Linden Lab Corrects Post in LCO Libel Allegation Drama
Linden Lab has fixed the post incorrectly linking to my blog account of Simone's lock-out from Legend City Online.
If you follow the link to Briana Dawson's post which misstated my post, you will see it has been edited simply -- and without excess explanation -- by Katt Linden as follows:
Last edited by Katt Linden : Yesterday at 08:40 PM. Reason: Title of post linked to is "SL Legend....Locked out of"
Note that LL didn't remove or "sequester" the post as they might have done in yesteryear when the forums were run by amateur Lindens -- residents with a heavy bias toward posters they didn't like -- Lindens who had five minutes before had themselves been residents with ties inworld. Of course, it's always possible that Linden made this rather surgical intervention, atypical of some of their past blunt-axe actions, because they don't mind seeing criticism of opensim worlds.
So, the post remains. The link to my article remains. All this is interesting, and since I filed an abuse report on Briana Dawson under the heading "harassment -- libel" -- it's interesting that such an AR works -- even taking 2 days -- and works with precision, i.e. not removing the entire post, or locking the post -- Katt merely reappears down the line to say "Don't fight in the SL forums" (it may get locked yet -- stay tuned) -- but just fixing one tiny part of the misleading headline, that used to say "Content Stolen".
The Sluniverse.com rabid junkyard dogs, of course, are speaking of me "selling Briana Dawson down the river". Nonsense. I contacted Briana inworld, and had a friendly conversation with her some days ago, explaining to her long before this lawyer's letter was filed on me that she had incorrectly referred to my post, and fanned the hated and allegations springing up everywhere about me. She conceded this in chat as follows:
Conversation December 29, *before* the legal "cease and desist" libel allegation was filed against me:
[8:50] Briana Dawson: someone just contacted me about a blog on LCO
[8:50] Briana Dawson: and is now giving me some notecard they say i wil find intersting
[8:51] Briana Dawson: oh ffs, this is just 1 sided drama
[8:53] Briana Dawson: no idea why that person contacted me.
[8:53] Prokofy Neva: yes I've gotten a number of these -- and I stand by the story of Simone. The chat logs simply shed more light on LaLa's dunning of her, and the reneging on the deal. Divas make deals that they seal with air kisses. They break down. Drama ensues. What else is new. But there are larger issues here.
[9:01] Prokofy Neva: And I do want to point out that YOU are the one, on e the forums, posting a link to my blog, and headlining it with a headline I didn't use, which is "Content Stolen". I said "Content Creator Locked Out" -- and that puts the content at risk. I did not make a claim it was stolen -- but LaLa hrself takes care of that for me by her beligerent posts about refusing to acknowledge DMCA.
[9:02] Briana Dawson: ok you are right
[9:02] Briana Dawson: i did dramatize it, and i was wrong for doing that, i really wasnt thinking
[9:04] Briana Dawson: i sort of let my dislike of Central Grid bleed over into that.
[9:06] Prokofy Neva: I don't know the story of Central Grid but by hearsay. But as you have headlined a forums thread that has the junkyard dogs now posting everywhere that Prokofy lies and makes false claims and libels lala for stealing things, you *could* come back and say, the issue is *LaLa's own comments about not recognizing DMCA". That's the thing tow orry about. And we will see what happens in the next 24 hours if her ISP acts.
[9:07] Briana Dawson: ok
[9:09] Briana Dawson: posted
[9:11] Prokofy Neva: thanks
[9:12] Briana Dawson: You are welcome :)
[9:14] Prokofy Neva: but...that was an underhanded, BDSM bitchy way to do it, so noted, and I won't be talking to you again. My story is true; your casting dispersion on its veracity is just a manipulative power-mongering thing you are diong for your own purposes, which remain opaque. Enjoy, not playing : )
[9:15] Briana Dawson: huh?
[9:15] Briana Dawson: wow
[9:15] Briana Dawson: ok
[9:21] Briana Dawson: hmm...muting.
