What happens if Linden lab closes/shuts down

[ChinRey]

4 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

doesn't have to mean a lot of course.. but i get very suspicious when a company offers subscription renewal for a virtual product as old as SL  up to 3 yrs ..

Yes, that's a sign of cash flow problems and that shouldn't be an issue for a company as well established as LL. It's hardly their first get-some-money-in-fast campaign though so I wouldn't worry too much.

[Alwin Alcott]

1 minute ago, ChinRey said:

Yes, that's a sign of cash flow problems and that shouldn't be an issue for a company as well established as LL. It's hardly their first get-some-money-in-fast campaign though so I wouldn't worry too much.

i'm not really worried, just a little voice in my head but if a company "asks" /offers a 3 yr subscription, i'd at least expect to see some numbers about the product. while those are kept more secret than the Private Archives of the Vatican

[Drayke Newall]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

Yes, that's a sign of cash flow problems and that shouldn't be an issue for a company as well established as LL. It's hardly their first get-some-money-in-fast campaign though so I wouldn't worry too much.

Might not be their first, but it certainly is their largest to date. Usually it is a discount on the premium memberships. I could be wrong but its the first time I've seen them offering 3 years renewal.

I stopped renting my land in SL late last year due to the change as well as all the fee increases just to test the waters a little. With the layoffs and issues with Sansar uptake, the timing of the renewal announcement was a little concerning.

And no not a sky is falling post just an observation.

Edited January 17, 2020 by Drayke Newall

[ChinRey]

41 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

Might not be their first, but it certainly is their largest to date.

I was thinking about the get-your-region-grandfathered campaign a while ago. That may well have been bigger for LL than this.

 

[Lureo]

Is there any alternative server compatible with LL to pay secondlife. In case Linden Lab stop is there possible to have other servers?

[Qie Niangao]

56 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

I could be wrong but its the first time I've seen them offering 3 years renewal.

Dunno about the history, but they sure didn't want to offer three year renewals this time -- rather, we had to fuss about getting short shrift if we'd re-upped too recently -- and it was three years only for a lucky few whose billing anniversary dates were perfectly aligned with the renewal schedule.

But all this is a tiny blip on LL's cash flow anyway -- nothing like their original lifetime tier offer to charter members, back when they had scant revenue from any source so it really made a difference. I take this, like the occasional special Premium subscription discounts, at face value: they'd really like to get more Premium members, I imagine mostly for predictability and "stickiness."

[bigmoe Whitfield]

15 minutes ago, Lureo said:

Is there any alternative server compatible with LL to pay secondlife. In case Linden Lab stop is there possible to have other servers?

LL's server side is closed source and not open to being able to be connected to from the outside,  All we really have is opensim and that will not work with SL.

[mikka Luik]

Not really worried even if it is a short term cashflow push - very sure it will be for some wondeful improvements =^^=  More serious, doubt if it will provide all that much anyway but its pretty standard for business - in a way.

Even if available, still not biting. Not because of any long term worries (SL is more likely to be around in 3 years than I am) but because of these ongoing 'hints' about new premium levels. The last incentive I took was the switch/prepay for annual at 72 bucks, went from 3 months to annual even if it was a bit of a scrabble. Mostly because at the time the talk was of the 3 month going away. Worth it to me but not sure from the lab standpoint - they would have gotten 4 times whatever that rate would have been over the year *shrugs* Twice that as we had a plan to add another group member. Its cashflow after all.

More its a bit 'mixed message' really.

Oh and as to the original post - made plans for that eventuality a few years back. Any monies left at that point go away. Any stuff I make already lives locally.

[rasterscan]

There would be approximately 50 thousand horrified regulars. 

[Alyona Su]

2 hours ago, rasterscan said:

There would be approximately 50 thousand horrified regulars. 

True, and everyone who has never spent a real life dollar or Euro will go ballistic over losing their (pretend) money.

Edited January 30, 2020 by Alyona Su

[Mahala Roviana]

Worrying about it isn't going to change anything. Live in the moment. Buy that funky beach house, sit on the sand while in your first life,  snow pelts the ground outside the window. Stop wringing your hands about what might happen tomorrow. LIVE YOUR LIFE.

