THIS topic:

I am importing in its near entireity Jeffrey's post from the other thread, for discussion here, followed by my comments:

-------This is Jeffrey's Post-------------

Edit: However, I just noticed Coco's polite request for additional data on said mission statement. Let me provide some quotes found here on the forums to that end. Context included.

llSawzAll()

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Linden
LL wasn't always a software company. It was started as an exploration into haptic hardware, but we needed a virtual world to interface with the hardware. First things first.

More Open Source Metaverses?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Linden
"LL has discussed how and whether a Free Software or an Open Source transition for SL would be possible, and many LL employees are ultimately in favor of it while some are skeptical. In any case, there is a bit of work necessary to do before such a move, and we've all agreed that now is not quite the time to throw a lot of effort into it. Yet at the same time many of us (including myself) believe that SL will indeed be dwarfed eventually by an Free/Open metaverse if LL does not go that route.

The main obstacle in my mind is the protocol that SL currently uses. It has evolved into something unlike what we originally thought it would, and now has obvious shortcomings that we are scheming on fixing. I'm afraid that if we were to open it all up now it would snowball into an unmanigable mess like the open Netscape project before it was scrapped and reborn as Mozilla. The only way I think Free/OpenSL would work would be if LL were to clean up and stabilize the protocol so that it was easily extensible, then release a sample client implementation, and eventually the servers (which _really_ aren't ready for a sparsely distributed system yet).

An open, distributed, shared network was part of the plan from the very beginning when Philip was telling me about it over lunch that first week I came down to San Francisco, and as far as my opinions sway it is still part of the plan.

My recommendation: stick around and see what happens -- it might be interesting.

Incidentally, the back end of SL is becoming increasingly dependent on Free or Open Source software. Each simulator node now runs a squid, uses libcurl, and a few other FOSS components. It is possible that future nodes will be running MONO and jabber as well. It would seem a shame (it seems to me) to not contribute something back to the whole happy wonderful world of FOSS, preferably FS."

Quote:
Originally Posted by Philip Linden
"I'll speak for my own gut here, allowing that I'm sure this will be a long and interesting discussion in the years to come:

My intuition is that open source and open standards are the only way to go for SL long term - for us to reach the whole world in the way that the web has will probably only happen under this sort of model.

I don't think becoming more open would be a bad business move for LL, because there are so many central services that we can offer for a fair price - once SL goes to truly global scale those charges can create a very large and sustaining business.

Pragmatically, there are things that need to happen to make this possible:

We have to preserve some sort of system to protect the rights and permissions of content. This means that in some manner the servers must become untrusted - a 'man-in-the-middle' from a crypto perspective. Today, the SL servers are totally trusted - if you owned a server you could take all the money and copy all the objects of anyone who walked into it. I can imagine that long term you get a notice on entering insecure servers, and you can choose what objects and how much money you want to 'carry' when you go in. Coding this is going to be a big change, and lots of work.

Additionally, as also discussed here, we need to make the protocols between servers very simple, so that folks can start from scratch with server code if they like. HTTP got really widespread in part because it was really simple - you could write a basic server in a few hours. Ideally something like SL needs to be comparably simple - you should be able to write a 'hello world' server and connect it to the grid very easily.

Projects like OSMP are great, and something that helps us understand what priority we should give to these changes. Ideally I'd like to see the metaverse get built as quickly as possible, which means that everyone is working on interoperable code and content. If big projects get underway that are challenging SL in scale and capability, it means that we are doing something wrong - not being open enough fast enough."

Upgrading Second Life, or Starting a Third?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Philip Linden
"Good thread.

Our desire is to balance changes with backwards compatibilty. We take content as built today very seriously, since there are so many great works in-world already. Given that, we think we've architected fairly well for allowing incremental changes. To answer Tiger's original question - we are very much behind SL expanding and retaining content - we don't see the existing version as an experiment that can be wiped out. As discussed, we think versioning and adding functions can allow expanding LSL while still retaining all previous functionality. Admittedly, this is often a challenge. We've already been able to do 'rolling' deployments, where we upgrade some sims but not others (we are doing this now with updates to the OS version under the sims, for example).