What Briana had done was put in a comment -- later deleted -- that basically said, "The issue isn't Prokofy's biased reporting, the issue is DMCA and IP protection". I had said "thanks" before reading it -- when I did, a few minutes later I came back and blasted her as being underhanded -- of course, it was typically manipulative and dishonest.
So she refused to correct the title, and put in a lame-ass diversion -- and then even erased that later here out of spite when I called her on her bullshit -- she seemed fixated on the idea that people should raise my RL gender in this discussion, to pursue her own GLBT BDSM blah blah rights campaigns, and couldn't look at the sense and meaning of the main point. She also refused to concede I had covered this story accurately -- she was afraid of the gang of thugs at sluniverse.com who always beat up people in their ranks who get out of line -- or ban them outright -- so she went with the herd and characterized me as biased, and my biased reporting "not the issue" -- not acknowledging or changing her own flame-throwing.
There's a discussion of this story elsewhere on forums like Xstreet.com and various blogs, and all of them seem to have this theme "You can't believe Prok because he is crazy and prints allegations that aren't true".
But I don't print allegations that aren't true. In this case, I reported the story accurately that Simone Stern, after getting comped a sim and promised a deal in exchange for her free content, got locked out of Legend City Online. Can anyone point to me proof that this is *not* the case?!
Does that mean her content is "stolen"? I didn't say it was -- and not because I am "skirting the TOS" or "dancing around" because then, as now, I honestly didn't see it as such, but as a different problem -- the inability to make FIC deals stick when a grid owner will suddenly invoke code-as-law and the "system" which just "automatically locks you out" if "you have not paid".
Well, it is an unfolding story. When I first wrote this and publicized the problem, I figured within a few days, LCO would merely return the build, delete the content and account, end of story. It didn't occur to me that they'd play this game of "waiting for Simone to pay her tier" (fake) since they didn't have a standard subscription account set up with her from the get-go, by their own admission, and there was a clear disagreement about the deal. I figured it would be resolved, and figured it would *not* likely be resolved by LaLa endlessly selling Simone's content without her access to it -- although stranger things have happened in the Metaverse. (The whole issue of the value and cashout potential of these spacebux called "legends" is also at issue.)
Content creators like Lordfly, Chip Midnight, etc. reacted to the news of lack of *access* to content by instantly fearing content *theft*. And they are right to have that fear, although it isn't yet proven in this case. A TOS that says a company has exclusive rights to your content to display it on the service isn't a company that has swiped your stuff to resell it in a VW. That remains to be seen. The fears that developed about IP protection at LCO developed regardless of me, before I posted anything, and independently of anything I said, *based on LaLa Xevious' own blog posts*. THAT is what she needs to spend money on fixing -- not chasing me.
There's a lot of discussion on just what *is* the content management and copyright policy of LCO which you can read here in the original format that caused concern from content providers long before I posted the story of Simone -- this may be in the state of being revised.
The other point is that third-party content providers for these worlds not only have to GET IT IN WRITING when they make special exclusive FIC-like deals, they have to do DUE DILIGENCE and examine what kind of grid they are walking into. Does it have a board of trustees with financial responsibility? Does it have a RL name of a director and staff with RL addresses and phone numbers that don't lead to a P.O. Box or a boiler room? Does it have a verified PayPal business account? And so on. These are just the basics.
Meanwhile, as you can read in the lie-filled drama-laden discussion at sluniverse.com, there are calls to ban even the mention of me, with fearful clutchiness that this might bring "traffic" to my "blahg". ROFL. My blog doesn't hurt for traffic, and its purpose is not to gain traffic.
Joshua Nightshade obviously has a tie to OpenSim, founded by his boyfriend, Adam Zaius, and his protestations that he "doesn't like" the commercial grids is so much bullshit -- neither does Adam, the technocommunist who shrugged about lack of IP protection and commerce tools in his software, but conceded that other developers could build modules for commerce and permissions on top of the software he helped to found and develops. The point is, both of them have a stake in seeing various types of grids spring up from their platform OpenSim, and they are obviously going to take the side of their software customers.
There's someong named "Justin" who is referred to on XStreet.com as having an interest in OpenSim and these grids -- I don't know who that is.
