By Avatar JayR Cela
Back into the Way-Back-Machine, I first arrived into the virtual world SecondLife back in September of 2005, and Wow, was it ever Kool ! ( at least back then it was ) I had just started my recovery from a small stroke and severe closed head injury, so I felt the ability to get out beyond my physical confines was truly a tremendous feeling. I started joining different groups and meeting people. I attended numerous LL-SL related meetings in-world. And everything was good, and then suddenly Phillip Linden ( Rosedale ) decided to depart as CEO, and turn over the reigns to M. Linden ( Mark Kingdon ) Boy that was a Fiasco of Major Proportion's, the company seemed to split off into 2 separate entity's, corporate and artistic, with an emphasis on the potential possible windfall of $$$ to be had by the Big Wig Corporate influx of new paying users. SecondLife was no longer a fantasy land. During his tenure M. Linden rushed into place what is now referred to as Viewer 2. UGH!! I think just about all the Old Farts still left here in SL can remember that Black Hole.
Luckily V2 evolved intoV3, as Phillip Linden stepped back into the CEO shoes temporarily and all was well again. Or so we thought. Rod Linden former CEO of Electronic Art's was appointed as the new captain of the ship. It was at this point that SL suddenly started to become dark and cold as numerous LL in-world meetings were shuttered, the JIRA was gutted of proper utilization ( basically communications lines from the community to LL were severed ) as the SL team of developers went upon their merry way with introducing all sort's of neat, nifty new features no one within the community was really asking for ( Does Linden Homes Ring A Bell - Large swathes of land with abandoned and mostly empty 512m parcels with bizarre looking prefab homes ) Path-finding also another flop, managed to sneak in. Mesh, still a disaster in waiting as far as apparel is concerned. I really figured Rod could pull it off, but a certain air of aloofness, seemed to be permeating the LL staff, as numerous Lindens were either let go or simply resigned. I think the final straw ( or last nail in the coffin for Rodvik ) was the C.H.U.I. interface, no one in the development team or the alpha-beta tester's liked it. But it not only was eventually pushed through. ( after holding up other of much more pressing problems that needed solving ). And to much dismay it has turned out to be a complete flop as well. However time moves on, and Rodvick decided it was a good idea to start throwing as much crap against the wall as possible in order to defeat the Evil Third Party Viewer Developers, whom by the way were making the official LL-SL viewer developers look like a bunch of totally out of touch with reality people. ( Subsequently Viewer Name Tags were banned, too many people were using TPV's and making the Lab look bad ) Burning Man was no longer going to be supported by LL. neither was the yearly SL Birthday bash, Educational Institute subsidies were discontinued. Desura the indie game distro entity was gobbled up ( and soon to be spit back out, maybe ) some odd ball indie games were purchased and shortly thereafter shelved. The TOS was amended effectively screwing all of the independent content-creators of retaining their individual IP right's. Major private Sim's started closing, Mainland parcels were being abandoned at a rapid pace as well.
That's all I can remember right about now, the Big Konk on the head I got back in 2005 still affect's my abilities to think clearly sometimes.
So now we have Ebbe Linden, and from what I have been reading so far, this guy may be just the right fit into SL's odd-ball niche culture. By that I mean, as I see it SL is an artistic community involved within the RL worlds largest Virtual Reality sandbox. Ebbe seems to be a real person, he has been seen attending numerous SL event's, meeting together with prominent SL bloggers, and doing just about everything right that anyone could expect from someone with such an important position. I wish him all the best, I think he can pull it off.
I would like to offer a few suggestion's.
#1 There is a crap load of abandoned Main Land in SL, how about restarting the SL Moles team of landscape developers.
#2 Bring back as many LL employee in-world meetings as possible.
#3 Bring back the Educational Institute discount's ( In fact, how about donating entire parcels (sims) free of charge )
#4 Return Homestead limited use parcels (sims)
#5 Close Linden Homes ( no one uses them anyways )
#6 Embrace Hyper Grid and start contributing to the project again ( Hell Linden Lab & IBM created it )
#7 Get off your False Soap Box proclaiming individual IP rights will be protected in SL, while the company two-facedly and blatantly steals ours.
I am all about the TOS thing right now, I don't trust LL, if you do, that's your right to do so.
Myself I won't trust them as far as I can spit into a swift wind anymore. An example, I am currently working on a truly massive database of GPL sound effect's, at this point in time I have no intentions of devoting any time, energy, or support to the SL platform.
JayR Cela :(
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