MarkTwain White, one of the preeminent leaders of the SL Sailing Federation, stunned the audience of the Paisley Beebe show last night. He read a statement for Jack Linden that summed up the position of the gigantic Second Life Sailing Federation community. In essence, The Second Life Sailing Federation has reviewed the options available under the new Second Life land options (e.g. the Homestead Act), and they have determined that it will be technically impossible to conduct operations as a sailing/racing community in the new infrastructure laid down by Linden Labs.
see the Mr. White's comments on Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe Quick Time Viewer a must
Furthermore, Mr. White said, without an infrastructure to sail on in Second Life, there is no reason to continue the existence of the SLSF beyond a certain point. Mr. White stated that the SLSF has decided to purchase land in the Open Sim Grid in order to rebuild their community in an environment more supportive of sailing races on the Grid. He expects that it will be "at least a year before they can realistically expect" sailing to be viable in the new environment.
The crowd went wild both in the studio and in the party afterward, indicating that the sailing community is ready to make the transition.
I am happy for the SL Sailing Federation (in that they will soon find a new home) but awestruck that this cornerstone of Second Life (150 sims worth) is folding tents after so many years supporting sailing on the grid.
Farewell, Bright Blue eternity.. I will surely miss you!
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Wow - 150 sim exodus? Linden should certainly sit up and take notice of that. I'm sure it wasn't their goal to have people leave; their goal was to get people to pay more money to keep what they had. They read that one wrong, didn't they?
I have just started exploring Openlife, a virtual world on the OpenSim platform. It has great potential. You can purchase a water region with no setup fee, and only $10 USD a month, but there are no prims allowed on it. I don't know if that means for building, or if it would include boats sailing through. Hopefully they can be persuaded to reformat the requirements of such sims for the Sailing Federation and other such activities.
I assume the Royal Air Force (sorry if I got the name wrong; don't have it in front of me) will be relocating their dogfights soon for the same reason.
Linden Lab may have just signed their death warrant, at least as far as original creative content goes. But maybe that is ok with them. Maybe they don't want us anymore and would rather just create their own content and rent it out to a whole new flood of newbies?
Maybe it's time for a new home.
I'm not sure LL has quite signed their "death warrant", but they have certainly made a serious mid-judgement in their business plan. By taking the actions they did, they have unnecessiarly alienated a large portion of their customer base, re-enforeced the perception that LL does not care for the people who support their product, and with their "psudo-capitulation" with the Open Sims, frankly, look like imbeciles.
Open Sim has benefited from LL mistakes, and a number of other virtual worlds will be more than happy to entice disaffected SL residents. However, as you poined out astutely, madam, they probably wish to push their *own* content (e.g. the new Nautilus sim) at the expense of the creative communities in SL.
Indeed, perhaps it is time to find a new home.
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