Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

Nothing that ANYONE sells you can be trusted to remain more than you have a contract for, and sometimes not even that. AT&T is turning on a 20 GB monthly traffic limit to broadband customers using the service I'm currently on... not in my area, yet, but they'll almost certainly extend it here in time. If they do that before the end of my contract then the most I expect to get out of it will be the right to terminate my contract without paying the early termination fee, or possibly, a few years down the road, a token class action settlement that won't even pay a month's DSL bill.

Dear LL (Mark and others),

Why aren't you doing as you promised us, as another service, open up the server code (region code), to everyone, so the decentralization of the grid will come in place. (that's what LL is aiming for aint it?)
It's been over a year, since the announcement was made, by Phillip Rosenthal (Phillip Linden) at a virtual world conference.

The Opensimulator thing is good, but it should be a side project.
Please openup de real code, you as LL use, as promised. (while meanwhile you keep working with interopperability with e.g. opensim).
For the licensed libs, like Havok, they can be distributed precompiled (binary format), like in many games this happends. And is allowed in the license of havok.

I'm waiting for a respons on this element. It would make SL bigger then ever, be able to run your own region using exactly the same technique as you yourself are using. (cause opensim is third party and way less mature/feature rich as the REAL code in use by LL).
Maybe a small setup fee, to hook to the asset servers and such.
who knows...
Besides not everyone has a colo machine, with big bandwidth. (or rental machine for that matter).
And for support, one could need to pay additional costs..

Think about it, in future terms...

Awaiting your respons.

Keep it OUR DREAM, OUR WORLD.... OPEN UP THE CODE, LIKE THE VIEWER...

Think of it, what if there was only one Internet provider per country.. BAD BAD BAD...
The internet is OPEN, everyone can run it's own site, or choose freely where to host it.
SL should too...

Prices will go lower, but market shares will go up, because of more customers.. (many small pieces make a big pile principle)

this means, that more land will be used, without riddiculous tier fees. thus everyone is able to have land, and live their dreams, as SL is supposed to provide.

then no one should invest anything in sl, ever. period. money down the toilet, totally dependent on people who have shown themselves to be devoid of care or concern for the consumer. Let SL rot on the vine. I am done with it.

This was I thought to be something of a feedback situation - you know where we would talk - they would listen - they would talk - we would listen.

Not the case - this is something they have in place so that eventually the anger would boil up to the surface and people would begin to fight amoung themselves, thus taking the heat off the Linden Labs folks - divide and conquer - and sadly from what I'm reading its starting to do just that.

Jack Linden and M Linden you are both grossly incompetant and unable to run more than a three car funeral - the fact that you in charge of a company of this size is amazing to me. I know of no other company that would allow you two to continue in your current positions. You would have been given your pink slip about 15 minutes after the forum starting filling up with customer complaints.

Have some class - admit you totally screwed up - admit you are royally screwing over those of that purchased the bright shiny new OS product you were selling and do the following ASAP

1.) Allow those who wish so to have FULL refunds for the price of the OS purchased. or give us the actual product we purchased with all that came with it.
2.) Apologize
3.) Get your applications filled out for your next positions.

There has been constant talk both by LL and people in this thread about the 'abusers' of these regions. While there certainly are cases of abuse where people have been totally overrunning an OS region, to all of those (including LL) who keep pointing to the KB articles and the intended use bla bla bla, not only is there the fact that in their own KB articles LL stated that while not intended for, that people CAN use OS regions for other things, there are numerous estate owners who were told directly by Linden Lab employees that things other than the 'intended' use they keep talking about were totally ok. This fact, coupled with their own 'push' of cheaper OS regions with more prims makes the majority of people who are just 'living' on an OS region not part of the 'abusers' category.

