Phoenix Team Leader Jessica Lyon Speaks Out About New Third Party Viewer Policy

Yesterday on Feb 28th, Jessica Lyon made a public appearance to speak about the recent changes Linden Lab announced of their Third Party Viewer Policy. The Phoenix "office hour" took place at the Rockcliffe University area, and was in front of a packed audience with up to 150 residents in and around an auditorium at the intersection of four sims (Rockcliffe I, Rockcliffe Library, Agile 3D, and Rockcliffe Conservatory). Despite delays, sim crashes, a restart, and a troublesome griefer, the meeting went on and most of the people stayed or came back to listen. There was also the option to see the event over Treet.tv live.

Appearing with Phaylen Fairchild, Jessica told the audience she wanted to give her side of the matter, but be objective in doing so. She told the audience that the features showing users of the Phoenix and Firestorm what Viewers others were using and what their online status was would soon be gone. Other than that, the viewers would not be changing, and it was her impression Linden Labs would not be asking for any more.

Jessica told the audience that Linden Lab had first come to her several months earlier asking about the possibility that Phoenix could do away with the feature showing what viewer others were using. They told her there were reports coming in of "bullying" by third-party users on users of official viewers. Jessica stated she then went about with an alt using the official viewer, and had a few encounters that gave her the impression there was some truth to the Lab's claims.

What Jessica felt was the policy change that would have the biggest impact was the one about any further changes to the viewers would have to be approved by Linden Lab for use on official viewers, stating they wanted to preserve the "shared experience" of the residents. "I get it in principle, but," Jessica felt this would have a detrimental effect on further innovation as developers would be less inclined to spend weeks or months on a new feature and have no guarantee it would be approved by the Lab. She stated Linden Lab had the contrary opinion, that they honestly believed that their policy wouldn't affect further third party research.

She brought up the former Qarl Linden's work on a mesh deformer viewer tool to allow users to correctly wear mesh clothing, and how it had been Crowdfunded by donations. She cautioned anyone else interested in crowdfunding a viewer development would be subject to Linden Labs vetoing the project, and "all the money the community paid ... is wasted."

Jessica told the audience they were going to go ahead and do what Linden Lab was asking: submit further developments to them first for use on official viewers and awaiting approval before using the new features on new viewer updates. She felt as in the past year the Lab has been more active in updating new features, there was reason to hope, "We'll see how things go."

Jessica took some questions from the audience. Among them, would they design viewers for other grids. She answered, "Good question," saying it has never really been discussed by the team, but "not out of the question."

She did feel there would continue to be third party viewers and teams behind them, "(Like you) we're residents. We deal with the community more directly. ... I don't think (Linden Lab) will ever truly understand (it's users)."

Jessica gave the audience a number of links they could read about various perspectives on the Third Party Viewer policy changes,"Policy Changes" on the Official Second Life forums, Your Nymph, the Andromeda Media Group, "Stiffle Competition" on the Official SL forums, Inara Pey, Tateru Nino, Nalate's Things, Prim Perfect, Tonya Souther (the Phoenix Mac development leader), Ciaran Laval, and The Torch. Daniel Voyager also posted a number of screenshots of the meeting on his Flickr. Presumably, there will be a recording of the event available soon.

Bixyl Shuftan

*Editor's note* This article was slightly edited later in the day due to the rush job to get the news out due to public demand.

Newspaper Staff Meeting

Here we are (Xymbers is in the turtlelike "Koopa" av) in our office in Sunweaver Air discussing the paper and story ideas.

Linden Lab to Hold Monthly Events Meetings

Effective March 3, Linden Lab will begin holding monthly Events user group meetings for anyone interested in providing feedback and learning about changes to the Events directory.

The first meeting will be held March 3 at 2 p.m. (Pacific) and future meetings will be held the first Thursday of each month in the Hanley region:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hanley/159/209/27

Capacity will be limited, so we encourage people to arrive early!

For the March 3 meeting, some members of the Linden Lab events team will be available to discuss current Events listing policies and guidelines.

In subsequent meetings, Linden Lab staff will be taking broader agenda items from the community. You can always stay informed on previous and future meeting notes and times on the following Events User Group wiki page:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Events_User_Group

I'd like to thank Kalli Berman and Mankind Tracer for allowing me to attend the recent United Music Community forum. Some of the information from that meeting has been passed on to the Events team and many of those issues will be discussed in the first Linden Lab User Group meeting.

Best,

Brett Linden

Philip's Inworld Meeting: Goal of Making Second Life "Fast, Easy, and Fun"

On July 30th at 10 AM SL time, Linden Lab CEO Philip Linden (Philip Rosedale in real life) held an inworld meeting with a small audience whom had applied well in advance for the limited seating, randomly chosen through a lottery according to the Linden blog. Most everyone who saw it did so through video viewing through Treet.tv, either live or archived. The event took place at the Linden Estate Services sim, and was moderated by Wallace Linden, who stood out in what looked like a robotic pirate avatar. Also there was Chief Operations Officer BK Linden (Bob Komin in real life).

Philip Linden spent the first half hour giving a presentation. He noted a few points by critics, “Second Life ... it was big in 2006, but where are they today?” He seemed to feel some were just waiting for Second Life to go under, it’s continued existence an annoyance, “it just doesn’t go away.” He then talked about “tearing down the walls” between Linden Labs and the users of Second Life.