Longer term, we are trying to architect in such a way that upgrades can be made progressively to some sims and not others - this should allow a balance between preserving older content and allowing more radical or non-backwards-compatible changes. One has to imagine that with thousands of sims this will become the norm. A challenge to this sort of model is to normalize the sim-sim messaging and interactions to a standard protocol that will support such changes."

My aim is to present my opinion and the raw data clearly and to do my best to not confuse the two. For further reading, refer to the linked threads.

-------That was the End of Jeffrey's Post--------------

These are my comments on all the above:

Having plowed through at a relatively fast clip most of the above threads quoted from, in addition to taking several side trips to other threads and blogs pointed to therein, I have formed some ideas and impressions.

1. Seems to me that when I talk about "the game" and others of you talk about "not a game/the metaverse/platform!" we are comparing apples to oranges. You are the apples and I am the oranges.

But it seems to me that without the oranges, there will be no apples. Jeffrey, you spoke of having a "huge userbase" of some "one million" people before going open source. Overlooking for the moment the fact that the open source idea is somewhat hypothetical at this point (though it may be a fond overall goal), how are we going to get to one million users?

I posit that the people streaming into SL now are not mainly programmers. In fact, I wonder how many of the population now or at any time actually were programmers. If they are not programmers (as I am not), what are they expecting of their experience here?

I think two things: (1) User-friendliness. LL seems to be going in this direction. I think all the improvements before I arrived, and certainly the ones since I arrived, have been in the direction of making things less, rather than more, obscure. In other words, more easily accessed by the Average Player, so that Average Player can also enjoy building. (Scripting still remains hugely proprietary and far more obscure to Average Player.) As someone pointed out in one of those threads I read, *most* people want things they can immediately use, and *most* people don't get their jollies from programming (that person used Mozilla - which I now use and enjoy, and I certainly didn't program it - as an example.)

(2) Fun. If there were actually a million people who wanted SL to be an opportunity for them to help mold a product before it becomes open source, no matter how unpleasant that task might be in terms of game fun, I think they would be here already. Actually, I think only a small percentage of those who are here already are such people. (And maybe it has been that way from the beginning.)

I posit that people are actually here for a GAME. Not to be guinea pigs in someone's grander plan. Now, being a guinea pig is all right, as long as one is having fun while doing it. As long as one's needs and desires are met by the game in question.

Consequently, I think it's a mistake for people to be so eager to throw out the structure, the "game" part of the game, and the fun available for Average Player, at this stage of the game. Saying, "This is what we're moving toward" is one thing. Moving toward it at such a rate as to run off Average Player means you won't have the population to test the limits of the parameters, much less have the population to provide the profit for the company to continue.

2. This business of open source is not only iffy in terms of doability, profitability, and consensus on whether or not it is even desirable (some in the company seem to not think so, if I'm not mistaken), it's also not necessarily in the near future. Meanwhile, we still have the game as it stands.

Moreover, it could well be that a plan subsuming the best of both worlds will be implemented; i.e., what Phillip and others seem to have mentioned (if I'm not mistaken), which is that the grid and the game as it stands would still stand, with any future open sourcing to cover other uses, grids, and purchases. In this case, we still have the game as it stands.

3. I understand how programmers such as yourselves would be desirous of open sourcing. You want to get your hands on it. You want to see inside it. You want to improve on it. You want to contribute to it. You want to use it for so many possibilities. That's fine. But meanwhile, you do depend on me, the Average Player, to achieve this possible ultimate goal. And I, Average Player, want an enjoyable, fun game to play. (By "game," I don't mean leveling - I mean a way Average Player can enjoy his/her average creative potential and have fun in this particular, specific environment, and in more ways than simply scripting, building, and/or land sales.)

