The thanks before the rant.

Thanks for (mostly) cutting off free money to alt and basic accounts. Good move.

Now why did you put the identity and age check on honor system?

To me that says "we want to puff up the active user numbers so that someone will buy us out", to hell with the consequences of minors and griefers signing up en-masse.

Is that the goal, to sell Linden Lab, to cash out? I know the chance of an honest reply here is nearly zero, if that is indeed the goal, but it doesn't hurt to ask, right?

Hi Gigs! There were some of the same and related questions on this already... and Linden answers, including in Robin's blog:

http://secondlife.blogs.com/change/

Please do have a look at those for the current news.

We're not cashing out. But we are growing rapidly.

Astute readers will also note searching for "second" on Google currently puts us at #1, and "life" is either #3 or #4--I've seen different things.