Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

when we will see flatrate fees around 5 to 15 dollar for one full high-end sim on maybe millions of maybe then global linked grids or one mega-meta-globewide-grid. I am not sure if these upcoming generations of players and content creators are able to remember the name of a specific company, later in future. Maybe they're then not even a footnote in the unwritten historybook of the world wide web, like so much slow and snotnosed dinos wich the web left behind itself. Some years ago I started my entry to the world wide web on a 56k modem, for a pay per minute based fee of around 1 german Mark...later then 7 austrian Shilling, wich means translated in dollar valuta, that I payed around 50 dollar for an hour internet...in Europe, 8/9/10 years ago. A few years later I am sitting actualy on a 20480 kbit/s cable connection with literal no limits, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for only 43 Euro per month, including hundreds of digital tv programs and hundreds of digital radio stations, as an all in one service package. And my ultrafast, ultrastable and an ultraservice offering website provider offers me a state of the art webspace with all up to date software goodies, even with no limits and every year 200mb webspace additional for free for 2 Euro 50 cent/month.

There it goes, somehow that way. I think, the Lab will wonder what all is waiting on horizon for them... - since money, informations, tech and software developements and human intelligence is running in lightspeed around the globosphere and all high-tech goes faster, smarter, smaller and cheaper, thinking on actual and upcoming technology jumps, the Lab will have to face the good old word by Michail Gorbatschow who said it somehow like this: who comes too late and with too bad offers, will be punished by life and, ahm, by the customers.... Just that.

I'm usually one of the quiet people that watch controversies go thru their lifecycles from the sidelines. However, at this time I feel I must add my voice to the throng of protest. At first I thought that for sure, given the massive declaration of customer dissatisfaction, LL would assess the situation and quickly rectify it and repair the associated substantial damage to its credibility. I was wrong.

I am at loss to understand LL's latest moves re: Openspaces. Perhaps it's a case of counterintuitive revenue maximization in that by raising prices so significantly they figure they will lose a number of customers, but the remaining set will more than compensate for this loss at the new exorbitant rate? I don't know. What I do know is that there are some ethical thorny issues that will prove to be much more costly to LL in the long term than I think their models predict.

As has been mentioned ad nauseum, doubling the prim allocations to current Openspaces a short time ago made them a lot more attractive at that price point. It is likely that quite a few people purchased openspaces as a result. Therefore, it seems that at that time, LL's product strategy for Openspaces was a volume-driven one. To suddenly and dramatically raise prices while diminishing functionality right after growing the Openspace user base is terrible judgement at best, highly unethical at worst. This is behaviour one would expect of a company in a monopolistic environment, not one that is less than a year away from being hit by very serious competition!

Maybe LL wants to drive up revenue in a hurry to make their books more attractive to a potential IPO or buyer, who knows...but the end result of this tactical approach will be highly damaging for LL for a long time to come. I think it's fair to say thousands of LL's customers are pissed, especially when it's clear that the modified product offer recently announced is not that different from what caused this customer fiasco and PR nightmare in the first place. The timing could not be worse with the global economic crisis at hand since SL for most people is really a function of available discretionary income...I have to wonder what the heck is LL thinking! Really, I hope LL has someone on staff that is well versed in macroeconomics.

LL: You have lost so much goodwill already and as a result of this fiasco will be losing a lot more revenue that you are forecasting because as much as you probably deem this to be a compartmentalized and isolated case pertaining to Openspaces, a significant chunk of your customer base is not perceiving it as such. To us, it is evidence of decay of your overall value proposition.

As such, come January, I will be giving up my 1/2 Openspace sim that is my home in SL, which took me many many hours to build, and sadly, I will not be actively contributing to SL's economy any more. Like many upset customers, I will await the emergence of stable alternatives to SL and drag my friends there with the belief that these SL substitutes will be hungrier for business (as LL once was) and a lot less arrogant. I truly love SL; and while in theory I could afford your raised prices (a number of people are not as lucky), I will eventually leave SL purely on the basis of principle: This is the wrong thing for LL to do now, on both business and ethical levels.