4. Therefore, the disconnect between people like me and people like you. I don't live in a land of programming, open sourcing, and metaverses. There are other lands to live in - the artistic, the creative, the entertaining, the socialiazing, the challenging - all of which are reasons why players, in fact, play online games, and all of which I live in, to various degrees. I live not at all in the programming land.

Yours is a rarefied stratisphere, with your minds almost entirely on the future as epitomized by the vision of Phillip Linden. That's fine. But it also disconnects entirely with me, the Average Player. Average Player has needs, too, and if you don't meet them, you will lose Average Player.

5. Given that the open sourcing is (a) somewhere in the future and (b) will probably NOT affect the grid we have today (which will be kept running as a profit source for LL), why the rush to eliminate all game-like accoutrements from SL?

Originally I thought the reasoning for this was part of a big economic experiment, and I still believe this. I think the Lindens may be so scared of economic collapse (thanks, in part, to the demise of TSO and other games due to the same cause), that they tend to worship the market value of the Linden above all else, and in doing so, tend too often and too precipitously to throw the baby (fun) out with the bath water. (But there may be other reasons, such as a strong Linden looks good to the company investors, etc., I don't know.)

Now, though, having read the threads above, I add to that mix the compelling attraction of Phillip's original vision to Phillip himself, and the pressures on him and those working with him by the forces within the game that want to see open sourcing not only happen, but happen as soon as possible. Forces represented by the apple side of the dichotomy. I would represent the oranges side, and tell him there is little to be lost by actually creating a pleasurable game in the meanwhile (and much population to be gained), which does require their direct intervention (considered "artificial" by the apples) on their part.

In fact, if you have two things - a game that's growing, and a desire to provide the structure of the metaverse - which of the two is a surer bet and a surer way to profits? The game. Moreover, what is to hurt by having a game while we all play guinea pig? Nothing. Nothing in terms of game structure now will possibly contraindicate any future metaverse-like uses of the engine (I think you would call it). There is little reason to "move toward the metaverse" in terms of cutting out entertainer subsidies, for instance. The skeleton of this game - of this grid - of the teenage grid, for that matter - need not affect the greater goal whatsoever, as far as I can see. You can always roll out another grid. This particular grid, this particular GAME, would be but one of thousands of similar uses of the engine.

If I were an investor, I would say, hey, game the heck out of that game! Make people love it! After all, this game is what is providing the only income at the moment.

5. Finally, I would caution that lofty dismissal of the needs and opinions of Average Player by the programming types among us, particularly those who live in the loftier universe of What This May All Become, is counter to your own goals. Not only do the Average Players have good ideas - having a very good grasp of their own needs and what they consider fun - but running them off is counterproductive to your own desires, as stated by Jeffrey, when he envisioned having a million players before taking off into Open Source Land.

These million players are by no means guaranteed by the growth curve we currently see on the game. Their needs must be met. They will not take kindly to the idea of being used and abused in pursuit of some higher goal. They will quit if they aren't having fun, or if the game is too much stick and not enough carrot. Look at TSO: They were so sure they were going to get a million players. Not only that, they thought they knew much better than the players did, and when they finally did start to listen to what we wanted, it was way too little and way too late.

For the record, I don't think the Lindens are making this same mistake. I think they do listen. As for my voice, I guess now is as good a time as any to plunk down firmly on the side of Average Player, believing, as I do, that they need us, and further believing that we need them - we need and want a game like this to play; we want THIS game; and we want it to be fun. If eventually they achieve some sort of metaverse, great. Meanwhile, we want to give them our money to have fun now. Too much punitive stuff - and too little "game" to the game (God knows it's free and open as all get-out as it is) ruins that, and drives people away.

All the above is why I don't think I will give much credence anymore to the notion that "this is not what we are moving toward" on the basis that "we are moving toward open source," etc.

