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Magnus Brody wrote:

 

I'd rather read what Ebbe has to say than read posts about spelling mistakes, but whilst we are on the subject, your use of the British vernacular "ain't", rather than the more universally acceptable "isn't" suggests that you really should have spelled "center" as "centre".

"Pep, is that you?"

In English language forums, I'd rather read English that makes sense, without the misplaced arrogance of the writer regarding his capabilities impinging on my perception of his competence. I am afraid that Ebbe's words lack content even before the built-in deniability of the "I didn't mean that; English is not my first language" excuse is raised.

And your time in Scotland has obviously dulled your senses to classic culture, since you have failed to recognise the intertextual references between my avatar name and lyrics contained in the seminal Eagles song. That's why the last sentence in all my posts is in quotation marks. It's in the original "Americanese".

At least I am not using pretentious archaisms, like "whilst", or do they still think that word is current north of Hadrian's Wall?

"watch 'em duelling"

 

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LaskyaClaren wrote:


 

However, let's get back to SL, which is a rather different ballgame.

Your argument is premised on two false assumptions:

 

 
  1. The interests of the consumer are identical with those of the merchant.
    Well, sometimes they are, but a great deal of the time they are not. For instance, I'd like to see protections for consumers in SL, so that we can't be merrily ripped off by merchants and landowners without recourse, as sometimes happens now. "Caveat Emptor" serves your needs, not mine.

     

  2. Second Life is primarily about consumerism.
    Well, for some people it certainly is, and there's not much question that it is important. However, while I do buy things, that's not 
    why
    I am here. What makes SL interesting for me, and for a great many others, are the things -- the art, the music, the reconstructions and gorgeous sims -- that are produced rather selflessly by people who aren't in it for the money. I myself ran a "business" for three years in SL,  making online literature available for reading for between 1 and 5 L$ per book. I spent 100s of hours building those books, and, given the price at which I sold them, I sure didn't get rich. But I did it because I wanted to. Thank god, there are many others who feel the same way, or SL would be a giant strip mall.

To reiterate: I too have a stake in this community, and I want my voice heard too. MY voice; not yours, claiming to represent me and the other unwashed masses.

Of course, I could go on and on about how Democracies are the main societal problem, but let's stick to SL.

 

I don't think any1 is saying the non content creators should not have a voice. The question of regulation is really about costs. The cost to regulate anything, is almost always higher than money lost because of unsavory players. The vast majority of unsavory players can be detected with just a little information. As you see now, there is much less fraud going on today, than there was when I started, as people catch on and tell others about it. Also, regulations keep new competition from entering the market and makes it easier for monopolies to form. The regulation also raises the cost for every1. How much more are you willing to pay to have regulations?

Ask any merchant how long it took to make a single product, and most will tell you they spent way more time than the price indicates. In the vast majority of cases, the creator will never, ever make enough to cover that time spent. Easily, 3/4 of the products I have made are not profitable at all, and the rest basically pays the bills. I've updated my most popular product, my Lycan AO, 5 times in the past 8 years. The last time, I spend a full month just on the avatar, and then another month refitting all the animation, which there are over 200. Why? Because I fricken love werewolves and lycans. Thank god many others do to. This brings me to my point, the reason I can redo the whole product like that, is because of those profits. If not for the profits, I would have to work on something else. By making profitable products, I also have time to make things that I know I will never profit on, or make a custom animation for some1, who could never pay for my actual time.

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No Phil I totally disagree with you. That is your viewpoint as I am exercising my right to express mine without judging anyone else.

At no point did LL ever say my content was to be deleted otherwise I would not have purchased it. They cleverly changed the TOS as while back stating that we agree that our content is thir property and now we know why. They knew they was doing this and covered themselves legally.

It might all be legit in law what they are doing but problem is, the majority don't like it as you can see through reactions in here.

Purchased content is just that, it belongs tot he buyer, digital or material. I purchased the bulk end of my stuff prior to being forced to sign a new toss before I could log in and access my assets again.

 

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Phil Deakins wrote:


Deej Kasshiki wrote:

I keep hearing about how this new platform will focus on content creators as king.
I want to know is how us poor schmucks (like me who have shelled out real money for almost 8 years now as a Premium member) who aren't merchants will figure into the equation?

How about being very pleased that you've enjoyed SL for almost 8 years, and the cost of the enjoyment is the money you spent having that enjoyment. When looked at that way, it's been incredibly cheap enjoyment, even if you don't get anything back by moving stuff from SL1 to SL2.