This is exactly my point of view too, and I suspect quite a few people. While it may or may not be thousands, it will be many that turn their backs on SL due to their greediness and unfairness. One can understand an accept they may need to increase the price a little (eg $95 tier - which to be fair will still be tight for some), but this is pathetic - and extremely mean to many who cannot afford that. Instead of introducing new products so more people have access to them, they are doing the opposite.

You know the more and more I look over these different responses, as well the more the reality of this whole situation sinks in its starting to become yet even more apparent - almost familiar even.

Under Phillip Rosedale Linden Labs seemed to have some sort of direction. Albeit vague, but it had a good set of goals. They were set out to make a 3D platform comparable to the 2D web as we know it today. With Cory Ondrejka as the CTO it was ensured that this new and exciting platform would have been open and shared with the community.

These two were the founders of the Second Life platform and community. Now that they're gone the whole thing is seemingly in disarray. With each passing day, Linden is beginning to look more and more like the stereotypical .COM of the 1990s. Honestly, if this keeps up I wouldn't be surprised if Linden were to join the likes of pets.com and simply fold under the weight its shaky business structure and horrible customer handling skills.

Without direction, in its current state Second Life is headed for the same fate as any other fad. Here today, gone tomorrow the way of neon colored spandex shorts and snappy metal wrist bands. Right now its nothing more than a generalized version of World of Warcraft, waiting to be replaced by the next latest and greatest craze.

I know they are free now, but im asking AFTER they start losing costumers if they are going to drop the prices of OS so ppl can buy them again and pay AGAIN to convert full sims in OS.

As stated earlier, OS tier was underpriced at US$75 per month and resulted in a crash in Mainland.

Linden has taken a short time pain, long term gain approach by raising the tier to US$125 per month, the magic number that no matter how a reseller package the rental, it will always be at a premium compared to Mainland.

Mainland price has started to creep upwards. Min L$/sqm is 2.8 now.

It should clear $3.0 L/sqm, the starting bid for Mainland auction.

With that, we should see the Full parcel Mainland Auction back in action soon.

I've been watching the controversy go by on this issue. Now we're on page 154 of blather, I suppose it's time for me to add my two bobs worth.

Let me see if I have the facts straight:

1. LL announced OpenSpaces for "light use".
2. Everyone went bananas buying "cheap" islands and renting them out.
3. Then the lag kicked in and they started complaining.
4. LL responded by jacking up the price 60%, with 2 months notice.
5. All hell broke loose regarding the price hike.
6. LL modified the announcement and created a new product for the new price, but with no apparent benefits.

All I can say is: "Welcome to Second Life".

I think LL should just roll back the clock on this. Withdraw all announcements of price hikes, products and revised technical limits.

Why? Because LL can't deliver on the technical promises. Lag is a fact of life in SL. If you own a whole sim you get some control over what loads up your CPU/core. If you own a quarter of a sim (or a sim that shares its CPU with 3 others), you get no control over what gets run in the remainder of the sim. If LL had any capability to limit CPU utilisation, they would have done it years ago.

So, let the people who like their cheap open spaces have them. Get rid of stupid price hikes and knee-jerk technical solutions. The market will work out the fair price for rental of these sims.

I'm probably on page 155 now.

I agree, where is the line drawn, i have mostly lakes, water, and forest area in mine. but i do have a few house boats for rent there in one corner of the sim, and a shop in the other corner. some renters like the fact that they are renting in an area that isn't over crowded with other rentals and shops and which have a clear sea view. so having mostly forests and lakes is attractive to the few renters we do have, where they can relax in the beautifull surroundings created in this space. If there is going to be a limit the the amount of traffic in an area aswell, why bother even making a pretty place to visit if noone can visit it. I love my lake and always decided that it would stay a peacfull area with trees and a cave so is there restrictions on people comming to explore this area? I see this as being openspace as almost all of it is being used as such. the rentals themselves are only using around 450 prims on this space. so what catagory does this fall into? Openspace or Homestead?

It's a homestead if the renters are on it.

