More open-source metaverses...?

Amen, Gwyneth!!!

However, I must point out that I can agree with you 100% because I can see that you employ phrases like "sound business models" in a way that is entirely different to their normal usage by traditional business people.

For you, "sound business models" clearly means business models that have been evolved to take into account the new technologies and opportunities and practices that have appeared recently, as your examples illustrate very well. You clearly do not mean "business models that we've been using successfully for two centuries and that we are not willing to change".

And this to me suggests that you are an ideal candidate for the position of business leader in a future of community-based development. My engineering approach of saying that black is black is totally devoid of the diplomacy and tact required to communicate with people whose only interest is in white.

Just let me repeat --- Amen, Gwyn!!!!

I feel the need to point out that Blender has had a very rough history and has ceased to be more than once. I wouldn't call their business plan exactly sound.

The Blender folks have picked an extremely tough corner of the market in which to fight.

The huge potential audience and the extreme level of interest and the sheer diversity of possible ways of making money in an open metaverse would be unrivalled in human experience, except recently on the Internet. The opportunities are so vast and awe-inspiring it almost hurts to think about them.

So, my guess is that Blender's difficulties don't transcribe too directly here.

Well, Chip, I certainly didn't look at the business plans of the company behind Blender. The only thing that I know is that they're still here and still around, even if they're not a "major player" in the market. That must certainly count for something. And then again, they may go broke next month. That's also possible, but the argument still holds. You can create a successful business plan to promote an open source (and free) tool. It's not easy, but it's definitely possible. And there are certainly going to be hiccups down the road.

As to Morgaine's comments - "lol" is my only possible answer Yes, surely, flexibility, adaptation to change, innovation, all of these are also part of a successful business plan, IMHO. And I have seen some pretty radical ones. We also have an advantage in 2005 - we can look back at 1997/8 and see what went wrong with "radical" business plans, and not make the same mistakes all over again. I think that Philip was "lucky", in a sense, that in 1999 - when he started his development of SL - he was fully aware that computers and the broadband Internet would not be able to run something like SL. Because if LL had been created in 1999, they'd get US$ 100 million for the idea, create a mega-structure in San Francisco, hire 250 people, buy 5000 servers instead of the original 16 or so, and run Windows on them - and then close doors in 2001 with no customers and a huge bank debt. So, in a way, the slow growth of LL shows that they are being extra careful with their project. And someone even mentioned that they had earned $ 2.5 million or so last year. I'm not sure if I should be surprised or not, but, then again, I don't really know how much they invested and how much it takes to run LL (although I have an overall idea ... it's not hard to make a few estimates, since LL is unusually open about so many numbers in SL). I'd have to type a few figures on an Excel worksheet to make sure, but I'd say that they would be able to recover the $8 million investment by the end of 2007, even if we assume linear growth (and not exponential, as Philip is hoping for). What happens after that is anybody's guess. I suppose I'm betting on Philip to be right, but that's just a "feeling", not an "opinion based on solid data". As I guess everybody knows, running a business always has a degree of risk and the "intuition" and "luck" factors are often undervalued...

Well, we're drifting OT again, originally, I just wanted to have some feedback on other "metaverse projects" besides OSMP and OpenCroquet, which I have been able to study more carefully. Despite the "coolness" of being open source, and an amazing amount of papers on OpenCroquet, I think that those projects are advancing too slowly. I was expecting much more from the open source community. The way I see it, the problem with these projects is a certain lack of commercial interest in them. Most people just view the 3D technology as something good for games, and that's it. Linden Lab, on the other hand, views it in a completely different way. Second Life is entertaining - but "entertainment" is certainly not just offered by "games". And, of course, it's a platform for collaborative work, and it's up to us - the residents - to see what we can make of it. Whereas the open source projects I have studied seem to target the programmers, the "code junkies", and the "3D gurus". SL is targeted towards "the whole world" and not towards a single niche. This means a completely different approach to both its interface, to the environment, and to the way tech support is offered. It's very hard to appeal to both programmers, designers, and us "common folk" who are neither. All of us enjoy SL despite its shortcomings and limitations.

I think that's one of the "secrets" of SL - universal appeal. Until other platforms reach that level, SL will have an "edge" - even if it's not a technological edge. I mean, I can imagine IT professors drooling over OpenCroquet's technical papers. But I don't want them to drool, I'd like the "common guy next door" to drool over things like SL. The metaverse has to be something accessible to everybody, not just to the Enlightened Ones

This brought to mind a little paragraph that had a profound effect on me in my formative years, appearing in a long-forgotten technical critique by C.A.R.Hoare (one of the most eminent people in CompSci ever) on the language Pascal. He said (paraphrasing horribly):

"No, my critique does not mean that this language is bad. It means that the language is good enough to warrant spending time and effort on detailed criticism."

And so it is with SL.