I'm not saying that I haven't, Phil. Of course I have. I just want to know where my wants/needs/desires figure in in this brave new landscape. I'm not asking for a refund or anything of the sort. I just don't want to be left out in the forthcoming discussion because so far all I'm hearing about is how the new shiny will be content creation foicused.

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Thanks! That creative freedom and social connections is part of the magic. We just want you to be able to make even better cats and have even better social experiences and for you and others to be able to share those experiences with many more people...spirit of SL but better...and, again, it will take time, but if we wait until someone forces our hand it may be too late, so time to go for it is now.

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DesperadoReprise wrote:


Magnus Brody wrote:

 

I'd rather read what Ebbe has to say than read posts about spelling mistakes, but whilst we are on the subject, your use of the British vernacular "ain't", rather than the more universally acceptable "isn't" suggests that you really should have spelled "center" as "centre".

"Pep, is that you?"

In English language forums, I'd rather read English that makes sense, without the misplaced arrogance of the writer regarding his capabilities impinging on my perception of his competence. I am afraid that Ebbe's words lack content even before the built-in deniability of the "I didn't mean that; English is not my first language" excuse is raised.

And your time in Scotland has obviously dulled your senses to classic culture, since you have failed to recognise the intertextual references between my avatar name and lyrics contained in the seminal Eagles song. That's why the last sentence in all my posts is in quotation marks. It's in the original "Americanese".

At least I am not using pretentious archaisms, like "whilst", or do they still think that word is current north of Hadrian's Wall?

"watch 'em duelling"

 

No, my time in Scotland has made me impatient with the supercilious, having nothing better to say than pointing out spelling mistakes made by those not writing in their first language, or indeed pointing out that living in Scotland may be the cause of slowness of wit.

My stupidity, or basic inability to recall the musical references of some musicians whose output I have no care for, is neither related to my nationality nor my geographical location; being as it is and has been for a few years, considerably far south of Hadrian's Wall.  My stupidity is proudly all my own work.

Now we have the marathon search debate behind us, perhaps we could read the views of everyone about the Lab's plans, and Ebbe's responses which have provided some re-assurance, rather than the pedantic corrections of a thwarted p®ep school teacher who believes geographical location has an affect upon intelligence.  Really, it would just save a few emails.

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Vinten wrote:

No Phil I totally disagree with you. That is your viewpoint as I am exercising my right to express mine without judging anyone else.

At no point did LL ever say my content was to be deleted otherwise I would not have purchased it. They cleverly changed the TOS as while back stating that we agree that our content is thir property and now we know why. They knew they was doing this and covered themselves legally.

It might all be legit in law what they are doing but problem is, the majority don't like it as you can see through reactions in here.

Purchased content is just that, it belongs tot he buyer, digital or material. I purchased the bulk end of my stuff prior to being forced to sign a new toss before I could log in and access my assets again.

 

Okay, then here's one of the things you actually "bought" and sorry for the inconvenience:

1a67-5565-3b64-005c-3567

Well, not exactly that, but what you "bought" in real life terms was actually a UUID number referring to a bunch of other UUID numbers which eventually get reduced to a whole lot of 1's and 0's. When you're connected to Second Life they create the illusion of an object. Not connected to Second Life? Useless as teats on a boar hog.

 

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Personally, hearing this and knowing people for what they are, I will likely stop buying and creating in SL now. It's clearly headed towards being a dead world. People are going to leave for both this one or for High Fidelity.

I don't mind that I have purchased tens of thousands of dollars of inventory over the last 8 years and will lose all that, it's always been clear that the game would close one day - they all do. The inventory had nice use and has no regrets attached. Just a shame that it's dead money.

But now, knowing that (1) the new world will be fully closed (2) content creators are going to be urged to leave SL (a loss of new content for this world) and (3) that inventory is unlikely to come over then that's it for SL purchases. Sorry content creaors but ebbe has made it 100% clear that anything bought from this point has a VERY short lifetime. And once the content creators go from SL, nothing new is here.

In the sunset of this game, I'll sit on my island with my friends, spend more time in OpenSim and increase my assistance to teh opensource high Fidelity project. (For me the choice of worlds is a partly matter of personal ethics, a fully commercial world is unappealing to me personally, just as Apple products are compared to opensourced Android)

I am sure there will be a few people who follow ebbe and flow into the new world of the Lab, but there will also be those who leave for high Fidelity, I'm likely one of that group, not just ont he issue of opensource, but once burnt by the Lab with this loss of inventory I won't trust them again.

In the end, with only the landbots in SL the lab will close it, erase the asset servers and destroy the code. SL11B is the last where people had hope, from now, anyone who buys any digital content in SL is doing so knowing it's a VERY limited life left on it.