But clearly those speaking against me either are joining the pack of junkyard dogs from hysterical rabidity and a history of hating me for years (Aimee Weber) or they want to bind and belong (the newbies) or they have a stake in LCO or OS.
It's surprising to me that given that awful, fierce tribal hate and conformism at this joint, that people like Io Zeno have stood up and said that I have a valid point, that there are legitimate concerns, and it was covered properly.
Chip Midnight, of course, has done his usual tarantella, pirouetting 360 degrees.
With his usual clutching, grasping fading-Sunset-Boulevard-type-glory (or is he more like Bette Davis in The Star? lol), Cristiano counsels everybody to shut up, stalk talking about it, put this dark thing in a dark place and never mention it again, we must all pull together, blah blah blah.
Why? "Sunlight is the best disinfectant". I didn't "goad" this LaLa Xevious, I merely reported her locking out of the very person who had convinced me to come into her world and take it seriously -- an incredible PR flop. That's all. And many others, all on their own, came to this conclusion.
As noted, they could still pull up their socks and right this trainwreck, which is not solved by killing the messenger. They need a public statement of policy and a welcome mat out to content creators in a written and documented policy for promotions with third-party producers. Merely reiterating DMCA law and linking to it is not enough.
The point of a virtual world is that it is *social* media which means it has people in it, and communities. The point of a virtual world isn't to provide an experimental playground for lawyers and prosecutors, especially gamers just out of law school, to use code-as-law and their own legal nihilism to gain control over other people, and create a climate both of litigiousness and lawlessness in virtuality. The place for legalities should come at the onset of the founding of the world, by a properly-constituted corporation with a board with fidicuriary responsibilities, with proper procedures, and lawful TOS -- the law shouldn't be brandished as a weapon to harass users, content creators, and blog writers.
Reminder: Anyone is welcome to post whatever critical and even hateful and nasty reactions to my writing they like here on this blog with two conditions: 1) you must use a *recognizable* first and last Second Life or Real Life or Blog Owner's name and b) you may not incite or cause actual SL or RL damages against me.
So spew whatever hate you need to ventilate -- by taking accountable inworld or outworld or online for it, as part of your track record -- not with a day-old alt or a fake handle. And If you grief my SL property or stalk me in RL, you will be banned.
What you need to do is get your agression out of the word and get it into a game of chess.
Posted by: AlterEgoTrip Svenska | January 04, 2009 at 01:35 PM
"Joshua Nightshade obviously has a tie to OpenSim, founded by his boyfriend, Adam Zaius,"
Each and every time you repeat this lie is a HUGE slap in the face.
Do you see the name afrisby anywhere in the first 20 commits?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1 | cw | 2007-01-31 20:10:13 +0000 (Wed, 31 Jan 2007) | 1 line
OpenSim initial import =)
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r2 | cw | 2007-01-31 22:09:20 +0000 (Wed, 31 Jan 2007) | 1 line
Making trunk; applying appropriate license to each file
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r3 | cw | 2007-02-01 00:15:47 +0000 (Thu, 01 Feb 2007) | 1 line
Cleanup
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r4 | mw | 2007-02-02 17:22:04 +0000 (Fri, 02 Feb 2007) | 1 line
Clean up
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r5 | mw | 2007-02-02 17:23:56 +0000 (Fri, 02 Feb 2007) | 1 line
Clean up. Added GridManager and teleport between regions/sims.