I cant believe some of the posts here. Some people are buying the BS the Lindens are tossing out there. The bottom line is everyone is still getting screwed here. Wake up people this is still a bait and switch deal that is being shoved at us.

It must be possible, just probably (up until now) not been worth their bother.

There's no reason why you can't have the three types of sim - low, medium, high use, and let people buy what suits their needs. If someone wants to buy a low use sim and put a nightclub on it, it'll be so laggy they can't use it - but that's their fault for buying the wrong type of region; if someone buys a low use region and puts a home on it, then it's up to them to deal with any lag they might get through the use of too many scripted items or large textures.

Hopefully M will wake up in a few hours when morning hits west coast, and post something. Their apparent lack of concern over this issue is harming them far more than it needs to.

ahhhh you see, if the case of it being charged as homestead, then it will be used as such, more rentals will be put on the land, and the land will lose what beauty it did have, probably causing more lag. There is no noticable lag at the moment. this would cause me to get rid of the land. At the moment its, lakes, trees, ponds, waterfall with 4 small houseboats in the corner. I can see this causing people to build more on these lands and the pretty open spaces that were considered by there owners to be open space but technicly aren't will be transformed into exactly what they were hoping wouldnt happen

People need an answer from LL not someone who is guessing the answer.

first of all how can you tell if its rented or not..

what if i have a house or several that's not rented out to users but used as privacy areas for a club..... there are not renting the island.......

what about if there is a wooded area where everything for sale..... that a shop or an open space...

what if its a place that demo's boats that are for sale?


what if they don't have renters but have a boating club that's very popular... with a tip jar to help pay expenses...


People can speculate all they want... till LL makes a clear cut statement between the difference.... all it is all a guess based on personal opinion and subject to personal interpretation.

Seems pretty damn clear to me, people are nitpicking. However if you're not sure file a support ticket.

Jack Linden "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."

From the knowledgebase article:

"If you are using your Openspace as a rental or other unapproved use, such as habitation, you are really using what we call a Homestead. "

"What are the policies around land rental on Openspaces?

Openspaces are not approved for residential or commercial rental, or for habitation. They are only for open areas of scenery and parkland."

Let's just hope that they are beginning to realise that the free-for-all anarchy that the mainland degenerated into is the bigger problem.

After all, if they're telling people you can't have an 'openspace' and make a small home on it, surely they ought to be telling people you can't have a shop with 35 camping zombies to artificially inflate traffic on a 2048 sq m plot.

That is a far bigger abuse of resources than someone with a small home on an openspace that gets hardly any visitors, isn't it?

Agrees...........waits to hear from LL and hopes not to have to ruin a beautifull sim

I know it's pointless, but i'll reply once more.... I guess I have nothing better to do.

I claimed 750 is enough. And since you keep bragging about other peoples work, ok, let people use those "people are in awe" 3 in 1 trees and my island you think is empty would be 3 times as full. And you can't be serious about me "just dropping 750 items" on my sim, at least you gave me credit for my sim looking better than most, I understand you can't admit more. And about realism, the SL engine isn't good enough for realism, I haven't seen a single build that was realistic, as good as objects and textures might look. We are living in cartoon world and I am fine with that. Now about "expressing your imagination", use a normal sim for that. If I express my imagination, I want people to come over and have a good look, walk around, bring friends over, enjoy the builds. This is not what OSS are ment for. That's my whole point. At something more than just a glance they need to be attractive, nothing more. Owners keeping a few prims free, um, if of these 750 prim sims four will go on a chip, that is built in already, 3000 prims on a core opposed to the 15000 they can hold.
And what I ment by "nailing it" I didn't mean I can't learn from anything, thank god I can, I just ment 750 would have been enough for me. Oh and btw, yes that 3 in 1 tree looks good, very efficient, but it can be stretched to 6 a prim. So he can learn aswell.

I never decided 750 was enough for what you want to do with a sim, I say 750 is enough for what LL wants with an OSS. If you or anyone needs more prims (and better access and more scripts), get a Homestead, or make a case like many others do for an "in between" option.