Comments?

coco

"We take content as built today very seriously, since there are so many great works in-world already. Given that, we think we've architected fairly well for allowing incremental changes. To answer Tiger's original question - we are very much behind SL expanding and retaining content - we don't see the existing version as an experiment that can be wiped out"

Phillip said this? Whew. That's somewhat reassuring. I would hate to see the grid that we know with all the builds go poof if SL went open source.

Coco, I'm glad you've taken that topic out of the provenance of tekkies and put it up for more general discussion which it urgently needs.

It's my own fervent belief now that Open Source=Closed Society. I'm very alarmed at the ideologies that go into open source -- they are so cleverly "open" sounding that we forget about the things you need to ensure openness in a liberal and free society -- individual rights, property rights, contracts, the rule of law. Open Source is not far off from Dostoyevsky's "Without God, anything goes."

So I want to take a very thorough look at this, and read your thread more carefully later. I would caution all readers not to take this notion of "open source" literally. When bands of Bolsheviks seize the state and confiscate state assets, skim off the best part for themselves, then collective-farm out the rest as "state property," you could call it the first Open Source experiment. You could alos call it Bolshevism, an ideology marred by the millions they had to kill to implememt their utopianist hell.

If you think I'm raving, think again. An Open Source and "free" world fractured into a million pieces by people who claim they are "free" is prime territory for totalitarian ideologies to flourish. There's no overarching rule of law or protector of property. When I see the thinking that people like Morgaine have done on this (google for the other threads here on the forums where we had strenuous debates), where they are willing to say there should be no government and no law (the new cyber anarchy) -- and they equivocate on whether there should even be a TOS -- I simply have to wonder what this is really all about. It's not about freedom for you and me. It's for freedom just for some people.

It's too late to migrate Second Life into an open source arena. It's true that the bulk of our population created accounts to play a game. They've no interest in further development beyond feature enhancements based on fun and commerce. This is all good for Linden Lab's current cash flow; but it precludes the open source development of something that might evolve into a professionally useful metaverse.

If Philip, Andrew et al want to pursue that dream, they'll have to build a seperate, private grid and invite (yes invite) non-employeed people to participate in the development of the project. It will be a closed society of developers that will continually expand until the software is ready to present to the general public for truly open source development. It will resemble Second Life on the surface, but will be radically different in a few fundamental ways.

I'm sure they know this from hours of study and discussion. Andrew's original protocol ideas need to be dusted and revised from square one without the overbearing onus of meeting the demands of a gaming population in order to make money. I'm not sure that Linden Lab can yet afford to do this. The project will have to be seeded and rely on future licensing fees to recouperate the costs. Second Life itself has likely not come close to paying back it's own investors.

It leaves LL in the position they've placed themselves. Producing a centralized game, rather than a distributable software product, was a decision they made in the last quarter of 2003. That choice has costs them the resources to pursue the original, lunchtime dream. After all the ranting and raving we posted when 1.2 was announced, I find it hard to believe that they're actually surprised to be backed into this corner realizing the inevitability of other projects beating them to the real marketing table with viable products.

I would like to point out a few things in relation to this topic, not to start any fights, but to elevate this concept of what we are talking about. First, SL is not a game. Computer based games have an average lifespan of 6 months. SL is a MMORPG. It is one of only 4 “real life” based worlds. I like Khamon’s use of the word “toy” as it describes, more than anything else, what SL is. All of us use the toy in a differing fashion, to serve our own needs.

What is different about SL is that it changes from minute to minute based on the creativity and whim of its residents. This is what sets SL apart from other MMORPG’s. The human brain looks for patterns and when confronted with something like a game or a new experience, our brain automatically starts to “learn” the patterns. Pick up this token here, open the door over there. Once we have learned the “rules” and the “pattern”, we begin to become bored and start looking for something new. This is the true reason behind the demise of TSO and There, once people got the patterns down, they started getting bored. SL has the opportunity to break free of that mold because the content is ever changing. Trying to shoehorn SL into the box and make it TSO is a futile exercise. Where SL is going is much bigger than best thong contests and sex balls. You can bitch all you want about where this bus is going, but it is going there with or without you.

