Selling Free Items

Some will, some won't! And these fourms are all about complaining. That seems to be how things get acomplished here

People generally only complain if theres something to be acomplished. In this case, I doubt you are going to turn round to communities viewpoint on selling freebies, and by the sounds of things we're not gonna change yours.

Out of intrest, do you sell freebies? If so, why can't you be bothered to create your own things?

No... just as the rest of this, there is a grey area. I still charge $1 at the Gnubie shop, so that I can track purchases. Actually, way back when you couldn't sell an item for $0 - so we had to set them to $1, IIRC. I should test this now and see if I can still get a transaction record from a $0 sale, but I doubt it.

Personally, I don't see an issue with reselling at what you paid for it - be it $0 or $1, but again - this is strictly my opinion and I am not speaking for others.

I've had people take a freebie, modify it and improve on it and resell it for good money. I was fine with that and surprised that they asked for permission, frankly - but they had done some great work on it and really my creation was just a base of what was being offered.

There isn't much trekking involved with P2P teleporting, is there?

No, Ricky. I certainly don't like when someone sells a newbie, who is already low on money, a Linden tuxedo for L$100 when that newb could get it for free at a telehub. This is what's called "being a dickhead."

Besides that though, these freebie resellers aren't usually selling single copies. They're selling multiple copies, which makes your argument irrelevant.

I'm not sure what my goal is here or if I even have one other then the fact that I just plain disagree with some of you. It's frustrating as I'm sure it is for you. And yes, I do sell freebies on a very low scale. I have since the first month I was here. I meet many new people this way and not one has ever said they though I was doing anything wrong. I get alot of newbies and it's fun teaching them things. Half the time they tell me the spent all there money on worthless stuff so I load em up with what I can for FREE. No problem. But if some want to pay, no problem there either. Being able to sell things I got for free (and many I paid for) has given me the oppertunity to see that this is the direction I want to go in, in sl. I like having a store, it's fun. Without that oppertunity I'm not sure if I'd even still be here? I'm not into clubbin or what I see so much of, the sex scene. But now I am starting to make my own things and working with other creators on deals to resell there items. Someday I may not be selling a single free item but I want that to be of choice, not because somebody disagrees with me and takes it upon themselves to grief me. Until I spotted this post I really didn't know anybody thought I was in the wrong. It doesn't change my mind but at least I'm aware of it now. So I guess some good came from this but I still stand 100% behing my feelings about the issue. I think most of the points I'm trying to make here are being passed by to easily and we all, including me, are looking for an argument more then trying to acomplish anything. I think I'm gonna start a thread where creators can list there names saying they do or do not want there things being resold for profit. Any comments on that?

To help with your fledgling biz, I'm going to add your name to my weekly classifieds.
And give you some free promotional on Fucktard Radio Live this weekend.

See - even though I no longer make free stuff, I'm always glad to help the community.

Remember though - my advertising is free for you - so it may not have much value, or give the results you desire.

As an added bonus - it may even help you decide what you want to do in SL a little bit.

The difference Ricky is in the intention. When I make a free to copy item, I make it to give it to my fellow residents as a gift. I do not do it to enable someone else to make easy money off their backs.

When I make a free to copy, I make it free to other people, and intend it should ALWAYS be free. If you PURCHASE something, it will normally be either transfer or copy, and you will be able to sell one original of the item, or not transfer it at all. If you get a free to copy item, you do not pay for it at all, and often people have made them fully modable. I do this because I like people to be able to gie things away, and often they can't recalll where they have got them from. Sometimes I make free to copies associated with a particular event which are only available at that event...why should I have to change that just because some greedy people prefer to be parasites than contributors?

I would say that the fact that the Lindens swoop in pretty damn fast if anyone is selling THEIR free to copies, means that they frown upon this in principle, even if it isn't in the TOs.
Cali

I'd like you to start a thread where people can sign up for having their freebies sold...I will be surprised if you get one taker.

I looked at your profile in world. It is an almost perfect blank, with no information about where you resell the freebies. Unless you are too cowardly to come clean, Mr Squeegee, where is your reselling business to be found?

Take note that I do not wish my free to copies to be sold in world, now or ever.
Cali

Often people don't recall where they picked up a freebie, which makes P2P teleporting largely irrelevant
Cali

Sounds to me like another resident who has a 'forum alt' basically to post anonymously here..

hang on let me put on my sarcasm tag for a moment..

[sarcasm]
Because they have such conviction in the fact that what they are doing is totally acceptable and right.
[/sarcasm]

I just started giving them free advertising, in the form of classifieds you can find by typing in the word 'ripoff'

I'm just following the same 'because I can, I should' mentality thats been shown to me. I figure every deed deserves a reward.

