is SL about to be sold?

Eww, not that. Google's a nice search engine, but it's getting creepy.

Having Google being able to try my web searches, IM, email, AND actions in SL would be nearly equivalent to them attaching a camera and microphone to me permanently. That's why I don't use gmail (got my own server), google talk (what for, it's just jabber), and wouldn't like a google run SL at all.

Liabilities. Letting your users create their own content opens up the potential for lawsuits, civil cases, copyright infringement, hate crimes, terrorism charges, etc. etc.

At least, that's what executives would think. So they'd shave down the featurelist until it became MetaVerse, Sponsored by Coca Cola, rated E for Everyone by the ESRB.

You need a small company to become a competitor to SL, because big corporations can't do it right. Hell, they can't even do traditional MMORPGs right. Look at: Sony, Electronic Arts.

So, you'll need a small company. Then, you'll need employees (or a founder or two) with extensive histories of something similar to streaming technology. Then you have to tiptoe and ensure you're not stepping on any other streaming patents (owned by LLab, Philip, Real, whatever). Then you have to develop the framework, take careful notes of what the competition (SL, There, AW) have, and match those features. Finally, you have to research and develop your own featureset that the other guys don't have, implement it flawlessly, and then there's the whole marketing thing...

It's definitely a multi-million dollar undertaking for a small market; that's high risk.

Also consider that SL, at this point, has tremendous momentum. No other virtual worlds are getting as much press as SL, except maybe traditional MMORPGs such as WoW or EQ2.

Several thousand new people try SL every week. I'm not sure what the numbers are for AW, There, TSO, or IMVU, but I bet they're much much smaller.

Linden Lab is in an odd position, I think. They're a research development company with the unexpected benefit of having a constant revenue stream from people willing to test their ideas to death.

They kind of remind me of the guys that make the Dyson vacuum cleaner. The Dyson guys just kinda sit around and make stuff. Witness: The Ball Barrow, the Dyson vacuums, some sort of car/boat hybrid, and so on. They make stuff first, then worry about how to market it flawlessly later. Just a bunch of engineers.

And that's kinda what LLab is; a bunch of engineers poking around and making stuff. They throw it into SL when it looks like it could use a year or two of heaving bang-on testing.

Anyways, I've rambled too much before morning tea.

lord i take it you didnt read the terms of service or anything about SL when u signed up the signup procedure prevents any type of lawsuit etc against Linden labs. They are not held responsible for what you do!

Lina Ters of service do not prevent lawsuits, and LL is responsible and accountable.

Believe me, LL can be named in a civil or even a criminal law suit depending on circumstances inspite of the standard disclaimers in the TOS.

'

Flip maybe logic has nothing to do with this.

Say, maybe, just maybe Philip is booored with SL and want's to go onto his next-great-thing.

Ultima Online had to settle a class action lawsuit and phase out it's volunteer program.

Why would anyone sell their company when's it's on an upswing. That makes absolutely no sense.

That is often a great time to sell - you get top dollar for the company. It's a tricky balance. I don't personally think they are angling for purchase though.

Exactly...

You're right Cris. There's no way he's going to sell. I offered him L$200k last week and he's not even replied. He's clearly not in it for the money.

That's because I already offered him 1 million L$, TWO weeks ago. Sorry, but you were too late.

I agree with Cristiano.

Plus - he will sell it . . . when he wants to sell it.

coco

Why would anyone in their right mind buy a a platform using old technology?

Starting fresh, with new hardware, new development, state of the art plugins and willing customer base seems much more logical.

Second Life is now a cash cow. It's doubtful we will see any significant developments in it's life.

You make a LOT of assumptions about just what kind of hardware sims require. I suspect, in actuality, it doesn't take much. My Pentium D 2.8, 2GB RAM, SATA-150 hard drive system should be sufficient--and that's barely even $500 these days.

Precisely. The fact that we're "paying to beta-test" hasn't much bothered me because it's a bit like, I dunno, paying to beta-test the first working faster-than-light drive; I wouldn't forgive myself for passing up the chance. (Obviously, this doesn't satisfy everyone, but it works for me, and that's enough for me to worry about.)

But SoE still has the Guide program, I believe. UO's lawsuit was based on promising special goodies for the volunteer work and then taking them away, but expecting the volunteers to keep doing the work - not applicable here.

As LL doesn't promise the volunteers HERE much anything of consequence (save the L$500 for teaching a class as an instructor... WOO ) the only real benefit is whatever warm glow of altruism you might get, and possibly a good working relationship with LL should you seek a job there.

The same thing happened to AOL - in fact AOL has phased out their entire volunteer program. Many other companies are facing similar problems, and Linden Lab just keeps adding new ways to uses volunteers. It is going to bite them in the ass, and is unseemly.

Spoken as somebody who's never ran anything serious.

The cost of server hardware lies not so much in the cost of hardware with good performance, as in its reliability. If you can, try to look at a server box with its cover off, it looks nothing like a desktop box.

You'll see those things have well organized empty space inside, redundant fans, all cabling is nearly invisible, some things are comfortably replaceable while it's running. A server board will also often include a SCSI controller, two gigabit interfaces, support for redundant RAM, PCI hotplug and redundant power supplies. Our server does things like logging problems. You can see why it went down (say, overheated). It's also noted in the log when somebody opens the case.