There are no “average players” in SL. The bar is set too high. If your computer doesn’t have the chops to handle SL, you are out of luck. If you don’t have enough creativity or curiosity to get past the “how do I level up” mentality, you aren’t going to become a regular. SL is not for people who need structure, levels, goals and tokens. It provides a lot of things to a lot of people, but everyone who logs in regularly has found something here that speaks to them. Something that calls to a desire to express themselves in any of the myriad creative outlets that SL provides. SL fills some need that all 30,000 of us have. The fact that we fight so passionately about it is irrefutable proof.

To qualify what I am going say next, I am not in anyway trying to be an asshat. I am one of probably only a few people here who have gone through what Philip and LL are going through. Trailblazing is brutal. Breaking rules and taking people out of their comfort zone of structure is not easy. The process of creating something new is unbelievably messy. It involves vision, determination, all-nighters, weekends, mistakes, successes, crushing defeat and moments of overwhelming pride. You try a new idea, maybe it fails and maybe it works. You keep throwing things at the wall until something sticks. You take calculated risks. You have some people gunning for your failure; you have some banking on your success. You have critics and you have cheerleaders. Sometimes you have to radically change course when you realize what you are doing isn’t working. At the end of the day, there is no feeling on earth like being able to see your vision become reality, to see all that hard work in full, glorious color in front of you. If SL were mine, every time I logged in my eyes would tear up with pride.

SL is not coloring between the lines. This is not easy, what LL are doing. Things are going to continue to change radically and that is just the way it has to be. Either you are on the bus and willing to see where this is headed or you aren’t.

We didn't have "average players" who need structure, levels, goals and tokens. But we do now; and our focus is keeping them entertained while we recruit new ones to replace the old when they grow bored with the buildings, clothes and activities that we provide.

I'm stating my own observations here. I appreciate LL's willingness to post some of the world stats; but the whole thing is larger than a person can summarize scientifically from a few smatterings of data. We have to rely on LL to give us an honest assessment of the possiblity that anything can be salvaged of Second Life.

That's need clarifications before it causes a fight eh. Second Life will survive, in it's current state, for years to come. It will continue to be fun for the whole family, and profitable for people who want to work hard, throughout this decade. By "salvaged" I simply mean using some of the code that's been developed to prop a metaversal endeavour.

I'll be encouraged when the quotes say more than we think this is a great idea and have thought about it once or twice and want to do that someday. I'm not holding my breath anymore. I've already turned green.

Ugh. I'm so glad you posted this, because now the picture comes into focus a little bit. No wonder it seems like a closed society with a bastion of scientists -- that's what it is lol. And silly me, I thought it was kind of a goofy goal-less MMORPG.

I don't like this idea of you all sequestering yourself off to make your high-tech thingie, though. I think anything that involves a vast influence over human society, a restructuring of human society, and ultimately even a control over human society, needs lots and lots of input and not just the self-selected elite.

The idea that the tekkie wikis gets to noodle around in sandboxes, feted all the while, to help game devs make the groovay software, then they foist it on the unsuspecting public with "open source" (which is just replication of the tekkies' closed society).

Thanks for putting in this piece of the puzzle for me. I was puzzling for a long time why Open Source=Closed Society. Now I get it. It's because the pathway to making the code that you're going to Open Source is based on the principle of a stuffy little closed, feted and self-referential closed society -- so it's completely natural that when this thing goes "prime time" and becomes "open source" it *replicates the closed society*.

Yeah. At what point did the sequested closed society and its culture of superiority relinquish, Khamon, and become open? Open Source, as I see now, is merely the replication of the scientists' closed society, with some sector of it opened up for "the masses". It's truly an unattractive and unsightly picture to behold. And all the worse for having kidded itself all along the way that it is "open" and "creative" and "cutting edge" and all that other Future is Now stuff. Ick.