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r6 | mw | 2007-02-02 17:24:44 +0000 (Fri, 02 Feb 2007) | 1 line
Fixed missing files
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r7 | mw | 2007-02-02 17:41:51 +0000 (Fri, 02 Feb 2007) | 1 line
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r8 | mw | 2007-02-02 17:59:51 +0000 (Fri, 02 Feb 2007) | 1 line
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r9 | mw | 2007-02-03 19:51:52 +0000 (Sat, 03 Feb 2007) | 1 line
Added Basic Inventory support
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r10 | mw | 2007-02-03 19:56:19 +0000 (Sat, 03 Feb 2007) | 1 line
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r11 | mw | 2007-02-03 21:09:54 +0000 (Sat, 03 Feb 2007) | 1 line
Basic Inventory support and clean up
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r12 | mw | 2007-02-04 11:36:35 +0000 (Sun, 04 Feb 2007) | 1 line
Clean up
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r13 | mw | 2007-02-07 12:17:58 +0000 (Wed, 07 Feb 2007) | 1 line
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r14 | mw | 2007-02-07 16:52:49 +0000 (Wed, 07 Feb 2007) | 1 line
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r15 | mw | 2007-02-08 21:18:24 +0000 (Thu, 08 Feb 2007) | 1 line
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r16 | mw | 2007-02-09 20:01:07 +0000 (Fri, 09 Feb 2007) | 1 line
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r17 | cw | 2007-02-12 01:38:21 +0000 (Mon, 12 Feb 2007) | 1 line
[0000048] Animations
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r18 | cw | 2007-02-12 01:41:44 +0000 (Mon, 12 Feb 2007) | 1 line
[0000047] System.IO.Path combine path
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r19 | mw | 2007-02-13 20:27:14 +0000 (Tue, 13 Feb 2007) | 1 line
[0000050] Animations stop/start issue fixed
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r20 | jmalthus | 2007-02-14 02:36:25 +0000 (Wed, 14 Feb 2007) | 2 lines
Patch Applied regarding Bug #51
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You'll see only 3 people here: cw, mw and jmalthus
cw == Christian Westbrooke, who was at that time the server admin on openmv.org
mw == Michael Wright, the guy who famously posted "i've got a simple simulator working" on the libsl forums
jmalthus: you know who this i presume?
Posted by: Gareth Nelson | January 04, 2009 at 02:59 PM
This sounds like some sort of silly opensource catfight that is always interesting to follow as an example of the idiocy of the opensource movement, but means nothing.
Adam Frisby/Adam Zaius is universally recognized as a founder and developer of OpenSim, and appears everywhere at conferences and on the VW talk circuit and blogosphere introduced as having these roles.
A number of times people have bustled up and hastened to tell the world that he wasn't the ONLY founder -- but he "stood at the sources" for sure and is everywhere identified with OpenSim.
Read his own blog:
http://www.adamfrisby.com/blog/category/technical/opensim/
Read the very first post on the OpenSim blog:
http://opensimulator.wordpress.com/2008/02/
This is just so much trash talk from some goofball that has some grudge.
Look at Reuters:
http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/09/06/rival-grids-threaten-lindens-monopoly-on-sl-technology/
This and many other articles speak of "Frisby’s open source Second Life server code, called OpenSim".
"About 300 servers have installed Frisby’s open source Second Life server code, called OpenSim. DeepGrid, a network Frisby manages, has 20 OpenSim regions running on a near continual basis. While there’s no centralized inventory server, meaning that an avatar on DeepGrid can’t take objects from one region into another, users can cross region boundaries seamlessly, experiencing no disruption as their client connects to servers on opposite sides of the world. Another similar network, called OSGrid, connects ten regions."
"Frisby hopes OpenSim will be especially attractive to users in light of the recent spate of technical problems on the Second Life Grid. “With OpenSim, you can pretty much guarantee reliability, or at least be aware of downtime problems,” Frisby said. “Second Life is a game of Russian Roulette with the login server.”
BTW, I've been meaning to mention somewhere that Christian Westbrook AKA Christian Prior in SL is the "CW" of the copybot chat scripts fame. He worked for the Electric Sheep at the time. ESC worked overtime trying to say that their man was merely an observer. He didn't code in LibSL. He certainly didn't have anything to do with CopyBot. He didn't deploy it, etc. etc.
But...it's interesting to see that the founder of the renamed LibSL in SL group, called openmv.org is...Christian Westbrook. Now he is a former ESC employee -- he left more than a year ago and works in the mysterious Wello start-up. He and Jerry Paffendorf (SNOOPYB Zamboni in SL) were RL roomies back in the day they both worked at the Sheep. Jerry was present at CopyBot's testing and debut in SL, he thought it was a great frolick. Both of them are fun guys. I've hung out with them a lot and they're fun to talk to. We've repeatedly argued about CopyBot and Christian always looks at me with a total poker face and tearful eyes and says he didn't do anything wrong.