Why do you want all that stuff? Because when a server goes down the last thing you want to do is to fight with a cabling mess inside the case, or have it fail because a fan broke. When a fan fails, you open the case while it's running, remove the broken fan, insert the replacement. Things like these are expected to run for years straight, it's not exactly consumer hardware.

Of course if LL allows people to bring their own box, you could do with your. Perhaps you don't have a problem with making everybody wait for several minutes while it reboots, or having it down for hours because you need to drive to the data center to replace a fan, but I bet LL tech support would get a really unhappy call from you if that's the service you got when you bought a sim from them.

Then take your lack of ECC RAM, for instance. Without ECC, it'll happily run with bad memory, until it fails due to an error, or worse, writes complete garbage to the disk/database before failing. That last thing happened to me on a home machine when a RAM module got loose.

Dale, most people just don't need server-level hardware to run things. AW servers certainly don't require it; neither would SL sims, I suspect. Yes, all that redundancy and "just-in-case" crap is fine if you can afford it (or are a hosting company) but it's just not necessary for a single sim running on someone's home PC.

Agreed, but I was discussing why a sim costs so much. You might not care, that's fine if you run your own web server at home or whatever. LL cares though. They don't want people who paid them a lot of money to scream at them because the server's unstable. The sysadmin cares too, because s/he doesn't want to get up at 3 AM and drive to the server room to change a fan. Besides, there are up to 4 sims per server.

i haven't read this thread in entirety, but i get the main ideas floating about. i really just want to reply to the main theme of "is SL going to be sold"..

i honestly don't think this is in Philip's plans at all. he alluded to this in the townhall (via reading the transcript), but that's not why i take this viewpoint.

Second Life wasn't about making a new thing to make money from. this world is literally a dream come true for Philip.. it's not about the company, it's not about making money (although, inherently needs to take that into account)..

Second Life is about making dreams come true. it's a brain-child of his.. not to mention to the rest of us as well, as the main content developers.


selling a company is one thing, selling your dreams is a different idea altogether.

What about if your dream turns to a nightmare?

I'd give my nightmares away. Any takers?

For something that isn't about making money, Linden Lab has found a way to get consumers to pay more than any other online environment, and continually promotes SL as a place to make money in the media to the detriment of other aspects of SL (again, it is the GET RICH GET RICH GET RICH A CHINESE WOMAN MAKES $175,000 A YEAR GET RICH GET RICH GET RICH chant in every damn media article that is responsible for that, and why people come here both with an entitlement complex and why greed rules the day.

While I agree with you that this does seem to be something that was built out of a genuine desire to create something revolutionary, they certain found amazing ways to profit from it along the way and to let investors and others pervert that vision. It is naive to think ultimately this is not first and foremost about being profitable - without that, all those warm and fuzzy intentions are just paving the road to hell. Linden Lab certainly should be profitable and successful, but losing sight of the nature of the beast is always a bad thing because it will bite you every time.

Second Life has always been about dreams becoming reality to me. it certainly needs to be profitable to continue to exist and grow, but "losing sight of the nature of the beast" is a good point.. but from my view, that nature is the daydreamy nature instead of the monetary gains to be had.

Starax, good question.. but remember, sometimes nightmares are fun, if not revealing, as well.

i will alwys view SL as a shared dreamscape, regardless of how money of those dreams are about making money. when i first started, our world was mostly about creativity and finding new ways to express it. 5 years from now, that will stuill be what this world is about for me.

the reason i believe Philip will always harbor a similar fondness is because i used to dream of a very similar worls as SL. had i been in his shoes and was responsible for the existance of SL, i would be doing close to the same thing. do what's necessary to keep things going and profitable, but keeping in mind that it is those finances which enable the creativity to continue to flow.

i don't think i can ever truly express how much this world means to me personally, but whatever small thing/s i can do to help it along the way are things i will gladly do. regardles of monetary gain.

But something Cybin just said reminded me of something P. Rosedale said in one of SL's earlier town halls. He was very excited that someone had invested money in the company that week. It wasn't very much by huge corporation standards, but that month SL was less laggy. Think they moved to a new office. Just a few changes. But he seemed very happy. He said something about his detractors. In the business world, not SL. 'They don't understand what we're trying to do here'. When he said it, I wasn't quite sure..or sure at all...what he meant.

The type of people who come on SL are often marginalized in real life, or unable for various reasons to self actualize..have their goals met..have their dreams come true. They're too old, too poor, too 'not right' in some fashion in the rl culture they happen to find themselves in to go to a club, to start a business, to start a family. One young man huddles forever behind his desk in Israel afraid to go to University save he travels on a bus with a bomb on board. He in always on SL. SL lets these folks 'do'. ANYTHING. Most anything. Without too much dream-killing activity. So, yes. I'm still not quite sure what LL is trying to do. Exactly. But this is what SL does.

Maybe LL's updated business model has them healthier than they were when the owner was so grateful that a small investor looked their way. Maybe not. And maybe no huge investor, full of his or her own rl success, would understand this venue and thus want to buy LL. Bursting at the seams in cash or not. One rule of the business world is that 'if you don't understand a business, don't buy it.' But I do hope that it stays a while. Or that something very much like it is available. Hopefully, the venue that makes me able to realize small dreams remains to help others realize, more important ones.