This is VASTLY helpful, Khamon. So I'm only glad to say that I'm glad that Philip either killed this Bolshevik in its cradle, or just found that he coudn't make child support payments on it, but whatever he has foisted on the world now won't be as terrible as it might have been.

Lions and tigers and bears OH MY!!

Oh come now Ingrid. Surely you must know all of those labels are completely neutral, social commentary!?. They carry no negative connotation at all, what-so-ever, swear on a stack of bibles, cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye!

It's just reporting! Scout's Honor! *Makes rock concert Devil horns with fingers*

That's why so many labels are necessary - they carry no impact - because they are harmless, and completely inoccuous non-perjoratives!

Attribution goes to Ronnie James Dio for making the Devil horns so popular!

Holy Diver!

What did I read the other day that seems so appropriate... ah here it is!



Hmmm wonder who said that one? Either way it's very applicable to this convo!

Coco,

I honestly don't think you are an "average" player.

Moreover, I do not think there is such a thing in SL.

Taking a pizza cutter to the pizza that is SL is dangerous. It's devisive. It fosters "us vs. them", in an environment that is a myriad of things to a myriad of people.

One really can't state with any degree of certainty or objectivity that there are simply consumers and producers - because there are 1000s of varying degrees to which people excercise one or both of these aspects of SL.

The uniqueness of SL largely lies in the fact that there is no "average" player.

Every single person here, has their own idea of what SL is, their own interests, their own plans, wants, needs, and desires.

In MMORPGs, we see more of what you are talking about, the "average". This is because most people have developer provided goals like leveling, questing, etc.

SL is not even close to that, unless you decide to go to one of the role playing sims and spend the greater portion of your time there. Even then, you will not be the average player.

In short, LL hands you a toolset and says, "make your own experience.", therefore, given the extreme divesity of SL's playerbase, it's nigh on impossible to define groups or their goals and interests.

Yeah, Ingrid, can't say it enough, lions, tigers, bears, and...the Wicked Witch of the East! Ugh!



Yeah, because I actually do experiment on the stuff I talk about. And if someone is working technology and scripting and making game features *that I am living and working in* sure I can comment on it and you are absolutely right it is "applicable" to this convo because *I live there*.

Example: somebody beavered away on the group tools, writing hours, days, of code. They were used for wikis. Then people tried to use them for businesses as capitalism entered the commune, and it was found they sucked, as we've remarked often in other threads. So here's an example of a closed-society tekkie making his little thingie, and me, as a FELLOW CITIZEN pointing out that is SUXXORS.

If your point was that scripters and graphics designers just get to tool around and sandbox around and even work hard on lines of code with no accountability or feedback for those *using their products and living in their 3D world* I can only say: not so, G.I.

Try harder Prokofy, you haven't completely derailed this thread and made it, "all about Prokofy and the Soviet bogeyman in his closet", quite yet.

What I am getting at, in a nutshell, is this:

The idea often presented me is that we cannot have subsidies or anything else implemented that isn't absolutely necessary, and all such Linden intervention is to be ultimately erased entirely, because eventually this will be open source and the Lindens will no longer be in control. The idea being that eventually there will be no subsidies, no dwell, no developer incentives, no contests, no manipulations of the events calendars, no meetings, no enforcement of the TOS, nothing, nada.

Now, I believe this to be false, as I outlined in detail above. Thus far, I have seen no rebuttal to my argument that it is false on many dimensions, even if open source does come true.

Is there any rebuttal to the arguments I presented above about the possible coming of open source not being any reason for the Lindens not to manipulate the game now, until then, and even beyond then?

And if the open source argument is not entirely valid, what are other valid reasons for the Lindens to attempt to progressively retreat further until their presence is hardly noted at all, except maybe to fix bugs, and make technological improvements?

coco

Their small size possibly.

You raised an interesting point about how open sourcing would be policed. Would it be like Never Winter Nights where the person running the server/shard/simulator sets forth and polices their own Terms of Service?

How and who would we pay? LL? The server owner? Both? Niether?

