Openspace numbers

Linden Lab can afford to lose some 40% of the currently online Openspace and still break even. - our grid: 26605 private estates & 5082 mainland - In June 2008 46% of all private estates were voids. Tyche Shepherd estimates that now 50% of all private regions are openspaces! - Thus, 13000 openspaces. - End result: at the 66% price rise, 5200 voids may disappear before Linden Lab will notice even a single drop in revenue. Oh, and they would save out on 1300 servers. But will loose about 20% of their landmass. No idea what I a ‘void’ or ‘openspace’ is? Start reading here. You have a lot of catching up to do!

Or want more numbers? More than 3500 votes on JIRA issue MISC-1776 Re: Openspace prices. - And 3000+ comments on the corresponding topic on the Second Life forums. I guess this shows your ‘active user base’ cares, Lindens?

From the Openspace frontlines

(Hey, if AP photographers may use posing & photoshop to report news, so may Vint! ;))

Openspace poetry

Some people bought Open Space Sims
Thinking they’d live there with prims.
But the land must be devoid
Or Lindens get annoyed
And they’ll increase the price at mere whims.

By Tymmery Thorne
(which you should not disturb if she’s in her happy place!)

Openspace thoughts

The Raymond Voids

Jack Linden at his office hour: ‘Onto the Linden Mos Ainsley region. This was and has always been on a full CPU, it was however originally built by the DPW moles on some Voids which had the lower prim setting. So when we moved them, that 3750 limit was still there, but they were full regions, not openspaces. So that caused some raised eyebrows, which I can understand. But it was just a config booboo. They were not openspaces.‘

If this is true, this is still only a ‘half’ reply to my question If Linden Lab is gaming us with their new openspace policy. No answer to this part: ‘Linden Lab was planning 4 openspace builds which would be sold along with new void sim orders. Builds which go into thousands of prims. That proves that they never intended Openspaces to be just empty land, like they’re saying at the moment, basically.‘

M Linden speaks void

In a statement provided by his publicist, Kingdon told Mr Hamlet Au, ‘We understand that this price adjustment will affect businesses and other projects of some our Second Life Residents,’ and emphasized the cost increases were only directed at select landowners, who have until January 2009 to adjust themselves to the new rates. ‘To be clear,’ Kingdon continued, ‘this price adjustment affects only a portion of land in Second Life; it does not apply to private islands or regular mainland property. We made this change to ensure an optimal Second Life experience for all Residents.’

Errr, Mr. M, if the above numbers are (even close to) correct, your ’select landowers’ is quite a few and your ‘only a portion of land’ is almost 40% of Second Life’s. Please take that into account, and then state again this change in the openspace pricing policy won’t influence the rest of the grid!

The Void Sim Creativity Tax Act of 2008

Writted by Zoe Connolly, “Avoid the Voids” - The Void Sim Creativity Tax Act of 2008 contains some very - painful - but fascinating thoughts:

I opened Google Reader and read Tateru Nino’s article on Massively. She highlights Jack Lindens response to the Openspace sims furor:

Jack implies that the type of usage is a more important factor in the pricing changes than the actual cost of usage, though to be fair, it’s an ambiguous pair of sentences, ‘We are saying that the use has changed, and continues to do so as people find more creative ways to use them. So the revised pricing is about recognising that change of use and the additional costs and value associated with it.’

The Void Sim Creativity Tax Act of 2008
So….no mention of some people abusing the original intent of the Void Sims.
Now LL recognizes your creative use of them…and taxes it.
See? It’s all good!
The greatest BDSM Master/Mistress roleplayers in SL are the folks at LL, and we’re merely their submissives.

Openspace vs. Immersive Workspace

On the Raymond Voids blogpost, Gally Young commented: ‘I’m surprised that nobody speak about the Immersive Workspace solution recently launched by Linden Lab for the enterprises… . Hmm. Guess that’s because we don’t think they are that impressive, and so no real use and are just more or less ignoring them? ‘I won’t be surprised to learn that the real reason of all this stuff about Openspace was to avoid to see Openspace competing with their Immersive Workpace (whose the prices will be probably higher than full sim and on which LL put a lot of hopes for increasing their profitability…). But I’m maybe paranoiac :)‘ Yes, Gally, maybe you are. But you would become that for less than a 66% price rise because of vague reasoning that keeps being changed.

Re: the openspaces vs immersive workspaces, the Immersive Workspace sims are “sims in a box” - meaning they’re not even connected to the main Grid. For more on this, keep an eye (or feedreader) on Dusan Writer’s blog.

Tags: immersive workspace, linden lab, openspace, policy, raymond, second life, void

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