Last of all I think the 67% increase in price seems to be high, but LL needs or wants the money, they will get it one way or another. My guess is they want less OSS, this will work.
I have said a number of times I can't understand their way of presenting it, no warning signals, on such short notice and no transition, but the 6 months will give anyone plenty of time to move their business elsewhere. Also 6 months will spread out the purchase price nicely.
And people not being able to afford the sims anymore, yes that is a real shame, I agree on that too. But I can't buy everything I like in RL either, it's just life.

The Jira ticket at http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1776 has been reopened and reached the astonishing number of 4000 votes. Perhaps the single biggest expression of interest of SecondLife citizens and something LL can not ignore. Eventhough they tried to close the ticket and told people to go to these moderated easy manipulatable forums here where no active Linden is to be seen.

Please go and vote against this renewed scandalous price hike, packaged in this nicely written blog posting by M Linden. Fact is: Openspace prices go up by 500% now considering the announced major cut in functionality and existing Openspace sims are relabeled as Homesteads in a blink of an eye to squeeze the original targeted 66% increase out of us all.

Altogether this is worse than the previous plan and SIMs started to close down now!!! One prominent victim: Doll Island . Go VOTE!

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1776

If the renters wearing a squirrel avatar, it is only wood. They can also dress as sunflowers or dolphins (in case of ocean-view). Or they live there as: ants. In the last time I saw some Lindens running around as moles, somewhere on Nautilus and Bay City. I think that counts not as human. There are also some gadgets in game, wich are able to set an avatar in stealth mode (in case a Linden inspector is taking a peek)

Regarding the openspaces mess you have got yourself into.
James and I were discussing this issue and disagreeing since James looks at things purely from a business owners perspective whereas I tend to look at how your decisions have affected the people. There was no argument purely a theoretical discussion and to be honest he had certain points but none which excuse the way you have treated your customers.
So you underestimated the demand for openspaces, you underestimated the usage and you continued to sell the product even after problems started to materialise and after the realisation that something had to be done.
The problem then was how to deal with it and no matter what solution you manage to come up with the Residents would be the ones to pay for it.
The point is not that you had to fix the problem but the way you, as a company, think you can treat your loyal customers. If, after the realisation that there was a huge problem that would have to fixed, you had come to us 1, you would have had all the feedback you got after your terrible announcement and 2, you would have kept the faith and trust that you have now lost to a huge degree, instead of which you have ended up making most people think of 'bait and switch'
If you had admitted you had messed up and apologised many would not have dumped their islands and Secondlife, the way you have condescended and patronised your customers is the reason Secondlife is dying and people are looking for alternatives.
Most can swallow price rises, and to a degree expect it from any service, but because of the appalling way this has been handled you have lost something very precious - TRUST.
Losing trust may not mean a lot to a company in the short term but in the long time you have damaged your reputation which was already in decline, as far as Residents were concerned, due to lack of communication and the impression that Residents do not matter to Linden Lab.
You have said you want discussion and are working on better communication yet even on this you do not take it seriously, I have been following the FORUM discussion - 4 replies in 88 pages is not a discussion and none from you yourself. Yet you expect people to take the forum seriously as a way to communicate - is this yet another smokescreen? Just a way to allow us to let off steam? It certainly isn't for discussion because that implies two way communication.
Please stop insulting your customers we are not 'passionate' but smart enough to see through your pretty words we do not need to be talked to like children we need honesty and transparency.
Making people feel like they are second rate is not a smart move - you should take your 'cap in hand' and apologise although its probably too late for many.
You have messed up and if I were in your position I would fire my PR advisers and start working very hard on trying to earn the trust back you have lost, if that is even possible now.
Many may have been smoke screened by the apparent changes and on the whole the end package you have decided on is not much different from the original except maybe slightly fairer to educators and sailing communities (if the script allowance doesn't kill those off too) but in time most will see through the smokescreen and feel even more duped.
I urge you to act now before any more damage is done to Linden Labs reputation.
You owe your residents an apology and in your last letter that is what most people were looking for once they realised not a lot had changed.
Dana Vanmoer

posted in sl-newspaper.com

Should not HAVE to file a support ticket..... how do you think the situation came about in the first place...