From: /354/1d/289652/48.html#post2195508



When someone is told something directly from a representative of a company, especially when they also indicate that the KB articles are going to be updated eventually to reflect what they have just stated, this is without a doubt an approval of usage terms. The fact is, there were quite a few estate owners who were told similar things (thanks greatly to Zeebster for having a log of this chat), and based upon what they were told, they made decisions to purchase and rent out these OS regions. LL is totally responsible to these people who invested not only time and money, but also their reputations based upon what they were told by LL. The current 'solution' is not acceptable and really needs to be revised again to reflect fairness to these people.

I mean, you really find it reasonable to think that someone would pay a thousand dollars to set up a full sim and not expect the terms to be valid more than a month? Do you tihnk any court you walked into would consider that reasonable?

jesus god, this just gets more and more insipid.

strange that my webhost has changed their packages lord knows how many times over the past year and in a certain respect i agree with you on a month by month basis they can but for the most part and my webhost is a prime example of this is that it has got ALOT better with the increase and not the other way around.

case in hand i was paying £120 a year for a good package there upgrade option now gives me almost double the disk space and a lot more bandwidth yes both packages are on a shared server but they have also relocated my space on to servers with less users per server for now £140 a year and if i did not want to upgrade i did not have too but for the sake of £20 extra over a year that is nothing not like the $50/month that Linden Lab wants to screw people out off and for a poorer service than the initial plan.
in very rare caees have i seen a service do the oposit so unless you have been screwed over that many times and are used to it by now i seriously can not see your argument in this.
i agree that limiting the use of scripts on these islands will help the situation BUT as it currently stands that is now degrading it for the owners will they put less of these homstead server per core per machine i seriously doubt that, sorry i do not believe that for a minute if they did then yes it could be deemed as a upgrade but lets face it they are getting away with it now why change it just impose the script limits and charge a rediculous price extra and shun the owners with oh well you purchased it deal with it and that is what will happen (of course my opinion only).

Over the last 12 months I spent many hours a day - some days more than 12 hours - and thousands of $US to create a beautiful world with several regulars and 36 openspaces, most of them sold to single people or couples to build their private places on them, in most cases not much more than a house, some beach stuff, trees, a boat and other deco ... on some sims we have (had) little rental homes, small hideways, which do not cause any lag and because of the different time zones with never more than 6 or 8 people on them at the same time ... no heavy lag causing scripts, nothing .. we cared for that a lot in our very own interest ...

We all feel betrayed by Linden Lab ... today I closed the first three openspaces with rental homes and more to follow ...

I will keep as many sims as possible, not to make a big win with them in the future but just to keep them for our residents who invested so much time and money to furnish and to decorate ... this will be possible only for residents who purchased a full sim because if someone shares a sim with someone else the risk that one of them leaves and we cannot replace him is too high ... this was the sadest day in my secondlife career when I had to send the many note cards with the info that we will soon close several sims ... somehow I felt guilty and dirty and I sent the note cards with tears in my eyes ...

I will definitely not invest one more dollar in this game, just hold what is possible without a risk.

that's it, Linden Lab - great job !

We started to build our office sim at openlife some days ago ... still stone age there , but the last few days I noticed a run into the game, already met well known former SL residents, some of them very talented ... scripters, builders, architects, and others ... so it may take a while but in some months or maybe a year it will have a good chance to be a third life ...

We will be there ...

Think the Linden Lab servers will run much better without all the disturbing avatars ... so Linden Lab is on a good way to reduce lag on their sims ... without the residents it should be almost lag free ...

your screwed.

your prices are going up or you are getting evicted but you only have your landlord to blame not LL. your landlord shouldnt have been renting it out and you shouldnt be living on it (understood to mean, a building and furniture). thats always been the policy and both of you are breaking the rules and that means you are part of the problem and you are the reason for this mess.

Thank you for posting that - many of us were told pretty much the same thing when questioning before making our purchases and many thanks to Zeebster for having the forsight to log that conversation.