This has been a public service announcement. We now return to our regularly scheduled bickering.  

 

[BelindaN]

Bickering is what families do.....

[Mahala Roviana]

2 minutes ago, BelindaN said:

Bickering is what families do.....

I'd much rather be bickering here with my SL family than the fleshies.

[BelindaN]

4 minutes ago, Mahala Roviana said:

I'd much rather be bickering here with my SL family than the fleshies.

Me too 

[Chic Aeon]

Interesting that this thread started in the time just before Tilia :D. Resurrected now.    The sky is ALWAYS falling it seems, but this question has come up in other places of late and by folks who generally don't pay attention to the "sky is falling" theme.  So yes, some long time folks are indeed worried and yes, I do have a prediction because I have been asked and that caused me to seriously ponder.  Here is my best guess.

 

Some folks will go back, to RL or other  "STEAM-tpye" games, but there are plenty of people (many here on the forums I suspect) that view SL as PART of their real life.  Those are ones with decisions to make.   There are only two possible  inheritors of the SL population that I can see  -- Sinespace and OpenSim.  

 

Here are the pluses and minuses for anyone who might want to explore their options (those folks that like to preplan their summer vacations looking and booking all the hotels and such will be the most likely to be interested :D).  

 

Sinespace --- 

 

This platform has been around a few years now and for the most part works well. On the plus side you get this gorgeous two story house with extensive yard (seems equivalent of a quarter region) for free. You can use this house or another free build OR make your own in UNITY.    The avatars are good except for the oversized hands which make me cringe.    You get 30,000 "silver" bits of money to buy things with to start off. You can also get special offer coupons to turn in for "gold" which let's you buy some fancier items.    

In this photo my skin was completely free (thanks Cora) and I purchased the hair and jeans with silver coins. The ruffled top was paid for with gold as well as most of the furnishings of my house.   

There aren't a lot of folks in Sinespace; it seems equivalent to Sansar or at least in that range.  Many things work very well, like the ability to try on clothes or see the furniture objects in a 3D rotating format BEFORE you purchase them.   There are body sliders, but some things are limited such as the big hands and thigh gap which seems impossible to get rid of :D. 

The biggest downside to Sinespace -- aside from a small crew and still being in beta -- is the lack of goods.    This -- IMO and that of other creators I talked to who have exited -- is because UNITY is cumbersome and slow. The process of getting even ready-made goods into Sinespace takes OH SO MANY panels of choices etc.  That could be fixed with some of the techie and talented folks in SL who actually ENJOY all that .   There ARE people wanting to buy. 

 

In my opinion, Sinespace would be the choice of the techie, creative types as well as many general users.  It CAN be free. You CAN spend money there. 
 

 

OpenSim  ---  

 

Opensim has been around for quite some time, almost as long as SL.  Many things work the same and you can easily upload most products to Opensim IF you are the owner of those products and have your files. The processes are generally the same.  

 

Lots of things in Opensim are free.  MOST things are not up to current SL standards. 

 

 

In this photo I have on the Ruth 2.0 free body and some great clothes from Remake in Savvy (hypergrid).   I used a legacy head as I wasn't too happy with the Ruth head and made my own collar to cover the seam.  Hair was free from somewhere long, long ago as well as skin. Both are likely stolen.  And this unfortunately is the downside to OS.  

There is content theft --- mostly items stolen from SL but also ones made in Opensim.   This isn't good for creators of course and most don't understand how very easy it is to steal in OS until it is too late.  There is an answer though and that is to stay on a single grid and not take anything that you would risk losing along with  you when you hypergrid (that's a whole long story for another time).   My best bet in the stability department is Kitely (based in Isreal I believe).  Kitely also hosts the store for all of Opensim.  You CAN choose to sell your products just to the people of Kitely (so not exportable) and it is the EXPORTING that brings about the risk of theft. 