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 I have had a profitable business in Second Life for the past 7 years. I have probably spent over $100K USD in tiers and purchasing items for my business, advertising and other overhead.  Whatever happens, I hope that the powers that be in Second Life will provide a way for me to not lose my inventory of over 100 homes and other products when the new SL arrives.  I hope too, that there will be a way to transfer my merchandise without the total pain of having to reconstruct all the textures, scripts and everything else I bought full perm but am not the "creator" of for each house.  I can tell you from experience that takes FOREVER.   

 Aside from that, SL2 could be a good thing IF tiers are lower, LI is higher and there is actually SOME customer service which seems non-existent at the moment. Taxing sales in return for lower tiers could work if SL doesn't get greedy. The merchants who make a profit have to get paid for their time and if they don't feel the return is worth it, they will go elsewhere. 

 As for the new Sl, it had better be almost perfect before they open it up or people will flock there and then flock right on back.  As a RL business owner I have seen it happen over and over to other businesses. I hope too, that those in charge of Sl finally come to realize that it's NOT a game.  It's a social arena that serves many purposes, financial, social and creative, but we are NOT here to play silly games so stop wasting time creating them like it's going to be the next big "thing". It's not.  Instead, please focus on the business, creative and social aspects of SL. Give us support, we haven't really seen that yet.  In the seven years I have been here, in spite of a very successful business, I still feel invisible.   Skye Varriale 

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I did not say I was shutting anything down. Where did you get that? I said we're going to invest in our future success in a major way. If you have long term interest in our (and your) success that should be good news to you. If you think I should have told you much later that we're making that investment, when I would have more details, then ok, consider that a mistake I made. Many people want to know that we are doing that and are very happy to hear it. You did not want to know that now, but rather hear a more detailed plan say six months from now?

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Oh Ebbe, one last thing I just considered.

As you change the course of the Lab and in-effect abandon SL and all the money we spent over the last decade+ for your new project, please be very careful to fully obey the GPL on all code you modify or reuse from SL. You are going to be closely watched by the TPV community I would say in that regards.

Oz at least has some idea of that side of it. A lot of the code in SL viewer, some of the best parts I would personally say, has come from the community itself not from your programmers. That code - if you use any of it - will force you to opensource your new viewer.

Mind you, that would be a GOOD thing.

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Callum Meriman wrote:

Oh Ebbe, one last thing I just considered.

As you change the course of the Lab and in-effect abandon SL and all the money we spent over the last decade+ for your new project, please be very careful to fully obey the GPL on all code you modify or reuse from SL. You are going to be closely watched by the TPV community I would say in that regards.

Oz at least has some idea of that side of it. A lot of the code in SL viewer, some of the best parts I would personally say, has come from the community itself not from your programmers. That code - if you use
any
of it - will force you to opensource your new viewer.

Mind you, that would be a GOOD thing.

the community contributions to the Second Life code are accepted through a separate contribution agreement. LL jointly owns those contributions, LGPL is how they offer them back.

 
 
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I am a Second Life premium member. After sleeping on my decision for two nights (and tonight with the news that Virtual Attire is closing over tax issues with Linden Labs), I have decided to move on to other worlds. It is not that I disagree with Second Life Version 2 (as the idea of a fresh world interests me greatly) and while I would miss the stuff I have collected in the short year I have been here, life goes on. Although, I do wonder about Linden dollar balances transfering to Version 2 as I think that is the real root of most people's anger and panic. So I would just like to say "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish".

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Let me put it this way...

 

We have normal residents who, now they know that SL's inventory can't be taken over and who will become increasingly aware that any money spent is 100% wasted, they, like me will reduce and stop buying.

We have content creators who, to get to sell in the new world will need to rebuild everything. Years of work lost.

We have TPV devs and patch submitters who now know that the anything they put into their TPVs or even right back to snowglobe could be used closed sourced. This is ethically wrong. Submissions made in the spirit of GPL and LGPL in which copyright was granted in good faith being used by the lab with a loss of opensource.

 

Does that make sense to you now?

 

LL has already burnt 2 sets of users, the TPV developers, a group of people LL have used for almost a decade to enhance their viewer, now look to be the third, UNLESS the lab are 100% sure not to ethically violate the GPL that I and others considered would remain in force.

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

Thanks Loki. I can't wait to see what you'll create in SL and then I'm just totally drooling over what you will be able to create in the next gen product! 

More likely that Loki and the rest of us Kid roleplayers (or Goreans or Furrys or Kidnap/Rape roleplayers) wouldn't be allowed into the new world.

 

 

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