I don't know why I continue to think there is a lot more to this story ROFL. If you had been in these convos, you would too. This mere observer who had NOTHING to do with LibSL according to hastily propagandizing ESC executives at the time later led the group into opensimulator with a revised name and continues to develop there. And God bless him, he's very creative and interesting. But he has that same wide-eyed but cynical take on technology as all the code kiddies -- it just wouldn't occur to him to make something opt-in instead of opt-out, or to think of privacy or social issues.
It's too bad the dead can't talk, but one way they *do* talk is in your memory, and in your notecards in your inventory, and on your blog, and on your chat transcripts. And one thing that was definitely the case about Jesse Malthus' work in SL was that he was genuinely concerned about a) the terrible implications of CopyBot and the misbehaviour of other people in LibSl with it b) the griefing and assholery in LibSl in general, which he tried to deal with by having the hapless founder expel some of the idiots -- and failed.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | January 04, 2009 at 03:28 PM
http://www.ugotrade.com/2008/07/02/new-release-from-realxtend-and-modular-integration-into-opensim/
"I talked to Adam Frisby (one of the founders of OpenSim and CTO of Deep Think)"
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | January 04, 2009 at 03:36 PM
Michael Wright, for whom Wright Plaza in OpenSim is named, who is described by Justin Case-Clarke as "our dear founder" just isn't as good at PR and flogging himself in the blogosphere and RL media as Adam Zaius.
That's all. But Adam is definitely a founder and definitely a developer, and doesn't deny it.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | January 04, 2009 at 03:38 PM
"Adam Frisby/Adam Zaius is universally recognized as a founder and developer of OpenSim, and appears everywhere at conferences and on the VW talk circuit and blogosphere introduced as having these roles."
Despite the fact that he DID NOT found opensim as the empirical data (SVN logs) proves.
"This is just so much trash talk from some goofball that has some grudge."
You'd have a grudge too if something you put sweat and blood into was labelled as being purely someone else's work. I was around long before Adam and after he came on the project he pretty much hijacked it in many ways.
"he left more than a year ago and works in the mysterious Wello start-up"
heh, I know plenty about this one, worked for wello myself as a contractor.
"This mere observer who had NOTHING to do with LibSL according to hastily propagandizing ESC executives at the time later led the group into opensimulator with a revised name and continues to develop there"
From my knowledge, he was involved in some server admin work back in the early days of opensim, and the same server did ultimately become home to the libsl SVN repo too. He now serves on the board of the OMF (Open Metaverse Foundation) but spends most of his time with wello stuff - a project which i'm eagerly awaiting the public release of and from my own knowledge of is fairly big.
There's a lot of drama between some of the current opensim devs and the OMF for reasons i'd rather not hash out in detail here.
Posted by: Gareth Nelson | January 04, 2009 at 03:41 PM
you know prok, you keep going on about copybot, but I happened across some interesting information and the name of a very interesting long time member of SL who is associated with Holodeck, and states in his profile HE is the creator of copybot and has a TOS approved version of it out there on the grid.
I would have written down the name from the profile but I'm so dreadful with names, maybe you can dig it up Prok.
Posted by: AlterEgoTrip Svenska | January 04, 2009 at 03:46 PM
"Michael Wright, for whom Wright Plaza in OpenSim is named, who is described by Justin Case-Clarke as "our dear founder" just isn't as good at PR and flogging himself in the blogosphere and RL media as Adam Zaius."
He once told me (when I asked him why he isn't bothered about others claiming credit for his work) that "if I wanted to get famous i'd have called it MWSim".
Adam did NOT found opensim, even if this misunderstanding is common now thanks to people spreading it. Of course Adam is a biased party in this - he's not going to go out of his way to correct people if just letting things stand is to his benefit.
For the record by the way I take credit only for the stuff I actually did: the grid services framework, animations, some protocol analysis (the evil reverse engineering!) and misc small things. Michael Wright is an absolute genius in my view and deserves more recognition as the guy who did the work, even if he doesn't seek the PR.