So long as we can post classifieds to wherever we want - I'd suggest everyone with 50 bucks to spare do the same if they find one or two..

You're helping the economy and fucking a tard at the same time - I think its a win/win situation.

And be sure to post me a LM and a name - I'll check it out and add it to a list I plan on promoting on my Sunday radio show.

Can't name names here - but hot diggity damn I can (and do) over the airwaves every Sunday

They charge you for water.
And hospitals charge for air. heh
Heck they charge us for each needle they miss your vein with too.

Contact the objects's creator. Look in the profile for the object's creator, if they want people to know where to get the free items they make, they have the options of using space in the profile for that purpose.

Object names and object descriptions and the names of the folders and boxes the objects are stored could be used to record the object's creator and where to get them.

It is sort of weird, since the Second Life world is all just a bunch of databases, it should be possible to do a search and find any object in the system , then get one.


My point, at any rate, about the trekking is that the argument that getting around takes lot of time doesn't have as much weight with P2P,. and the point is valid despite the existence of people who forget things.

Regardless of its a physical "trek" or just a lot of time spent IMing people and waitnig for responses that may never come, we can I think safely lump both of those in "takes a while".

Although a newbie to SL, I've not exactly just fallen off the turnip truck in RL, or in other online communities.

In my experience, they for the most part don't care if they don't get acclaim or respect, or that they're not contributing anything useful. They care only about the !!!BIG!!!$$$MONEY$$$ (or the equivalent appropriate to the particular environment), and will only use that to measure their success. If ridiculed or otherwise get a negative reaction to their activities (up to and including official sanction, hypothetically), they'll most likely dismiss it as jealousy or that they're being persecuted because they're successful (by their own measure, mentioned above).

Unfortunately, the lack of physical presence means you can't smack them upside the head, no matter how richly you believe they deserve it.

[Note that all of the above is intended to be in general terms not referring to any particular individual, and isn't advocating any specific action. ]

You know, before I logged out last night I actually thought I saw some good coming out of this. Now I wake up and find a bunch of people here calling me names and wanting to know where I am for the intention of griefing me is all I can think of?

I don't blame the bush guy anymore. After dealing with some of you people I can see why someone would want to grief the sl community as a whole.

I lost all enthusiasm to post here anymore. My last words to the ones here who want to cause me misery are this; I can bite back. Be carefull what you say to people you don't know!

For the rest of you who tried to act like an adult here even when I didn't, thank you

Well I give away my stuff freely to friends so if your hard up for T-Shirts np.

I didn't mean to imply that your code wasn't your "art" to you, although afer all the years I have spent in the Art world, talking about Art, making Art etc., I have a rather long complicated argument as to why code is not Art. But that's beside the point.

What I meant was in terms of the simulated world and economy of Second Life, which is the basis of a lot of these kinds of arguments, the T-Shirt is entirely different from the code. The making and selling of simulated T-Shirts to simulated people as a simulated business, and the differences between that and the RL situation is what is at issue.

In RL if I sell a RL T-Shirt I am not selling a machine to make perfect clean T-Shirts that never get dirty and can be resold at inflated prices ad infinitum.

I am not even sure that there is a paralell situation in RL for a writer of SL code.

There is code in RL of course, but in terms of having the same relationship that the RL T-Shirt has to the SL T-Shirt, it wouldn't be the same thing.

There is no "code" in RL that gives one knowledge of how to make cars work, birds fly and time process, and that without which, one is doomed to a life of jerky movements and dull default behaviours. The only RL analogue of an SL scripter that I can think of is a magician or wizard, which I dont believe in.

Interesting points, Noh. The thing is, though, I don't even think these people will make the big money. They make a few pennies, but, you know, SL is such a word-of-mouth market that in order to really hit it big, you need your customers on your side, chatting you up to their friends. You need the acclaim and respect, otherwise you never move to the next level in your business.

Beyond that, though, I just don't know how fun it is long term. I think as of this month, I've been in business in SL for almost a year now and I wouldn't have kept it up without the satisfaction of knowing my customers really enjoyed my product. I can't imagine how unsatisfying it would be to deal, weekly, with IMs from people pissed off that they paid 1000% markup for a L$1 item.

This is all an unfortunate side-effect of SL's constant PR message of OMG THEY MAKE MONEY HERE.

Strange discussion.

Seems to me Linden Labs has decent tools (although they could be better as with land owner options) to keep your stuff from being sold, modified and transfered. If you want it to be free I don't see why it can't be that way? Just check the right box's eh?

