Reading Radar

A lot of different blogs, a lot of comments on the openspace rate increase. And so many of them are outraged and blaming LL for their use of openspace sims as residential or business locations based on the fact that LL double the prim quota on openspaces. “Clearly they MUST have wanted me to use this for my booming business!” goes the argument.

I remember a few years ago, a friend of mine and his wife bought a steam cleaner. They took it home, cleaned all their carpets, then returned it. I asked what was wrong with it. “Nothing,” was the answer. “We never meant to keep it. They have a great return policy and they don’t ask questions.” Saying that clearly LL wanted you to load the openspace sims with tons of prims, scripts, and avatars because of their higher prim counts is like saying clearly retailer X wants you to buy steam cleaners, clean the whole house, and then return them because they have a good return policy. Both are unethical and at best naive, at worst totally dishonest.

I don’t think the rate hike is a good thing either, and I don’t think it’s the way to deal with overloaded openspace sims. But come on, people, at least be honest about this, if you’re going to complain and leave SL in droves (which is doubtful, but we’ll see). Don’t make stuff up just because it suits your cause. If you really believe LL encouraged you to use these for other than the clearly specified purpose, you’re just engaging in a predisposition to see it that way to justify your use of it as such.

Well, LL’s new policy on Openspace sims certainly has people up in arms. And while I can agree that throwing more money at misuse of resources won’t help, I have to feel that most people overloading openspace sims knew what they were doing. I’ve seen it all over the place - estate owners selling “half-prim sims” to people, which are really nothing more than openspace sims, and not warning them about performance issues or overloading concerns. For that reason I do like the part in the new policy that the sim owner can’t be changed to anyone but the real owner of the thing.

I don’t think Openspace sims were ever publicized by LL as for being for us as anything OTHER than.. well, open spaces. Waterways, empty buffer areas for putting next to your sim, etc. That’s the whole point of them, as they’re shared four to a cpu on the servers.

I’ve been told by one particular Linden that they’re constantly getting support calls on these things by people who have them loaded to the gills with scripts and junk and wondering why things go wonky, or when they’re using them as residential or commercial sims and the other openspaces on the server are bogging them down and they aren’t getting the performance they want for their activities.

It does seem like raising rates will hurt people who are using openspace sims correctly, and I have to say if you’re running a water or other almost empty buffer sim, $125/mo is kind of hard to swallow. I mean, honestly, the prices per month for sim tier are a little high anyway, IMO. On the other hand, dedicated servers in the web hosting business are all over the map on price, and can go up to $500/mo or more, depending on if they are truly dedicated, virtual servers, how much support is included, etc.

Bottom line: The tier increase sucks, there should be a better way. But every time an estate owner has sold one as a residential island, or someone’s used it for educational or commercial “heavier duty than intended” use, they’ve been bending all the other openspace owners over and making them fall for the banana in the tailpipe. And now none of them like the consequences. For those who haven’t used them in ways they knew they weren’t intended for, it’s a huge shame you now have to pay more (or more likely, NOT pay more but not own them anymore), and for the rest of you, quit trying to get away with stupid, selfish, and sometimes unethical behavior you know isn’t really supported.