Linden Lab should be PUBLIC not limited company

.

Makes sence really.........
Never thought about about it, maybe a while back they use to be. But nowadays not even close........

Nice call

There is far more to being a public company than that.

You do it when it's right for your stakeholders, not because some of your users want to know stuff, ie when they will get maximum return on their investment and/or the Company needs the funds to grow.

As far as I know now is not the right time to get the maximum ROI, but then I'm guessing because I don't sit on the board of LL, and as far as I know LL currently has enough funds for it's near term growth.

So tell me again why they should do it? (Oh did I mention it costs a _LOT_ of money)

Then so has LLabs these days.....

LL won't go public because then they'd probably be immediately bought out by Microsoft, and Philip Linden and co seem to be determined to stay in this for the long haul.
Plus, they seem to have stable financial backers, and so don't need the cash badly enough to consider it.

There *are* two different kinds of public. One which allows Microsoft to buy them out (i.e. the stock gives voting rights) and one that doesn't (the stock is for making money only).

It's just another important milestone to achieve like open-sourcing the client.

Second Life is an interface, a medium. Like the web. It should belong to the people, whilst of course making Linden Lab the money they much deserve.

I'm sure there are many ways to go public and I don't mean making all their shares available etc. If they don't want to be bought out (yet or ever), that's fine. Again, I'll let the people more knowledgable in the details speak out..

You're demanding too much, too soon. They won't become a publicly traded company for quite a while because right now the shareholders of Wall Street would likely strangle this concept before it is fully formed.

Most shareholders are intensely focused on the bottom line. They don't think about five or ten years from now. If there isn't an instant profit and return on investment available now, they are unhappy.


LL's current investors understand that this project is going to take a while before it is really fully ready for prime-time, and those investors are allowing LL to spend the massive amounts of money on infrastructure and design and development that is needed for this virtual world to really take off.

At this point LL is probably not yet profitable, and if they were to go public, most likely you would not get any return on your stock. When they've had a few more years and spent a few more million of far-sighted venture capital, then perhaps LL will finally be ready to go public.

.

If you don't know anything about the process or ramifications, as you admit, why bother even suggesting it, other than to spout some nonsense for the sake of increasing your post count or trying to make some kind of name for yourself on the forums?

If LL were made a public company, it would be asset stripped and strangled before you can blink, let alone cash out your lindens before teh company dies.

Why would I worry about such silly and childish things like post counts?

What matters is to learn not to know. I wanted just this brainstorming to see what others think and I think it worked. There have been a few great responses which much further clarified the issue for me.

Perhaps you should post more constructively next time.

I think Linden Lab has an outstanding information policy. They're really down to earth and fair.

No stock options for me, please.