I heard an argument that didn't make sense. Something like they wanted their object freely given away so they didn't want to make it non-transferable..... So if the person really wanted the item why can't they go to a source of the item? Why do they have to get it from someone that already has it? If someone already had it they surely know were to send the person to get it? Maybe add a notecard and/or landmark to the items package were they can get it and the person can simply give them that instead of the actual item. That will also get those people to your item area if you have other stuff that you would like to give away, sell or whatever... I think this is more an argument of convenience than anything. Maybe the creator has no land to place the item. If that is the case there are plenty of land owners that would be glad to place it on their land for you. I know I would. Freebies attract people.

As for reselling freebies or giving away items meant not be sold that really depends on the seller I guess. The tools to make that not happen are available but may not be convenient for you, but it is what it is.

We have to work with what we are given not what we would like to have. Voice your suggestions to Linden Labs.

Anyway that is my thoughts.

I also find it odd that people seem to spend more time bitching in the forums than they spend in SL...

Again in my experience, many of the folks with that mindset don't seem to care about longer-term effects, and will be satisified with what they do get before negative word of mouth gets around. Besides, if nothing else, there's always new members to scam.

(Of which I'm not likely to be one, as I'm seriously considering canceling my account because I can't use SL, due to my inability to reliably control av movement. Further experimentation on possible solutions has proven less than fruitful.)



As I said, long-term issues aren't usually a concern with these folks. As for the negative responses from the bilked, it's entirely possible that the people causing the problem discussed in this thread are asocial jerks who get off on the attention, negative though it may be.



I'm not entirely sure why there's such hostility to LL acting like the business it is (which includes making a profit, as LL isn't a charity), but I'm not sure how that's relevant to this particular discussion, so I'll set it aside.

Having said that, though, it seems to me that LL is just acknowledging an existing population, of which only a relatively few folks are causing the issues brought up by this thread, while a majority of the people of that group quietly go about their business without being noticed because of the human tendancy to only comment when something is perceived as being "wrong" (how often do you hear about complementing the cook for a particularly well-done meal, as opposed to "this is crap, fix it!" or variations on that theme?). LL's PR certainly doesn't create that particular group.

ive seen this option pop up before in threads like this, and a simmilar option was in this thread a few pages ago

but WHY oh WHY is transfer and resell lumped in the same check box

i know i would have saved a half hour and 7 pages of reading if there was a checkbox for each option.

X mod
X copy
X Trans
O Resell

omg its so difficult

So lets all stop beating this dead horse and go post 7 pages on why we want this in the feature suggestions forum

Noe, please don't go, you're very thoughtful. Hope you get your stuff sorted out.



No objections at all to Linden Lab fulfilling its business obligations. My only concern is that the way they market the product via PR sometimes leads new customers to have unreasonable expectations about making money here. Screws up priorities. The true power of SL is its ability to set one's creativity free. Sure, money can come from that, but it doesn't have to for people to have a great time exploring the otherwise-impossible world we have here. Because of these screwed up priorities, a lot of people take shortcuts and start selling shit they didn't even make. I don't know how that even seems acceptable, but there it is.

This is not to say I would stop talking about the money making -- it's pretty compelling stuff. But there are abundant downsides to letting that be your predominant message.

Indeed they do, and if you distribute freebies with conditions and someone knowingly violates them, they're scum. And filing the perms off freebies, that's pretty low as well... I don't and can't see countenancing that.

That has not been a common restriction on open source software for at leats 20 years, and even back in the '80s it was mostly non-source "freeware" that had that kind of restriction on it.

You can sell GPL software for profit, and use GPL software for profit, so long as you distribute it in source form and don't further limit redistribution. You can sell BSD software for profit so long as you leave the copyright intact and acknowledge the creator. You can sell MPL software for profit so long as you donate your changes back to the Mozilla project. You can sell APLS software for profit so long as you agree not to sue Apple over patents you hold.

Lots of conditions, but almost never are they related to whether you're allowed to sell open source software.

Er, I'm defending it and I'm a freebie creator. I'm defending the actions of the many people who resell products (free or not) honestly and openly. NOT the few that have been brought up who are engaged in fraud.

Darwin Open Source from Apple Computer. Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX. Open Office. The Mozilla Project. Companies frequently release substantial amounts of material where the reproduction of that material doesn't cost them any further money.We're not talking a few hours work, we're talking hundreds of man-years. Some of this software started out as open source or free, and they're giving back to the community. Some of it is software that they're no longer in the business of selling, because happy customers that can keep on using the products you're abandoning are more likely to consider you in the future.

You don't see this with physical objects, very often, but nothing in SL is a physical object, all of it is free to reproduce.

Twenty years ago the "free source" community went through this same transition, with some people holding on to "no commercial use" licenses, but the majority gave up on that restriction and let the code fall where it may. If the code is good, and it's widely taken up, the creators rarely suffer. Companies love open source software developers... especially when they're using their software! They get dedicated workers, the best possible support for the product, and they love showing them off to customers.