Am I reading that right? LL is going to charge a set up fee if 375 US to convert 4 OS to Homesteads? Or is it 375 PER? I am a bit confused can you tell? OH Sorry! I see it there at the bottom. Nice its free. Thank you for small favors, I just paid 100 US to convert to 4 OS two days before all this started. Will that be applied to the conversion fee? Or is the conversion fee wavied if you already have them and want to convert to Homestead. I will consider going back to a full region... I guess I have to pay for that too. LL can you think of more ways to extracted money from your non "IBM company type" users?

Seems to me when you agree to a certian price. You are entering a "handshake" agreement, and should have a time frame of some sort that the original agreed upon price would stand. Certianly NOT only 2 months. I agree, yes! ppl must at some point increase their cost if needed. But to make everyone pay the price for the abuse of something others exploited?

I have rentals all keep with in the allowed prims. As for scripts ( give us a limite on active ones allowed). None of the 5 OS has more then 4 avs on them at one time. How is this abuse? For the rest; OK maybe some of your employees need to get some over time to find the abusers and MAKE THEM scale down or upgrade.

I am how ever glad to see that you are cracking down on the "Non for profit/Educational" Owners that I know rent theirs out. Why would these ppl need to rent? Especially at cut rates? I.E Lower rents ( reflecting the lower cost they got) in addition to the twice as many prims for the same cost I had to rent a 4096 m parcel for. Doesnt seem non for profit or education use only there.

In the 5 and 1/2 yrs I have been with SL every time I see that survey "Is your experience better or worse?" I want to cry. I think from above you can see my answer.

Je suis sur sl depuis septembre 2007, ou j’ai pris beaucoup de plaisir.

On ma arnaquer d’ou j’ai perdu la sim 15000 Prims que je loué et même avec les preuves linden na riens fait pour me faire justice .

Je ne suis pas riche et je ne peux pas m’acheter ma sim et l’affaire des openspace vas me ruiner
En effet j’essayer de remonter mes finances avec une openspace, que je vais devoir quitter et tous recommencer encore une fois .
Je ces que linden se moque de ma situation mes je tenez a dire mon avis vue tous l’argent que jais mis dans se jeux
Salutation a tous

I would like to sell you all cars.


Brand new corvette's and it comes with a service agreement and the monthly payment will be 75 bucks a month..


6 months later...


well now that i have gotton all of your up-front money... i decided i did not make enough off the sales of the cars. So what I am going to do is this.. i am going to take your corvette back and give you a chevette.... hey its still a vette. Now you can have the chevette at the same price... isn't that nice? but you cant sell it and ohh yea you cant drive it either. but it will look nice in your driveway for 75 bucks a month.. what? you want you money back.... no way.. how about this


I'll give you a choice.. you can have the chevette for the same price or ... i'll let you have the corvette back but it will cost you 66% more per month and but you can only drive it a (undisclosed) ammount of time per day and no faster then (undisclosed)


What you still want your money back... but its a good deal!

I have held up my end of the deal...my open space sim is 1500 prims under the limit and I have had no more than 4 people there at any given time. Linden, on the other hand, can't even provide a map update in a three week period! What exactly am i getting for my tier increase???

Linden YOU screwed up...YOU should eat it, not me.

You are wrong - ignorant of the facts - or just dim as a brick - any way you cut it..you are wrong..

My residents will NOT be homeless - will NOT face a rent increase as this was our decision to buy the OS and to have tenants on them - I will not pass along the extra costs to them - I will eat it - like I'm eating other things that are needed to make certain the product I am offering is the best it can be.

Reason for the mess? Right now its people like you - spreading rumours about people being forced from the homes, blah blah blah

Amilie: My landlord is one of the people who was told, verbatem, that a couple of homes in the voidsim was perfectly okay.

LL employee's word and opinion in this far outweighs yours.

No it hasn't always been policy, indeed I've never seen any such policy until the change yesterday. There was a guideline about low usage, that was all it was. There was no mention whatsoever of not being able to rent it out.

... and still silence from all at Linden Lab.