Thanks for bringing this out coco

I fully belive that LL can easily switch to an open source service modle in some time to come.
With all good comes bad, so sitting about and just talking about things never works well. Open soirce will be the way for sl to go in the end, its the only way it will last for many years to come. The lindens for some time to my knowing have allways wanted SL to be controled by its residents and I think they are doing a good job of that

SL is an experience not a game or metaverse

Ingrid shh dont derail coco's thread (allthough I totaly agree with you )

Prok dont bother replying to people poking you, it saves thread space

when sl goes open source, someone will make a grid that serves the oranges.

when sl goes open source market forces will determine which grids succeed and which do not.

the freedom to choose increases as more types of grids are created with open source. if people have the concerns you describe, they will make grids that cater those concerns.

I imagine it would work quite a bit like the private Sims, Nolan, deeded out to others, work now in microcosm: I pay Nexus Nash (in Lindens), and Nexus Nash determines the behavior on the Sim. And then Nexus (in the macrocosm, the person hosting the server/s) pays LL for the ability to host his Sim (server/s).

coco

P.S. Please understand the gist of what I'm trying to get at: What is wrong with developing the MMOG/game as it is now, as other (reality niche) games develop theirs? Presumably this grid could continue on, still run as a mass appeal MMOG reality niche game, even after the whole thing became open source.

In other words, what's the big deal about subsidies for events, putting in other dimensions besides building and scripting, etc.?

So far, I have been given one valid reason: Small staff.

coco

No, Coco, I disagree. Given the number of people who would come in the door if they played it a bit differently and had more incentives for people to move from TSO and play house and host game shows, for example, and the money they'd be coining, it has to be reworked more like this:

hobbling world outlook.

I think they really do think they can engineer a better world, and I find that scary.

'fraid I haven't really time to read this. For me its simple. I'm for the drive to the opensource metaverse, with fun en route, and less griping about Linden non-intervention because we should all see why it has to be that way.

Now - what I really posted to say (and this is quite naughty of me):

Am I the only one conscious that something rather sick, slightly disgusting and decidedly insulting is going on (again) in this thread ?

I'm afraid I can't say what. Either you see it, or you don't, but this is surely the most flagrant example yet.

Anyone know what I'm talking about, or is the mute feature blocking it for those with the eye to see ?

We aren't really disagreeing, Prok.

Obviously, I think the game would be better if it appealed to more people, and have been lobbying for that with considerable tenacity, considering.

What I mean by "valid," is some other reason at all. Something that is valid, i.e., a practical reason. That they have a small staff could well explain the hands-off approach. That they worry about the economy over all else is another likely reason, I speculate, for many of their decisions, and I think they bend too far in this direction.

I am interested in reasons such as these. Because I want to know what is standing in the way of the things I want to see the game do, and which I think are necessary for growing the game, whether these reasons are practicable or philosophical ones. I want to surmount them.

coco

P.S. "That we should all see why it has to be that way" is not what I would consider a valid reason.

Wow ! Perfect.

I can't answer about your suggested features, because you have never given me examples.

I also can't answer for the Lindens. For me to do so would be to speculate about the motives of a cadre of people who are much wiser and much more talented when it comes to development, than myself.

I am not saying that there is anything "wrong" with it when you suggest developing the game as it is now. I state that I understand that the Lindens have stated that over time, they want to have less and less to do with providing entertainment themselves, and that they would like to move away from subsidies and the rating system. That's not me telling you you're philosophically wrong, it's me stating my understanding of LL's plans. I cannot presume to speak for them on their reasoning, although I have no problem with it. I probably wouldn't be here still if I did.

Actually my point was that when someone likes to say 'this is what I do - and you're talking out your ass' - then when appriopiate - they should in return be told 'you're talking out your ass' perferably with the exact same words.

After reading your assesment on open source, it occurs to me that you are doing just this.. whereas I HAVE done work with the open source community before.. So I have done, and you're just cranky ranting as per usual

Have a nice day