understand... rewarded for breaking rules??

Some problems with your argument:

1) Jack Linden, in the second openspace post, said that "the large majority" of openspace users are resource abusers. They are painting nearly the entire community as a whole with a broad brush.

2) There were no explicit rules, merely vague guidelines.

3) The history of SL has been users trying to maximize the potential of every tool and feature, be it for profit, creativity, or innovation. To think that users would not do this for one tool/feature is absurd. LL should have seen increased OS resource use coming; just about everyone else did.

4) By not making explicit rules regarding rentals on OS sims, allowing parcel sales and differences between payor or payee technologically, not throttling openspace resource use, and changing the desirability balance by increasing prims and how they are purchased/positioned, LL naturally opened itself up to having the free market in SL take advantage of the situation.

It goes like this: LL changes openspaces to be much, much more useful in the rental market. The rental market is incredibly competitive, and has the potential to make profit. Initial land barons shift some or most of their business market to take advantage of the price/value difference in OS sims and other rental strategies. Then, other land barons must shift their businesses as well, or perish. This isn't the fault of users or land barons; it's the inevitability of how a free market works in situations like this.

Summary: to frame this as being about resource abusers is wrong-headed, as it expects SL residents to not be SL residents, and try to get every bit of use, value, and creativity from every tool they can (This is called innovation.) Furthermore, a price increase will do absolutely nothing to change resource abuse- unless they are attempting to drive people en masse to abandon openspaces.

What gripes me is I got into the OS market BEFORE they jacked up the prim limits. I was fine with this lite use model and accepted that it could be limited as far as script load etc. I worked HARD at keeping the script load very lite even to the point of learning to script myself, replacing even simple poseball scripts with lighter versions etc. Anything that was poorly written/heavy load wasn't used. The script load for my whole sim is under .7ms and frame time is 1.5 or less. Compare that to any mainland sim where the frame time average is 20ms +.

They raised the prim limit, which I never asked for, but I still worked hard to keep script and texture loads low and have ~1000 prims still free. One of my goals in SL has been to work (for free) to try to lighten the load on the grid, even to the point of rewriting the popular AO-hugger scripts to reduce sim load and giving them away for free!! (SKAO on SLX).

Now I'm told I am an "abuser of resources" and am being punished out of the blue with a raise in prices which will do NOTHING to fix the real abuse. And at the same time "networked" ad-farmers continue as they complain about "network resources"?? The shifting excuses for this price hike also doesn't inspire confidence, which is the REAL issue here IMHO, loss of confidence in LL..

They were not rules... they were "guidelines." There is a big difference. Going against "guidelines" is not a "wrong".

The implication of such guidelines was that if someone suffered performance issues, then they were on their own. Nowhere were actual, precisely defined *rules* provided.

Moreover, many people, probably a majority of people who purchased the OS sims, did so through a land holding company. In my case, the Linden guidelines regarding the OS sims were not available anywhere through that company's website nor in-world communications. They were marketed as "residential/commercial" land.

So to further refine the analogy, it would be like a message was posted on the fridge:

"We recommend you don't eat the cookies. If you eat the cookies, you might get sick, and we won't take you to the doctor if you get sick."

A few daring souls ate a few cookies. And it turned out, hardly anyone was getting sick. So they told their friends. "Hey, these cookies are fine, I haven't gotten sick yet, and they're really REALLY tasty, the best cookies I've EVER HAD! And look it must be okay, I don't know why they put that message on the fridge, 'cause they are placing MORE of these cookies out here! "

Meanwhile, not only were plates of the cookies placed in the kitchen, they were also being carried to completely separate rooms down the hall. Many of the people first discovered the cookies in the rooms down the hall, where no such message was posted. A few people eventually wandered into the kitchen and happened to see the message, but it was too late - they'd already eaten the cookies.

So when they realized this, they decided to charge everyone extra to cover all the trips to the hospital. Even if you didn't get sick, and you only ate one cookie in the kitchen when that's all there was.

-Atashi

I don't know but this rings true and makes sense to me. In a way it is like the cookie story above. We all love a cookie so if you buy a packet, they are sure to all get eaten. After all, you did pay for them and who reads the small print on the side of the packet anyway,,, you know? the bit where is says unhealthy to eat the lot.

LL changed the product and sold it. It's their responsibilty to have put the controls in place.

Do you go visit a zoo and find dangerous animals wandering about amongst the crowds?

No, the Zoo keepers take responsibility and cage them before you get near them.

Do you moms want to have to tell little Joe Joe not to stroke the bear because he will eat you?

Linden Labs knew what would happen and what captive market they were creating. And now they want to cash in. It's not about abusers at all. Its about profit.