Its nitpicking to have a clear cut answer? Please..

So your saying i could have 10 houses as long as i don't rent any its fine?

What if i rent boats not houses?

i mean come on be real...

Or are you trying to say that If you can potentially make any money off the land at all... its a homested....

And if thats the case then clearly the decision was based on greed not technical limitations.





The whole rate hike things is really based on the fact that they open spaces where more popular then they had expected... so LL figures they must not be charging enough for them.

They only slightly hinted once that... they may makethem 3 to a core rather then 4.. but that was a "its something we may concider" not a statement of fact.



If LL came out with a statement like this,




"Do to technical limitations, we underestimated the effects of having 4 OS's per core and will need to change the configuration to meet the demands.

Openspaces will be limited to 3 per core rather then 4. As such a 25 dollar per month increase per Openspace will be warrented to compensate for the 75 dollar per month loss per CPU and an increased setup charge of 85 dollars per open space increasing the pricing to $335 setup and $100 a month tier with a 3,750 prim limit. These are still open spaces for very light to light use only and limitations will be put into place to help prevent over use of resources.

In addition to this we will offer a second light use product called homested. These sims will be for light to medium use and will be limited to two per core. the setup fees will be $500 setup and $150 for 7,500 and will have some script and avatar limitations imposed to prevent resource overuse."


That would be a statement and plan people could relate with and understand. a clear cut cause and reason for the price increases, that actually makes sense and is understandable. at least to me. As of now the only thing LL has said is that we are using too much resources so they are going to charge more for it... nothing about actually fixing the issue and nothing that actually warrents a 50 dollar increase per month on Openspace sim costs.

If you're renting out a shop it's a commercial rental, I don't see how it could be any more clear cut than that regarding a shop. If you're renting out any building or parcel space it's a rental.



You don't generally get ten houses in a park or on an open waterway Parks and open waterways aren't residential areas.

Renting out boats is a good question though, I'll give you that one, pay per use anyway rather than paying by the week. The main rental issue I see is if someone wants to rent two homesteads and wants an openspace in between as an open waterway to sail ships across. Could someone rent an openspace to be used as an openspace.



I don't disagree with you, we're being asked to pay more for less. Linden Lab's attitude to the issue has been nothing short of disgraceful. Never mind that it's perfectly feasible that a quiet residential openspace could use less resources than a more popular sailing sim.

Is there some reason that sims *HAVE* to be 65k m?

I"m wondering if it would not be possible to make a "supersim"... 4 times the land area, same prim count. That way you have the equivalent of 4 openspace sims... but they MUST stay on one server together.. as one unit...owned by one person... but with more land mass for privacy and roominess.

Thats just it, renting out the land as home use.... is much much less resource intensive then say, setting up a mall or a club or a club with a mall and MANY openspaces where used for just that. Beds and scripts are nothing compaired to a dance ball with 40+ scripts in them. Contest bords have around 100 scripts each. same with announcment boards and those fancy radio boards that tell you whats playing.

Vender scripts are the worse

Just as an example, i removed ONE vender shop from my full sim just the other day, that reduced the number of scripts by 2,000 and lowered the over sim time total by 2.5 ms. Many of those server based vender shops will overload a sim and lag it to hell in a heart beat,

Temp rezers that some venders use also kill sim preformance, sometimes the prims don't properly go away and start eating resources up till the sims restarted.

Some trees are scripted too and lots of scripted trees can cause lag as well. And Since I am on trees, all trees and plants are transparencies. Every 512 transparent texture is around a 1 meg file size, 1024 clear images come to around 4 megs per image. a 512 JPG is around 50 k .


there are many many reasons for preformance issues and bandwidth usage. you know like the fact cache is seemly broken and you have to reload textures of things you just looked at just had your back to.


anyway enough of this i have to get ready for work LOL..

There are some technical limitations. A lot of scripts would break past 256 meters in x or y.