Being a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, it doesn’t take me long to don a deerstalker and a pipe. However for this modern day version, I require a couple of Watsons, namely Nalates Urriah and Inara Pey. The TOS debate rolls on, it’s getting ugly in some quarters. There has been much speculation about what it all means. Quite frankly I’m now coming to the conclusion that it means very little, but a window of opportunity may have been opened for content creators and Linden Lab.
Now let’s get into speculation mode, the first person I saw making the Desura link was Nalates Urriah. In that post Nalates makes the point that the terms of service change is a Linden Lab terms of service change, not just a Second Life terms of service change. For example the same terms of service apply to both products, although there are a couple of sections in the TOS that are product specific, it’s a one size fits all TOS.
Nalates also speculates that this TOS change could be a means to eventually allowing Second Life content creators to sell on Desura. This speculation has been growing as the debate has rumbled on. Some have said that it’s not likely because Second Life content is specific to Second Life, but if the opportunity to sell to the Desura market was there, that would change. Others have welcomed the idea of extending the markets in the Linden Lab product catalogue, one person even said the concept was “Freaking awesome“. That’s where opportunity knocks.
I do think there’s potential in this area and that plenty of content creators would find the idea of selling content to other markets “Freaking awesome“. However the wording of the TOS would mean some content creators would be reluctant to participate. Then there’s the damp squib part, that’s brought to us by Inara Pey who in her own post on The Desura connection points out that sections of the TOS that many find objectionable, are actually pretty much taken from the old Desura TOS.