To Jack Linden about the opensims

To Jack Linden about the opensims:
The world is in middle of an economic slowdown. A recession. That means unemployment, less money to spend in goods, in services. It is possible that this slowdown will bring a devaluation of our assets, houses, land, in a word our life long savings. In economic terms this will mean that there will be a contraction of Consumption, and lower rates of growth in our economies. The prices at least until mid 2009 will tend to go down or stabilize (including the oil prices I hope). This means that the inflation do not represent a problem. For that reason, we can see the FED decreasing the main interest rates. This is happening globally because the present crisis is affecting all countries in the world. There is fear and people tend in the present circumstances to save money (which is good). But the fear comes from mistrust on the economic and financial institutions. There are people losing their houses, their pension funds, their health insurances, their scholarship loans. Thou, for the first time since the great depression (1929/32) we are assisting to a worldwide answer to the present crisis. The meeting scheduled for 15 November in Washington is important and will be a reassurance to all of us that the world is ready to face and beat this recession. There is hope and we should act accordingly.
If people are reducing their expenditures in RL they will reduce also on SL. So, I really do not understand this increase of almost 70% on the tier prices of opensims. In addiction I expect that the user numbers of SL will decrease and some of the users will downgrade their accounts with LL. I am sure LL has managers, economists; please explain me what is your strategy. In the middle of a recession a sound policy should be to reduce costs, to fix bugs, to improve the service quality. Not to increase prices, develop new viewers and keeping I don’t know how many grids. Think and plan new investments are good but you can put them operational next year, around July 2009. The main concern now should be focused in keeping or rising the number of users and decreasing prices. I think your managers are perfectly aware of this.
Nevertheless LL increases prices. If there is a misuse of opensims, regulate the use of opensims. For a European your increase means to go 90 US$ to 150 US$. I am sure that LL is not trying to say Europeans please go home, or US citizens stay in your RL homes! But it looks like. And for that reason I protest. It remains an explanation: LL is running on red and these was a possibility of reducing costs and get some liquidity (cash) to face financial problems in the present Quarter and the next. Unfortunately I do not know the financial situation of LL, but I think I am not very far away of the reality when I am assuming that the picture is not pretty. If I am right why you are not asking our help? The help of SL users. For the most part of us SL is a wonderful place to be in, and for sure there are people ready to participate in founding a solution, if there is one. Now, the users are starting to ask if there is a future for LL. I think there is. But I would like to see more common sense in your policies. If they do not show up very quickly, we are going to assist to more protests and that is the worst road we need to face this crisis. Tell me that I am wrong. But if I am not, please do the same as our political leaders are doing: to reech out to every country of the world and inviting them to join in a common policy to face the crisis, in our case the users.
Gerard Darcy November 2, 2008

I hope Jack Linden and LL are reading your posting, Gerard. Very insightful and relevant.

I fully second the motion Gerard, but I am afraid, that mr. G.W.Bu.....uhmmm,..i mean Jack Linden, has crawled under a big stone, and is not planning to show himself for a long time.

JJ.

and its all true.