 

Opensim has its own charm. It is pretty retro but the people are also usually very friendly. Not everything works but you learn to make do and scurry around things that you can't change. OS uses Firestorm as one of the viewer choices so there is no new viewer to learn. And again, if you are a creator most things import just as they would in SL.  

 

So I think a lot of more casual players as well as content creators that primarily "play" and just want "a little shop" would be more attracted to Kitely and Opensim as there isn't all that much you need to learn.  

 

And with that addition to this thread I am heading off to RL.   

[Maitimo]

I would probably migrate to Opensim. The content creation in Sinespace is more than I can handle but I can at least make some basic layer-and-flexi clothing in Opensim. 

[animats]

Next month, on February 20, 2020, two new virtual worlds come fully online - Sominium Space and Decentraland. They're both in beta now, and go fully live then. Sominium Space has very expensive land, very expensive items, and Unity building tools. So far the builds there are mediocre by SL standards.  Decentraland is cartoon-level art. Both have major "blockchain" and "cryptocurrency" components, and it's not yet clear whether the primary product is the virtual world or land speculation.

The virtual worlds business is picking up, after a long quiet period. That's good for SL, because SL's big problem is being ignored. SL is still better than the other guys. More buzz about virtual worlds is a plus.

And, of course, there's the elephant in the room - Epic. They keep talking "metaverse", and they have more resources than anybody else.

2020 is going to be an exciting year for virtual worlds.

[Beth Macbain]

Just now, animats said:

2020 is going to be an exciting year for virtual worlds.

But can you have sex in them?

[Chic Aeon]

14 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

But can you have sex in them?

You certainly can have sex in OS.    I haven't seen any way to be naked in Sinespace using the default avatars so have no clue -- assuming you mean naked sex :D. 

 

I definitely didn't like the look of Sominium Space  and UNITY killed creating for me in Sinespace. I spent 26 ish hours trying to get a pose (a POSE) from Blender into Sinespace. I even had help from a dev and eventually (only with the help) managed to get one pose into the preview server --- then found out I had a bunch more steps to complete LOL.   So I LOVE MY HOUSE there but will not be creating in any UNITY world.   Others can and I will SHOP. 

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

On 1/17/2020 at 12:33 PM, bigmoe Whitfield said:

LL's server side is closed source and not open to being able to be connected to from the outside,  All we really have is opensim and that will not work with SL.

Small correction: OpenSimulator is 98% compatible with Second Life, and it uses the same viewer. You just cannot transfer any content from SL to any OpenSim grid (and aye, that includes L$).

The main difference between both platforms is that most OpenSimulator-based grids may use slightly worse hardware and connectivity than Linden Lab, but there are some exceptions...

[bigmoe Whitfield]

19 minutes ago, Gwyneth Llewelyn said:

Small correction: OpenSimulator is 98% compatible with Second Life, and it uses the same viewer. You just cannot transfer any content from SL to any OpenSim grid (and aye, that includes L$).

The main difference between both platforms is that most OpenSimulator-based grids may use slightly worse hardware and connectivity than Linden Lab, but there are some exceptions...

Main difference is, if they connect opensim to SL, I'm out. 

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

8 minutes ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

Main difference is, if they connect opensim to SL, I'm out. 

Heh. They did this, ages ago: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Open_Grid_Public_Beta/Teleport_How_To

It was done as a test project in 2008 and only worked from the SL Beta Grid. As you can see, you could not bring your own inventory to an OpenSimulator grid, and vice-versa.

Torley (a Linden back then) did an amusing video trying out this feature:

But you don't really need to worry. This was only a proof-of-concept project. Linden Lab never intended it to become a 'feature', just show that it was possible. They had had serious discussions back then if it would make any sense to switch their simulator servers to OpenSimulator (thus freeing many developers to do other things instead), but shortly after this video was published, Linden Lab ultimately decided to abandon any such ideas.

I would personally welcome such a project (as I've blogged about a decade ago, there even was an inter-grid communication protocol formally developed, with help from LL, IBM, and others) but it's clear by now that this will never happen.

