"A Message from our CEO: Coronavirus and Second Life Operations"

With the Coronovirus continuing to spread and make news, Ebbe Altberg/Ebbe Linden issued a statement yesterday on the issue. It was to state that measures were being taken to ensure the crisis would not disrupt service, and asking them to show patience, and welcome, to new and returning residents.

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As concerns about the current coronavirus outbreak continue, we want to assure the community that we have taken steps to ensure that the Second Life operations stay steady while also helping our employees stay safe through this public health crisis. Our hearts and thoughts go out to those who have been affected by this unprecedented event. 

Second Life will continue to be available without interruption as we get through this tough time together. Due to our previous crisis contingency planning and the flexible nature of our distributed workforce, we are not expecting any changes to response times for support inquiries and payment processing. 

We know that Second Life serves a great purpose for our community as people seek ways to stay in touch with their friends and co-workers, as they grapple with new social distancing protocols, mandated remote work requirements, and other precautionary measures. 

With the closure of many universities and displaced conferences and events, Second Life also continues to be an option for disrupted organizations looking for new remote work, classroom or event solutions. To help, we recently implemented a reduction in pricing to a flat $99/month per region for qualified education and nonprofit organizations.

We are seeing an increase in new registrations and returning residents during this outbreak. Please be kind and welcoming to those who may just need a friendly conversation to escape from this crazy world for a moment or more. If you have a friend or colleague who is looking for a safe place to socialize online during these tough times, we encourage you to help them discover how Second Life can enable them to feel less isolated by connecting them to your favorite communities or experiences.

Like many companies across the globe, we’ve put into action new remote work policies for our employees to ensure that they can take care of themselves and their families while continuing to work from home. Prior to this incident, a large percentage of our company was already working from the “Moonlab” (that’s what we call remote employees’ locations), so we have been able to transition quickly and efficiently to a fully remote setup. 

For the past 17 years, Second Life has been a special place that brings people across the world together -- and we appreciate your trust and support as we get through this rough time together.

Ebbe and all the Lindens

Xiola Linden's Farewell Address

Xiola Linden left Linden Lab on January 3. But not without some final words. In New World Notes, Hamlet Au wrote about asking her if she had any "last message" for the residents of Second Life. Xiola stated the following:

Be open to change, but never stop questioning it. Constructive criticism is always going to be received more enthusiastically than attacks. It is very easy to get emotional about something that means so much to us. I know, from my own experiences with Second Life, that it's sometimes difficult to keep calm and Second Life on -- but I also witnessed that sort of emotional response grow into a lot of misinformation and unnecessary panic. So, it's a balance. But it is important and key, I think.

We live in a world where it can be difficult to not get jaded and overwhelmed, but Second Life is a world that we can control, and I have always felt very strongly about the positives of how it impacts people. How it impacts me. That is what makes it so strong. It should be the playground and sandbox that it is so great at being. A place where we can feel welcome and empowered. 

So, my suggestion is that everyone try to be more welcoming, and also empower one another. I know that may sound idealistic, but it's a very simple concept when you think about it. That is what builds an incredible community. That is the principle that I always strive to bring to my work with any community, and one I think that everyone can benefit from practicing from time to time. 

Xiola reminded that she wouldn't be really gone, but still had her standard account and will be coming back, "Sometimes it might be just 5 to 15 minutes, others it will be for an hour or more for things like live music or just hanging out ... I'd like to get back into making stuff if I can find the time because I love clothes in SL so much, but sometimes have a hard time finding my style. I like to change outfits right before I log off, so it's like a surprise when I log in next, because I forget what I changed into."

So if your place in Second Life welcomes residents from all around, one of them someday soon just might be Xiola.

The picture was one of two Xiola sent to Hamlet, "The cheese one is closest to my heart because it's cheesy."

Ebbe Linden Speaks At The VWBPE Conference, Addresses ToS Issue

On Friday April 11 at 1PM SL time, Ebbe Linden (Ebbe Altberg) spoke at the VWPBE (Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education) conference. He spoke to a packed audience, whom had a number of questions.

One can get a summary of Ebbe's speech from Daniel Voyager, a review by Jo Yardley, and a full transcript from Inara Pey. Or see a video by Mal Burns:



(Click here if the video fails to load)

Ebbe brought up a number of concerns, including the controversial Terms of Service issue.

I am working with my Legal Counsel to try to try to figure out how we can make it more obvious – or very obvious – that the creators of the content own the content, and we obviously have no intent of ever stealing your content or profiting off of your content independently of the creators in some fashion.

The current terms might indicate that we might somehow have some plan to steal people’s content and somehow profit from it for ourselves, without benefitting the creator, and that’s obviously not our intent at all. It would be very damaging to our business if we started to behave in that way because this whole platform is all about the content you all create. And if you can’t do that, and trust that it is yours, that’s obviously a problem. So I’m working on that, and I can ask you right now to trust us that we’re not going to do what the current clause might suggest we’re going to do, but we’re working on some simple tweaks to the language to make that more explicit.

We also have no interest in locking you in; any content that you create, we feel you should be able to export, and take and save and possibly if you want to move to another environment or OpenSim, that should be possible. So we’re not trying to lock you in either. Obviously, it’s very important to us to get content both in and out, so I just want to put that right out there. 

These words were much more of an answer than the vauge answers given to the United Content Creators of Second Life group when they pressed the Lab for answers. So it seems finally the Lab, or rather it's CEO, has answered.

Different residents had differing views. In a UCCSL group chat I observed, those who had heard the speech were overall pleased, but, "He didn't say a clear position." Talking to some residents of the Sunweaver area, the opinion seemed to be cautious optimism to neutral. One commented the Lab had made promises before and failed to follow through, so would wait for more actions before deciding whether or not Ebbe was any different.

Time will tell whether or not this was the start of Linden Lab regaining the trust lost in the Terms of Service controversy.

Image from Gemma Cleanslate

Bixyl Shuftan