Posted by: Gareth Nelson | January 04, 2009 at 03:47 PM
AlterEgo, you need to get schooled on what Copybot is, methinks. If it's Linden Approved, it's not CopyBot. I would make a guess you are referring to SecondInventory. It allows you to save to your disk data for items you own which you have full permissions on.
That is a far cry from what Copybot does, which is to save data for items belonging to others which you have no perms on. That kind of thing will earn you a ban if LL finds proof of you doing it.
Two completely different things. Circumnavigating the Permission system has always been a TOS violation, and hopefully alwyas will be. But who knows, LL seems prone to doing the unthinkable.
Posted by: Darien Caldwell | January 04, 2009 at 04:42 PM
Yes there are ties all over to Adam in Opensim? Does it matter if he founded it? He's obviously one of the core team. The more I dig the more I see the whole thing as a bunch of companies that are going to try to cash in on opensim. Kind of a baby dot com in the making without them realizing the virtual worlds bubble has burst. Opensim is just another open source project in the MUCH grander scheme of things. Even if Opensim were out of "alpha" can we compare opensim to Facebook, Twitter ...right.
The more you dig the more you see that opensim is mostly driven by the lure of corporate accounts. Just take a look at the developers page on Opensim itself: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Development_Team
It's all about the money ... yours. They're more than happy to recruit volunteer (or is that free labor?) folks into their fold and graciously allow you to make couches ... but don't try to touch the real money or start a service based company...looks like they're sewing that up pretty tight for an "alpha" project.
Adam also owns (sluniverse?), DeepThink, Azure Islands (among others) and partial ownership in that large animation company in SL, the name escapes me at the moment and I'm too lazy to look it up. Check out http://deepthink.com.au/www/index.php/Main_Page
So right this "hating commercial grids" line is pretty much a crock from them when you put it in light of chasing corporate accounts ... of course you have no interest, there's more money elsewhere.
So right, the sluniverse thing and "ban the Prok" looks like damage control to me.
I have to say, if anyone looks to be in the "right" here, it doesn't look like anything involving opensim. Prok reported the facts as were revealed to her.
Posted by: Dartagan Shepherd | January 04, 2009 at 04:53 PM
I'm not aware that Adam has any investment in sluniverse.com but perhaps he does, I just don't know. I thought Cristiano always held it pretty close.
The company you mean is Sine Wave.
And like I said, one has to ask where this 22-year-old GWM gets his money to spend and lose, and who wears the pants in this family.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | January 04, 2009 at 05:03 PM
Darien, it was on the person's profile.. not anywhere else, and this information can only be found by going inworld and looking up the Holodeck group.. and the person who is the owner (not the starter) of this Holodeck group.
These are not MY words, but then Prok seems to be linking the suspects of this "conspiracy" to this crime..
I as a creator avoid the delema of "CopyBot" and just the whole idea of IP theif as such, "yes if you can see it you can make it or copy it or make a picture of it and then... " but if it costs less to buy it than MAKE it, thats where you need to be. My friend Vidd even decided it wasn't worth the trouble to make anything for sale UNTIL I mentioned this, and now he's a bit keener on the idea of marketing his items.
Just me mentioning COPYBOT seems to make people uneasy here but the only psychologial effect is not due to the fear of having any rights and those few you have NOT being protected so I don't think its the "copybot" (and that WAS in fact the name of the ITEM) but rather the hype.
I'm more concerned about protecting my financial acessets on the grid and worry about these rumours of people being hacked into.
Then again, LL could always have an accident such as what they did to Arcadia Asylum... where her inventory was never recovered...
Posted by: AlterEgoTrip Svenska | January 04, 2009 at 05:07 PM
According to Bettina Tizzy's NPIRL blog, Arcadia's inventory was restored by "the prompt efforts of Kona Linden."
Posted by: Osprey Therian | January 04, 2009 at 09:21 PM
So although she didn't return, her inventory was restored after some complaints and fuss made by third parties.
Posted by: Osprey Therian | January 04, 2009 at 09:24 PM
(Return as Arcadia, anyway.)