Then he brought up the new slogan for the virtual world, “fast, easy, fun. These words capture what Second Life must be as a user experience.” Philip also talked about going “back to basics." These were the two catch-phrases of the meeting.

Of “Back to Basics,” he talked about working on crashing and lag. He talked about an “attack” by the Lab on the problem of crashing until they reach their goal of reducing the crash rate and the impact of crashes. Lag he seemed to think would be a little tricker as many things contribute to it, but stated, “we’re going to attack that.” He talked about a new feature, a faster delivery of textures, which he called “http delivery of textures.” He also talked about separating chat from the servers so it would be unaffected by chat lag.

Philip talked about “winning back the lead” in their technical edge, though didn’t specify as whom this lead may have been lost to. He wanted to increase the rate of community feedback, “our plans and ... our source code will always be visible to you as we work on the product.”

He also held fast on Linden Labs continuing to work on Viewer 2, but acknowledged, “we have a big challenge. I know many people have been frustrated. Under it’s 2.0 release, ... we seem to have created a product that failed to satisfy ... any one group of users.” He stated it didn’t have all of the desired features for new users and lacked those familiar to older ones. He appealed for resident help in improving the viewer, inviting the open source community.

He emphasized it was his goal to grow the economy of Second Life, ““I’m not suggesting Second Life is all about people making money, but ...” He felt the success of the content creator was the “key driver” to the virtual economy. To help them succeed, For the near term, he wanted to have SL “optimizing the process” the residents get their goods. He admitted Search needs work, and told the audience they’ve already started fixing it. Of the process of getting and using virtual goods, he wanted an alternative to sandbox regions, so residents wouldn’t have to port from a store to another sim and rezz a box on the ground there to get the contents.

He stated he would be looking for an alternative to newcomers starting out at welcome areas, bringing them directly to a featured area. Of Second Life Enterprise, Linden Lab was suspending it, “stopping work on a behind the firewall solution.” He talked about wanting to create a better offworld shopping experience, “I know there’s a debate inworld” and insisted shopping on websites and inworld shopping could complement one another. Going back to lag, he brought of region crossing and how it affects sim performance, “we hear you, I couldn’t agree more,” giving an example of how it can interfere with sailing. Of mesh and it’s impact, “we’re very excited about it ... it’s potential on the economy.” But he stated they were being careful, so it would have no impact on lag, or actually help reduce it. Another goal of his, making Second Life work better for the disabled. He thought it could be done with the help of opensource development.

Before answering questions, he finally stated he was giving into those who complained his avatar look was shabby, “I’m committed to getting a makeover for my avatar,” joking that it was “negatively affecting the reputation” of those in clothing and avatar work.

The rest of the time was spent answering some questions. Among them, “If you could do anything over again ...?” Philip at first answered, “Hard to say,” then later felt they could “have been more honest and open” about fixing bugs earlier in SL. “What blogs do you read on a daily basis?” “... some of the most popular ones. I don’t want to call attention to any particular one.”

One question was more clearly answered within hours by the fashion industry than Philip, “How does fast, easy, and fun affect businesses?” It wasn’t long before virtual clothesmakers began making women's’ T-shirts with the phrase “Fast, Fun, and Easy.” No word from Philip on if anyone from the Lab anticipated this.

Source: Image & video from Treet.tv

Bixyl Shuftan

Eye on the Blog: Philip’s “Update on Strategy, Call for an In-World Meeting”

In his latest blog post, Philip Linden talked about what Linden Lab was doing, and announced there would be an in-world meeting soon, before the end of the month.

Philip came out to say Linden Labs had quite a bit of work to do in making Second Life more appealing to most computer users, and admitted Linden Labs was working on projects that it should have waited for until other things were taken care of. The Lab, he stated, was calling it’s current direction “back to basics.”

“First on the list,” Philip stated, “should be a big attack on lag and crashes, clearly things that very negatively impact all users.” Second, Philip talked about “need to more rapidly improve and innovate Second Life. ... in the short term you can expect to see greatly shortened release cycles across all our systems and ... lots of community feedback as a first result of those efforts.” He also stated Second Life would be sticking with Viewer 2, hoping to “very rapidly make Viewer 2.x the best and most widely-used Second Life viewer.” The negative reaction many residents have to the new viewer was not addressed.

Also talked about was Second Life’s “virtual content” market economy, expecting it to be around a total of $600 million US dollars in 2010. He wanted to “redirect efforts to improve and grow that market as quickly as possible. Making content and experience creators more successful is what ultimately drives the growth of Second Life.” He stated he wanted to make it easier for residents to buy and use products in SL, but did not go into specifics in the post as to how Linden Labs would accomplish this.

Philip wanted to talk about these, and other issues, more openly with the residents, “Before the end of July, we will also hold an in-world gathering where we can talk more about these plans and take questions. More details about how we can best get a big group together and talking will be coming in another post.”

Philip went on to say that Linden Labs would not be focusing on a web-based client, Linden Lab was “not planning to change Second Life to exclude any categories of users.” He suggested the work on that idea was being “reduced,” to concentrate on “a single effective system that is better for all categories of user” before it could go back to “how to customize it for different markets.”

He closed his post by thanking the Second Life residents, “in particular those people who sent me the many heart-warming email messages of support that I've received since returning.” He asked that the emails continue, saying that the questions and issues brought up in them were helping to guide his policies, I can't say that I can read or respond to everything, but I have gotten great value from many of the well-written thoughts I've received.”

For the complete blog and comments: Click Here