This is the number one top priority hot potato topic right now. Nothing else matters. We need 118% commitment from M, Jack, or anyone else for that matter, that they are taking our comments seriously.

I appreciate that decisions can't be made immediately, and they may need to have meetings and get back to us after the weekend - but there is absolutely no excuse to have had no input for all this time from anyone at LL.

SL is a 24 hour product company. LL is in timezones all round the world, as are its users. You cannot provide a service worldwide that's convenient to a few timezones.

I'll even make it easy for you by telling you what you need to do, rather than spending more time thinking about it :Retraction, apology, rethink, in that order, M, feel free to add 'resign' in there somewhere.

What rules are you talking about? The "light use" rule? Trees are good prims, chairs are bad prims? Was that ever spelled out anywhere? What about my tree house? Good or bad prims? My campfire in the forest? Oh, I have a swing hanging from one of the palm trees on my beach. Good or bad?

Amilie, I've been noticing several of your posts now, and I'm getting the feeling you either haven't the foggiest what you're talking about or you're deliberately trying to annoy people. Either way, I think you can make better use of your time.

There's a whopping 3,000 prim reason why you're talking absolute rubbish here.

Not quite ... they are scaling back to an unusable ( 750 prim can't build a forest!?!!! ) at the same price as current model - and making it impossible to keep as you can't get some rent off it to fund it, and then forcing all into the new homestead product at 67% higher cost WHICH IS ALSO INFERIOR to current OS's (not even equal) !!!

So openspaces will be 5 times as expensive as full sims at 10 prims per $ (and that can't be even partly covered by a renter), and homesteads about twice at 30 per $, while full sims and existing OS's are 50 prims per $.

So to solve their original 'usage' concerns on OS's they will apply limits to both new models, but still take the announced 67% extra! Damn ridiculous. I can't imagine what the next announcement will be ... how much worse can it get?!

This company is run by real idiots.

A class lawsuit is the only way to go here. Is anyone busy with that?

I can't argue with that. I'm just objecting to your characterization of what they did as deliberate deception. You are giving them far too much credit for long-range planning.

Linden Labs is all about doing cool stuff. That's what makes Second Life cool. That's also what makes them a tad unpredictable and unreliable (yes, I know that's understating things, you get the point). You can't get the one without the other... and I'm sure that the people who end up being the coolest companies doing things with OpenSim are going to have the same problems as they scale up.

LL doesn't do cool stuff.. like what?

WE ........the people who pay, and fund, and participate, and create, and dream do all the cool stuff...


LL does nothing but rifle through our pockets in presuit of new and inovative ways to take advantage of the folks that use the platform they designed.

As regards Zeebster's quoted chat, I just wanted to clarify that the product we are now calling Openspaces, with its limitations on agents and prims, is *not* for living in. It is very definitely for open areas used for scenery as per the recent knowledgebase article that M linked to in his blog post.

If you have an Openspace now, and you're still not sure whether it classes as Openspace or Homestead after the announcement, please file a support ticket so that we can take a look.

I would like that to be clarified for those of us with a bit more faith in the world than w we should have.

Jack, M, whoever.

Your definitions of service have been characterized as being only able to be relied upon for the span of one billing cycle. If I buy a sim today, pay hundreds of dollars in setup, i can only rely on the definition of that service for one month. Thereafter you feel you have the right to change it to anything you please.

Is this correct? I don't believe any court anywhere would say that it is a reasonable expectation to have your service swapped to something vastly and negatively different after paying a large setup fee after a single month. I don't believe that whatsoever.

But, regardless, that's for the FTC to decide. In the meantime, is that what you really intend for us to swallow? Buy a sim today, end up with something totally different in a month? Something like the sailing sims will probably get, which is either unusable or not financially viable?

If I did believe you could indemnify yourself against bait and switch via your terms, I still wouldn't respect you for doing it or advise anyone to trust you with a setup fee from this time forward.