Sorry, Prokofy - I seem to be fragmented at the moment so am making tattered comments.
Posted by: Osprey Therian | January 04, 2009 at 10:04 PM
says Macphisto Angeles on sluniverse.com:
"One thing about commercial grids vs. LL.
I was in Legend City a week or so back. A random person came up to me and started chatting about the grid some. In the course of discussion they told me they were a Linden (and which). I won't out them because that would just not be nice. I can tell you that according to her LL is not scared of the grids. In fact they are working with places like LCO and especially OSGrid (non-commercial) to figure out a way to make it all work together.
Now, that is no secret to anyone that has followed the gridnaut program, etc but the mentality of the Lab being stone cold afraid is not accurate according to her.
She was on her lunch hour at the time. I was VERY impressed with her attitude.
So, OpenSim may help LL in the long run to grow. At least the Lindens she works with welcome it all and hope each can work together in ways"
Whump Linden was thanked by LaLa Xevious for helping her developer her grid.
Any Linden relationship like this raises the question of how much Linden is sucked into anything that then goes wrong with these grids, and of any problems that emerge with their customers.
It's like OpenSim trying to wash their hands of the commercial grids using their OS software, as Joshua Nightshade claims they can do -- which is bullshit.
They have all come out from under Linden's overcoat.
The idea that Lindens "aren't afraid" is known; after all, there was a whole passle of Lindens that came hopping along with Zha on that interop hop, like Tess Linden. They love this stuff.
There may be different schools of thought on all this at the Lab, however.
What Linden should do is give these folks some pointers on how you build a FIC. The basic ingredients include:
o NDAs -- vital!
o Contests that have only one or three applicants
o Letters that say "You have won"
o All-expense paid RL trips to headquarters for face time and bonding
o Private inworld pow-wows
o Hidden alts that are residents on one, and staff on the other
The FIC structure, while unflaw in its essence, then at least creates a kind of semblance of order, so that all the perks, giveaways, insider deals, freebies etc don't lead to biting the hand that feeds you.
A model is Hamlet nee Linden Au, who is on what you might call a long tether, independent, but dutifully fanning Linden to his dying day.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | January 04, 2009 at 10:38 PM
*unlawful in its essence
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | January 04, 2009 at 10:40 PM
I remember when whatsis the ESC and machinima groupie lost all her inventory -- it was because when she logged on, and got that notice about inventory "caching something something" she impatiently exited out of it. I wonder if Arcadia did that. But are you saying that even after they restored her inventory, Arcadia still left SL? That's pretty nasty.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | January 04, 2009 at 10:41 PM
Prok said"The FIC structure, while unflaw in its essence, then at least creates a kind of semblance of order, so that all the perks, giveaways, insider deals, freebies etc don't lead to biting the hand that feeds you...."
I say: Prok the Idea of FIC is strictly yours... Your concept your lable, it has nothing to do with reality and yet you bring the people or these people closer together, if you really feared such a fictional group, (of your own creation) I would sugest you NOT attempt to polarize people into action.
I think your experiment worked, now you have a windmill to slaughter, while it laughs at you in your tinfoil hat.
Prok said: "I remember when whatsis the ESC and machinima groupie lost all her inventory -- it was because when she logged on, and got that notice about inventory "caching something something" she impatiently exited out of it. I wonder if Arcadia did that. But are you saying that even after they restored her inventory, Arcadia still left SL? That's pretty nasty."
I say: my inventory list is always doing that caching thing when I logg on, and I hardly ever loose any inventory (well it was returned but occasionally something I just wore goes missing for reasons unknown)
I have an older laptop I use Most days as its easier to be in the kitchen - but its just barely up to the minimimal requirments and thus I can not run anything else but SL in it. (I don't know if this is very sensitive information :P)
My 27 -28 thousand items take a while to upload on my list and thus it gives me a chaching message most every day. I don't think that can delete your inventory list the next time you logg on.. I've done it since I joined and have had no problems but Hazel has had her entire inventory disappear but get restored in a few days..
and we wring our hands and say.. "we are paying for this?" Arcadia is just an example of how it feels.. and for her it must have felt like a betrayal..
