One of the things about being a blogger is finding something to write. A lot of the time a blogger finds the material to base their post on elsewhere, … actually this happens a lot. This post will unashamedly use material from someone else. The reasons for this are because the material is cutting, funny and relevant. I’m heading off to Twitter for this.
There’s a lot of advice going around on what Ebbe Linden needs to do to make Second Life awesome. Both SLUniverse and the official Second Life forums have threads full of advice. However one brave soul has been collecting this advice from Twitter users, adding their own, putting their tongue firmly in their cheek and creating a Twitter account of @EbbeNeedsTo.
Now some of these are funny, some of them may not tickle your fancy, you may found the whole thing a bit silly. The first thing to say is that you should ensure that you have your sense of humour turned on if you read that Twitter feed because some of the posts may be about one of your important issues or pet favourites.
For example:
Bring back Versu! Because… um… okay, you got me on this one. (What the hell is Versu, anyway?)
— Ebbe Linden Needs To (@EbbeNeedsTo) February 21, 2014
I mean come on, Versu is a brilliant project … that Linden Lab decided to ditch because they don’t think it’s so brilliant and they have a lot more information about it than me! Pah, but hey I can take it, healthy disagreement is good. I mean it could be worse, the account could be poking fun at SLUniverse, which is a site I think has a lot of good information on … oh wait …
Join SL Universe! Because nothing works better than following the advice of hundreds of jaded ex-customers who will never come back!
— Ebbe Linden Needs To (@EbbeNeedsTo) February 21, 2014
Noooooo! However this poking fun at suggestions and ideas is actually quite brilliant in so much as it brings issues to light and also brings to light the fact that we don’t all agree. Healthy disagreement is good. There are many more issues raised, far too many for me to post about here, but I will cover some more.
Change the Terms Of Service! Give us back the rights to the stuff we ripped from websites and uploaded into Marketplace!
— Ebbe Linden Needs To (@EbbeNeedsTo) February 21, 2014
Ouch! However the TOS does need fixing! There’s a lot of discussion about the changes to the TOS on the official Second Life forum thread Ebbe posts a response about the TOS:
Nobody knows what may happen in the future. But we have no intent to steal your stuff. I can imagine scary scenarios that are more likely to happen, that none us have control over, that would concern me more. I don’t see how SL as we know it could be successful if we started to steal your stuff. I certainly don’t see a business model based on stealing stuff that could last very long…so I don’t really see the logic in this conversation. It sounds scary to some of you but how it could really become a real problem I don’t really know.
I’m not as encouraged by Ebbe’s responses on the TOS as others have been. Ebbe makes the point that a lot of people have made, why on earth would Linden Lab want to steal content? Of course that would be a silly business move, but that somewhat misses the point. The question those who are concerned about the TOS change are asking is why do Linden Lab need a TOS that allows them to use content for any reason whatsoever? People agree in the main that LL should be able to use content for purposes of providing the service and promoting the service, but why do they need the any reason whatsoever provision? This really doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Open the JIRA back up! Because there aren’t enough places to complain and whine and waste developer time with moderating trolls!
— Ebbe Linden Needs To (@EbbeNeedsTo) February 21, 2014
Another issue dear to my heart, but the above tweet is fair and balanced .. along with being tongue in cheek. The old Jira did have complaints galore.
Bring back SLCC! At this point, you could hold it in a Motel 6, and the sponsorship would be the cost of a Starbucks run!
— Ebbe Linden Needs To (@EbbeNeedsTo) February 21, 2014
Ah yes, the poor old Second Life Community Convention, where the arguments started months in advance when the venue was chosen and the poor organisers were getting criticism from all sides. there was even a suggestion that it should be like Blizzcon. Actually that’s would have been a good suggestion if it was on a scale level. I mean trying to get a Second Life singer to perform, perhaps on Karaoke, but it wasn’t a big enough event to gather headline acts. However maybe the idea was that it should be more fun.
Explore Second Life as an alt account! Because Bruce Wayne goes around as his alt Batman, and Batman’s awesome!
— Ebbe Linden Needs To (@EbbeNeedsTo) February 21, 2014
Probably the best suggestion of the lot! Batman is indeed awesome. Maybe Ebbe is an alt, he seems to know a hell of a lot about Linden Lab and is a friend of Philip Rosedale, has anyone ever seen Ebbe and Philip in the same place?
There are plenty more suggestions on the twitter feed to laugh and cringe about. There are some important topics ridiculed, but they are topics people like to discuss, making them fair game.
I am also a bit worried about Ebbe’s take on the ToS issue. If it is to be taken at face value (that he can’t see the ToS become a realistic issue because LL doesn’t want to steal user’s content), it means he is unaware of the license incompatibilities and of 3rd party resource sites explicitly disowning Second Life.
Has Peter Gray and his team stonewalled the issue so badly that they have not even told the CEO about these aspects?
Three words: acta, non verba.
Pete talked on various forums and third-party sites, but no action has been taken.
It’s nice that Ebbe is talking about it, but until something is done, it’s just talk.
-ls/cm
I simply don’t understand what was wrong with the old TOS. This is the sticking point for me really, the old TOS seemed to give LL everything they needed in terms of distribution, delivery and promotion.
The third party content creators issue is an excellent point really. They didn’t mind the old TOS, even with LL needing to distribute their content, but the new one is a game changer.
Intent is not the issue.
😉
thanks,
-ls/cm
Stealing our stuff? This is precisely what the TOS did for LL – it redefined the relationship so it is NOT called stealing, and that is what all the fuss is about. When someone steals, you have legal measures to counter it, and of course a business run on stealing won’t be very popular. But this TOS says they can just use it any way they like and you have totally and utterly agree to that when you logged in. Oh, this is flogging a dead horse.
It certainly starts to feel like flogging a dead horse when LL consistently seem to miss the reason for the upset, which really isn’t hard to figure out.
However discussions between LL and content creators would be a welcome step for both sides to more clearly understand the others views and concerns.
A dead horse would be an issue that’s settled and done, like Viewer 1.
A almost-completely-dead horse would be last names.
A very much alive and screaming horse is the ToS and the RL full-perms that Linden Lab has granted to themselves for anything that touches their grid.
If this ToS had been around from day one, IBM and countless other business would never have come near the grid… which… maybe that would have been a good thing?
Nah.
-ls/cm
SL is unusable for all professional use since all rights are given away when it touches the grid.
No licensed material in any form can be uploaded, since the ToS requires you to give away all rights to material you do not have such rights for.
Even if LL “does not want to steal the residents’ content”, I simple cannot understand how these are not critical showstoppers for the platform. I honestly can’t see any line of thought inside LL which makes any sense about this. Yes, they may want to have the ability to move content to Desura. But as worded now, it is suicide. The only reason SL has not imploded is that people don’t care about violating licenses. Remember, the ToS claims right to *all existing* content, including what was already uploaded. So anything from a 3rd party library is currently in violation, and LL cannot be in good faith about this.
Indeed, some people at the time the TOS hoo-ha broke pointed out that some of the terms of third party sellers conflicted with the old TOS. However as those sites had a specific section in their FAQ’s regarding SL usage, that seemed to be a nod that it was ok.
The new TOS though, goes a step too far and I can’t for the life of me understand why LL can’t see that. If they want people to sell to Desura, then introduce additional terms for selling to Desura as an optional extra market.