The Forder Foundation

Linden Labs has announced changes in its pricing for XStreetSL.com listings yesterday, and the furor over it is still unfolding. In brief,  the changes are:

• For every item listed for sale in XStreetSL, vendors will be charged L$10 a month.
• For every free item listed in XStreetSL, vendors will be charged L$99 a month.

These are in addition to the commission of up to 10% for items sold via XStreetSL that the Lindens already collect.
I won’t go into the alleged justification for this policy, as it’s laughable and specious. The comment thread for the post contains several alternative motivations for the policy; a power-play by large-scale vendors trying to drive out competition, a money-grab by LL desperate to squeeze money from the platform, and so on. All of these are plausible, each is more plausible than any of the official reasons for the change.
Whatever the motivation, the exodus from XStreetSL has begun.
As a vendor with products on XStreetSL, the new policy effectively wipes out my entire business. My top-selling item goes is listed for L$10. I sell, on average, one of these per month. under the new policy, I will pay L$13 a month to maintain that listing. Unless the policy changes, I see no alternative except to pull my listings from XStreetSL.com.
I’ll be looking hard at Apez.bin for the next few days, but at the moment it looks like an in-world storefront is the best alternative.

My mainland parcel is intersected by Linden right-of-way on one side, and bordered by a different Linden right-of-way on the other.
I really want to know when the roads will be built, but apparently there isn’t a schedule for doing it.
I’d even build the road for you, but Michael says that you lawyers say that I can’t unless I’m a mole, and if I become a mole, I won’t be able to influence which roads are worked on next.
If you ask me to, I’ll sign a notarized letter indicating that I’m doing the work for free, and that the roads will be Linden property. I’ll use textures that LL provides, so that they match the rest of the roads, and so that there are no digital media rights issues.
I’d really like to have some roads built in Blanda.

The first time I met Eshi Otawara in SecondLife, it was a pretty dark day for me. I was in the depths of a deep depression that had set in sometime around the time that my divorce was finallized. I don’t remember exactly when it was, but Eshi was in the middle of her “1 hour sim” project. It was early in the morning where I live; I had not slept most of the previous night, and was dreading having to face another day at work. I was with a friend in SecondLife who was trying to cheer me up. We had found a pair of maracas that made you dance funny if someone said “manbo!” in the room, and we were cracking ourselves up hysterically. I don’t remember whose idea it was to go visit Eshi’s build, but I remember that we arrived just after she had wiped the sim clean to start over. I think Crap was there, and someone else. We started chatting, and then the maracas came out, and it got silly very quickly. By the end of it, Eshi had friended me.

To be perfectly honest, I had no idea who she was or how famous she was in the SecondLife community. I didn’t even know she made clothes. A few days later, I just casually mentioned to another friend that I had met Eshi, and the response was full of the kind of fannish fawning that probably is a big factor in Eshi’s eventual discorporation. But I never knew her as “THE Eshi Otawara;” to me, she was just Eshi, a person on my friends list. Only later did I realize that she really was a big deal, like when I invited her over to a small party only to have Pathfinder Linden show up and spend the evening in my virtual home.

The first time I met Irena Morris in real life, she threw her arms around me and hugged me. By contrast to our first meeting in SL, our RL meeting at SLCC ‘08 was a very good time for me; a few weeks earlier, I had met another SL friend for the first time in RL, and we were on our way to becoming partners in both worlds. I still remember Eshi’s beautiful smile, sitting at a table under an umbrella on the hotel grounds in Tampa. I only knew her from SL at the time; I didn’t know a lot of her back-story; the tragedy of losing her husband, the resulting problems with her residency status, the struggle to make a full-time living in SecondLife, these were all things that were hinted at but never a the focus of our conversations in SecondLife.

I won’t say that I knew Eshi well, and I can’t yet say that I know Irena well, but I’m honored to have known Eshi while she was active in the metaverse, and I’m certainly glad that I know Irena, whom I consider a good friend. I’ll miss Eshi in SecondLife; It may take a while for me to be able to wear the clothes that she’s made again. I understand why she’s chosen to leave SecondLife now; it’s not what I would have done, but I’m not Eshi. We all have to choose the path that we take as we muddle through these worlds we’ve made. I wish her the best, and hope that our paths cross again.

posted by Nostrum Forder on Blanda using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

I’ve occasionally performed live in SL, to reasonably good reviews by those who attended. (I assume that the fact that people who actually attended asked me to come back constitutes ‘reasonably good reviews.’) I don’t play live in SL lately, mostly because the logistics of streaming live got a bit harder because of my current living arrangements.

I’m also a land-holder in SL. I’ve got some rental space (mostly unoccupied) and operate a small low-traffic sandbox on a mainland sim that’s relatively low lag (I own most of it.)

There are several spaces on Foundation land that either are currently set up or could be used as live performance space. I’d be more than happy to let performers use them. I know that there are performers who feel that they should be payed by the venue. I don’t have a problem with that per se, but I’m not interested in being a “venue.” I’m not interested in making money, and I’m not in a position to offer the kind of support/infrastructure that running a venue requires. I’m not looking to drive traffic. I just like live music, and want to encourage it in SL.

So if you’re out there, looking for a space to hold a gig, drop me a notecard in-world or, comment here, and let’s see if we can come up with a place for you to play.

Several months ago, the Foundation undertook an effort to remove the ad farm microparcels in Belphegor. The effort included the creation of open-to-the-public green space, as well as some rental parcels to defray expenses for the project. At the start of the project, there were over thirty ad parcels (16m2) in the sim.

As a result of our efforts, along with changes in Linden Lab policies regarding microparcels and advertising, we have seen the number of microparcels in Belphegor reduced to nine. Those remaining parcels are as follows:

For comparison, the price per m2 for parcels 512m2 or larger within Belphegor at this time is between L$3.8 and L$15.

We will continue our efforts in Belphegor as long as it is feasible, or as long as the ad farm microparcels remain, and we will update this report periodically as the situation changes.