Posted by: AlterEgoTrip Svenska | January 05, 2009 at 04:33 AM
But things happen and it's not necessarily the fault of anyone. Saying "betrayal" makes it sounds like it was done deliberately, which is untrue.
Prokofy, Arcadia did not return, however I noticed a new account creating stylistically identical builds shortly afterwards and assumed she had made it. I'm not sure if that account is still around (I haven't paid attention).
Posted by: Osprey Therian | January 05, 2009 at 03:52 PM
Osprey, of course it was not deliberate, but it must have felt AS IF it were. I don't know as I haven't really had the experience, and I hope I never do..
But you can imagine how it must have felt with all the work simply gone...
P.S., Ospray I was standing beside you when you arrived at the party on Halloween, and I know you probably heard it many times before but I simply addored that plywood suit!!! :)
Posted by: AlterEgoTrip Svenska | January 05, 2009 at 08:34 PM
Dartagan,
Of course opensim is driven by corporate interest, pretty much all open source is.
Contrary to what you may think, people don't work for free. They may work for cheap, or even for reputation, but never for free.
It's a straw man to assume that open source is some altruistic thing. It never was about altruism.
This isn't a secret, and it's not a conspiracy.
Posted by: Gigs | January 05, 2009 at 09:22 PM
"It's a straw man to assume that open source is some altruistic thing. It never was about altruism."
Thanks for saying that - I can't stand when people accuse me of being an altruist. I recently explained my reasons for why I support free software on my new personal site that i'm setting up:
http://www.garethnelson.com/code
Posted by: Gareth Nelson | January 05, 2009 at 09:37 PM
"Chip Midnight, of course, has done his usual tarantella, pirouetting 360 degrees."
Allow me to clarify my comment made in reply to your initial story about LCO and Simone. I said that I was in complete agreement with you, and I was, and am, but not about the he-said/she-said aspects of the story. I can't take sides on that. What I agreed with was the over-arching concerns about IP protection on third party grids, especially given the strong anti-copyright free culture stance that's pervasive in parts of the open source dev community. I think those concerns are extremely valid, and as a content creator, they make me very wary of testing those waters, at least for now.
As for the dispute itself, none of us can know the full details of whatever arrangement they had (or thought they had). I thought Lala's claim that the account is on hold during a standard grace period while they sort out the billing issues, or contractual issues, or what have you, was entirely reasonable.
So I wouldn't say I did a 360 at all. I just perhaps wasn't clear enough in my earlier comment. Any he-said/she-said stuff you write I will always take with a truck load of salt, Prok. You aren't exactly noted for your objectivity.
"With his usual clutching, grasping fading-Sunset-Boulevard-type-glory (or is he more like Bette Davis in The Star? lol),"
lol. I'd go more for Mickey Roarke in Barfly myself.
Posted by: Chip Midnight | January 06, 2009 at 06:22 PM
Yes, you did do a 360, Chip.
Because first you were willing to acknowledge that I was right to raise the problem of the insecurities on third-party grids.
Then, the minute you saw the pack going the other way, you had to rush to explain that there seemed to be more here than met the eye -- although there isn't.
You are wrong that there is some kind of standard grace period. LaLa's own chat log lets us know that! I've said this 100 times, and you and other remain obdurate about it, only because a) I'm saying it and b) you're trying to get in good with the gang.
It's abundantly clear from that transcript that LaLa set up a series of deals with designers. And she comped them, and gave them upload fees, and implied they would get business, from all accounts. The deal fell apart, for whatever reasons. Rather than just cancelling the account and making a business-like statement about it, she is deciding to stonewall it and posture and throw lawyers at people.
I haven't said anything that is non-objective here. I've reported what happened to Simone reliably: she was locked out of a service after providing content, including a newbie store.
Please find a phrase in any of my blog that you can prove is non-objective or not true.
Find anything else that you like that you can demonstrate is not true. Truck in all the salt you like, it's bullshit -- your glory days are over, and your days of ruling the roost on the forums are over.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | January 06, 2009 at 06:58 PM