Note that since the so-called Open Grid Protocol was abandoned (left to rot on a shelf...), the OpenSimulator community picked up from the lessons learned and developed the Hypergrid Protocol — which had several iterations. The last one allows for a secure way to teleport ('hypergrid teleport') your avatar across OpenSimulator grids, with inventories, without allowing permissions to be overridden, and has been quite stable for years. It would be relatively simple for Linden Lab to implement it on their Second Life infrastructure, if they wished, and the protocol allows not only for strong authentication, but fine-grained control over what can be 'crossed over' and what cannot. For instance, inside OpenSimulator, content creators can flag their objects to be unavailable on different grids — and the Hypergrid Protocol will enforce that. Second Life could easily have all objects flagged this way, to make sure that none could 'cross over', unless content creators specifically allowed it to happen.

But, again, this is all in the realm of utopian discussions. It will not happen. It's technologically possible, but there is not an iota of intention on the part of Linden Lab to even put this to discussion.

We just live in different times.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

1 hour ago, Gwyneth Llewelyn said:

Heh. They did this, ages ago: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Open_Grid_Public_Beta/Teleport_How_To

It was done as a test project in 2008 and only worked from the SL Beta Grid. As you can see, you could not bring your own inventory to an OpenSimulator grid, and vice-versa.

Torley (a Linden back then) did an amusing video trying out this feature:

But you don't really need to worry. This was only a proof-of-concept project. Linden Lab never intended it to become a 'feature', just show that it was possible. They had had serious discussions back then if it would make any sense to switch their simulator servers to OpenSimulator (thus freeing many developers to do other things instead), but shortly after this video was published, Linden Lab ultimately decided to abandon any such ideas.

I would personally welcome such a project (as I've blogged about a decade ago, there even was an inter-grid communication protocol formally developed, with help from LL, IBM, and others) but it's clear by now that this will never happen.

Note that since the so-called Open Grid Protocol was abandoned (left to rot on a shelf...), the OpenSimulator community picked up from the lessons learned and developed the Hypergrid Protocol — which had several iterations. The last one allows for a secure way to teleport ('hypergrid teleport') your avatar across OpenSimulator grids, with inventories, without allowing permissions to be overridden, and has been quite stable for years. It would be relatively simple for Linden Lab to implement it on their Second Life infrastructure, if they wished, and the protocol allows not only for strong authentication, but fine-grained control over what can be 'crossed over' and what cannot. For instance, inside OpenSimulator, content creators can flag their objects to be unavailable on different grids — and the Hypergrid Protocol will enforce that. Second Life could easily have all objects flagged this way, to make sure that none could 'cross over', unless content creators specifically allowed it to happen.

But, again, this is all in the realm of utopian discussions. It will not happen. It's technologically possible, but there is not an iota of intention on the part of Linden Lab to even put this to discussion.

We just live in different times.

oh I'm aware, was apart of the interop that took place. 

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

I miss Torley.

Too bad the inter grid didn't pan out.

[Coffee Pancake]

9 hours ago, Gwyneth Llewelyn said:

Small correction: OpenSimulator is 98% compatible with Second Life, and it uses the same viewer. You just cannot transfer any content from SL to any OpenSim grid (and aye, that includes L$).

The main difference between both platforms is that most OpenSimulator-based grids may use slightly worse hardware and connectivity than Linden Lab, but there are some exceptions...

 

Opensim provides a similar end user experience. It is nothing like SL under the hood. 

Opensim does not perform poorly because "grids may use slightly worse hardware". It performs poorly because it has been designed around providing a (now long out of date) compatible SL viewer interface rather than providing a scalable grid-wide architecture capable of supporting tens of thousands of active avatars.

If SL drops dead. We will not all be going to Opensim. Even if only 1% of us went to Opensim, we would kill it and it would take significant developer time (months) to reengineer the parts that don't scale up the the standard required. By the time that work is done, we would have all moved on.

Opensim can not be fixed by adding more better faster hardware.

The entire online population on the biggest Opensim grid right now (Opengrid, 133 Online) could be simultaneously hosted on 2 SL regions. This happens routinely at SL shopping events.