is SL about to be sold?

The rumors are a flyin. Is LL gettin ready to sell SL? Philip was just asked, at the town meeting, if LL was doing ok financially and if SL was going to be sold. Phil responded that LL was doing ok financially, but didn't answer the second part of the question.

Here's part of the townhall transcript. Phil responded to Margot's question before the question was posted to the log by Jeska. I haven't rearranged the lines:

Philip Linden: Margot, are you kidding?
Philip Linden: LL is doing just fine financially.
Philip Linden: we are hiring new people for almost every role,
Jeska Linden: Margot Abattoir: there is a rumor..that LL is not all that financially..solid?...is that one of the reasons for the less than stellar performance of SL at times...and..is LL about to be sold?
Philip Linden: and are growing revenues at a rapid rate.


So, what's up? Further rumors are that BUNGIE (Micro$oft) and VALVE are looking at SL.

Last October at SLCC, Philip Rosedale stated very clearly that Linden Lab will not be sold, he seemed fairly adament.

What Philip says, and what Philip does.....are two very different things.

yes, and philip has a great track record of coming through on what he says is going to happen.

what she said

Would it make good sense to buy it, given that it doesn't work real well for a fair number of people, and is written in such a way that even the people who wrote it find it very difficult to make modifications such as replacing the rendering engine?

Well, that would depend on the terms and the purchaser's intentions, wouldn't it?

And yet grows its revenue at 20% a month, almost in spite of the problems?

Indeed, why would any company want an asset that's practically an exponential cash cow?

Say it aint so, Phil! And I ask that in a pleading tone, not a challenging tone.

I dont say I take Philip at face value (his track record shows how much less than perfectly-honest he can be)...but I have a hard time thinking Bungie or Valve would have an interest in buying SL.

That's like Rolls-Royce deciding to buy up Matchbox. Sure, they both make cars...but only one of them is gonna have real horsepower under the hood.


- Newfie

If they have so much money why do they have customers working for them for free? Walmartish greed?

Aww, Newfie. That's a little unfair to call him dishonest. He could be the nicest guy in the world, but just because his plans don't come to fruition doesn't mean he isn't honest. I'm sure when he says Havoc 2 is being developed then he means it. Then the next day the world collapses and priorities change.

What ass did you pull that number from?

Because it's efficient.

Hey, we can either hire, train, pay, and hold accountable 10 people to babysit the forums, or we can have eager beaver residents doing it themselves!

If you're a corporation with investors, which would you choose?

The method least likely to get me sued. Customers working for nothing is not the method of choice for that, ask AOL.

OMG rESMODS!

What is the source of your figures?

The front page of SecondLife.com.

Philip doesn't have to sell the entire company. Linden Research could as easily sell the Second Life project, software, grid and all in order to fund another cutting edge development.

Actually, I'm looking at SL...

Because they can...

Industry standard, with the "recent" incarnations being found in Ultima Online, Everquest's guide program, and several other "player volunteer" deals.

Subtract all the angel money and then swim in the sea of red...

Nowhere else that might be viewed as more independent or unbiased?

If those figures were true, and truly indicative of profit potential, it might be seen not as a reason to buy the company, but as a sign that one should enter the market with a new product engineered better from the start.

O rly.

Because it's simply trivial these days to come up with a 3d streaming engine with easy-to-use content creation abilities. I could probably bang one out in a few days with a typewriter and some WD-40.

Really, nobody's rolled into this market yet because nobody realizes it's potential; they wouldn't get it right if they were to come in anyways. No sane company is going to give its customers 100% creative control over their content. It takes a bunch of lunatics to even grant that power to the userbase, much less give us the legal IP rights of our content.

Any competitor to SL wouldn't have even started preliminary funding research until maybe 5-6 months ago when it was clear that SL was becoming "big". Assuming they started coding today you wouldn't have a feature-complete competitor to SL in beta testing until 2008 at the earliest.

Trust me, when competition comes into the market it won't be any better than SL, and will lack some fairly core things that current SL users take for granted.