Keep Your Promises LL!

OPEN UP THE SERVER CODE (REGION) LL!!!!
Set a pay per support system, like many Linux distribution corps do now e.g. redhat, Novell. (and they are very rich companies, without hurting the userbase with idiotic prices)

Infact you promised this over a year ago!!

LL wanted to decentralize the grid, and promised to opensource the region server code in that path (just like opensourcing the client code is in line with that vision).

Now you are going berzerk with Opensimulator project, which is
1. a third party project
2. way less advanced yet.
3. unstable, and internal workings a completely different from your own code.

If you openup your own code, as you promised, you will get:
1. more paying customers paying for support (see point 3 too)

2. greater userbase

3. even more income, by dropping prices for your own server region orders,
* because not everyone has to access to a colocation box to host the regions on thereselves using the region code.
* By dropping the prices, for private islands and openspaces/homesteads, you get more income, cos more and more will order who are not able to host their own..
* many small incomes, equals a huge pile of income. Base principle for success. (it's affordable, thus a stable paying base, which expands rapidly = more income each expanding period, without loosing income from the current paying customers)

4. More populair as system and more developers will help, mature code. (like with the client code)

5. More merchants on the grid, more new playground, more expenses from residents within the grid (av to av transfers etc)

and a lot more..

as you see, this option will help everyone..

Ps. and you can still keep the opensimulator project up AS A LONG TERM SIDE PROJECT, for InterGrid workings.. which will lead to an even bigger userbase (if doing the right way)

Somehow I don't get the feeling that your proposed business model lines up with Linden Labs'....

Opening up the server source code wouldn't help those that rely on a thriving economy - my understanding is that for that the server would need access to the asset servers, which would open them up to hacking inventory and all sorts of Intellectual Property issues. So you'd need to set up your own, which would make it a whole different economy than SL....

No, that can be throttled, by using known IP addresses of the remotely hosted regions. And a contract, that specifies this.
Besides, on their side, they can block connections from a remote region, by blocking firewall ports to the asset servers.
Furthermore, there can be a mediating server present, that stands between the asset servers and the remote hosted region. So it will buffer out false request, and thus eliminating the direct connection to the asset servers.

Can you explain this more clear?