Is SL Linden Lab's own world or Player's world.

Well , people keep talking about economy these days, yeah , things goes even worse now.

check IGE , guys , they offer 18.5 usd/10k only !!!!

i thow out this topic cuase i think it's the basic problem .

is SL LL's world or us ,we player's world?

what's LL's exact role here?

It's their world, our imagination.

Until SL becomes open source or open standards, we're all just visitors.

Enjoy your stay!!

Its the Golden Rule, buddy.

He who has the gold, makes the rules.

May it ever be so.

it's a giant experiment and we're the guineapigs.

The cleverest trick LL ever pulled off was making guineapigs fork over fat wads of cash for the privilege of being experimented on!

hmm, i think the problem is that no one has spent time on this question .

even LL hasnot thought this problem seriously .

there's a line between the two conclusions, and it's the basic occasion to explain all the problem at present.

I would suggest hitting them in the leg with a stick.

But about that opium? Is it still around?

The software is owned by LL
and
most important, the servers too.

open source, or not, it won't change anything on "our world" or "their world"

The Second Life wora'uld is owned and operated by Linden Lab. The software, servers and content (including the entire stock of lindens) belong to the company.

The only thing we own is the profit we cash out and transfer to our Paypal accounts.

Anything else that anyone tells you is a blatant lie.

It doesn't have to be open source. It only has to be licensable so that we can operate our own grids on our own servers using our own asset systems.

They can still make loads of money off the software development and we can build worlds that are truly ours.

We are the study population of a wonderful and exciting experiment....

*waves at Khamon....

Oh, come on! Ever since the old BBS days, all online things have been a benevolent dictatorship. Sysops always sat on the line of controling their users and having those users leave the BBS for another one. There are other online games out there. If you feel so abused by LL, go play somewhere else.

It's not an Aristotelean dichotomy like that.

It's ours, LL's and the residents'.

They have the ultimate power of destruction of course, they can pull the plug, but the vast bulk of what you see in there is resident created even if stored on LL's servers - if there weren't residents there wouldn't be an SL in the same way as if there wasn't an LL there wouldn't be an SL.

Now your talking! LL will reach a point where it is too cost prohibitive to have a server farm(s) with many thousands of servers (5k 10k 15k?). They'll either have to license out the platform or hold the population within a fixed range. Also, there are some business applications that are not feasible in SL that could be if LL licensed the platform out.

But, I agree with Eloise. The meaning of the word "own" is relative. For the most part, there is a symbiotic relationship between residents and LL. Both parties own certain aspects of the overall world.

Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 166

Quote:
Originally Posted by Khamon Fate
It doesn't have to be open source. It only has to be licensable so that we can operate our own grids on our own servers using our own asset systems.

They can still make loads of money off the software development and we can build worlds that are truly ours.

Now your talking! LL will reach a point where it is too cost prohibitive to have a server farm(s) with many thousands of servers (5k 10k 15k?). They'll either have to license out the platform or hold the population within a fixed range. Also, there are some business applications that are not feasible in SL that could be if LL licensed the platform out.

But, I agree with Eloise. The meaning of the word "own" is relative. For the most part, there is a symbiotic relationship between residents and LL. Both parties own certain aspects of the overall world.
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A couple of interesting posts there. The idea of hosting my own island or section of the world is extremely interesting.
I would like to know more about the actual policies and plans for that idea.

As for the idea of running server farms becoming cost prohibitive, sounds like wishful thinking to me.
If it is good business sense to rent space on a hard disk now,
why would that change? It makes me think of the entire planet
being too full of servers, lol. Even assuming a situation of
increasing costs due to too many servers due to too many customers, reality just does not support that assertion.
Technology continues to increase in power in relation to price and physical space.In fact the increase in technological advance continues to be exponential, despite the dire prognistications of yesterday's tech analysts who expected Moores law to hit the wall of physical possibility.
No I see no problem whatsoever of practically unlimited expansion of the "rent memory space" model as long as there is positive margin to be made. The only real limitation to continued growth is the number of willing participants.

Yes I agree the term "ownership" is relative. It is both literal
and figurative. Being a private company they literally own it.
However within the context of this interactive world we get to simulate ownership, we "own" land and other items as long as we have the blessing of the local power structure that grants us the privilege. That assertion may sound a little heavy handed, however it is actually a symbiotic relationship.
For there is no percentage to the grantor of ownership
rights if there is no one there to participate in this abstraction.
For unlike the Real World where there is (for the time being anyway) definate limits on habitable physical space, future amounts of memory space is absolutely far beyond what we can currently conceive. That being the case it is clearly in LL's
interest to accomodate future options to participation in their corner of the Metaverse.

Get a little carried away with dissecting concepts sometimes.



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They own the servers, they created the software, they keep it running -- this is their world, we just get to play in it.

When you've got the hardware and software and personnel to run it, it _might_ be considered "yours", if you can get LL to sell it.

They own the world - and we pay them to build it.

It's a pretty sweet biz plan if you think about it.

'Twould be if it was profitable. Don't people start firms in order to realize some return on investment?

This capitalism thing always confuses me.

Getting carried away is no problem--at least to me since I do also!

Please forgive me as this is about to go off topic so that I can respond to Infiniview's post.

You make some valid arguments. My assertion is that LL may (above I said will when I should have said may) reach a point were it is financially prohibitive, or at least undesirable, to continue building out their server farm(s). This is based on three observations:

1. I read (observed) an article recently about one of the most popular MMORPG's--WoW. They have about 6 million registered users, probably more now. At about 5 million people, their servers hit a point where it was almost impossible to provide their users fast login times.

No matter how amazing technological advances in the not to distant future may be, there are practical limits to how many users can access a given system at any one time. Sure, a company can always pay for bigger and bigger data pipes, but that is very expensive. Read the article about WoW below:



2. The larger the server farm, the bigger the supporting infrastructure, the more RW people are required to manage it. If a company has sufficient cash flow, none of this is a problem.

If LL wants to maximize their profits, it would be best to license out their platform at some point and let others worry about footing the bill for people, land, buildings, servers, and bandwidth. Let's remember that SL and other MMORPG's push A LOT of data. This is not simple webserving or an email service.

3. In its current state, the SL platform is too limited to offer RW businesses solutions to conduct RW transaction or offer RW service. Selling virtual items to virtual people is not an attractive option to most RW businesses.

If LL were to offer a business version of the SL platform, a license that could be managed on a corporation's private server farm, then more RW businesses may take note.

Here is a list of some of the current shortcomings of the SL platform to RW businesses:



But, I know better than to try and predict technological advances. I may very well be off base in my assertions here. Time, of course, will tell.

Getting back on topic, if LL licenses out the SL platform, then the issue of who owns SL will get even more interesting!

Wow, sysop. I haven't heard that word in forever LOL....makes me feel old!

Linden Lab will be a whole different company after they realize profitability.

Excellent and well worded response Bloop.

Finally got around to looking at these old threads.

I am unable to disagree.

hehehe, why not...
Instead of a HTTP server, we could have a SL server... sound fun
(And a webrowser-on-a-prims will be integrated very soon)

Too bad they don't actually study it.

I have colleagues in antropology and sociology who would give a gonad for the data that LL throws away.

tee hee