ugh, when I started reading all that, and then Inara's, I was feeling kinda good [or, at least, I was doing a good job of pretending]. and did some copy/pasting stuff to do my accumulated long post [thus leaving no energy for other long comments] for this month, and July also [possibly even August --and maybe all of 2015 too--].
So now I gotta spare you all [of those who even read my occasional nonsense..i.e. those insane people, over there...] for maybe tomorrow, or so, if I can manage it, to say more [but that is very unlikely, so you can breath a sigh of relief, now].
So, even though this will be long, thankfully it is less than it would have been...I need a nap now as I woke to early.
Keep in mind, the overall disclaimer, that I likely either do not know what I am talking about [my first choice] or I can't remember, or even that I may be mis-remembering, and don't feel like spending even more time on this refreshing my memory. I really just feel like commenting, and it is really nothing more than that.
Of course, nothing I would say should be considered to be diminishing other people's experiences and life accumulated knowledge in education or work skills. I am just expressing opinions.
I also don't really know who Qwyneth is, and it hardly matters to me anyways, I treat all people the same and respond in like manners. Typically down to earth folks like that, other types don't. I have no clue what kind of person she is.
This is just some thoughts, mostly passing, on my own little take on things, that likely, and understandably, will be ignored, and should be.
Quoting Qwyneth:
"So what I see as a major problem is that SL starts losing residents and landmass very fast, well before ‘NeXT Life’ is due, and LL’s revenue stream collapses. They expect more revenues from ‘NeXT Life’ to compensate, but… will the users joining ‘NeXT Life’ (almost all coming from SL) compensate what LL will lose with a shrinking SL? And, if the math doesn’t balance out on LL’s accounting department, then the big question is, what will LL do? Shut down ‘NeXT Life’? It might be too late — SL might not ‘recover’ those users again. If things go too far, they might come to a point where they cannot support the effort of maintaining the whole company — because the revenue from SL will be dwindling further and further, and the ‘new’ revenue for ‘NeXT Life’ will not be enough to compensate for the overall loss."
I think this, and other comments in the article show, and understandably so, a bit of tunnel-vision. Her article, as far as I read, does not mention at all the impact that will likely happen [and is now in a growing number of Meta places] of doing away with the SL enforced, old tech of land sizes...256x256 regions.
The use of MegaRegions here, and the now current VarRegions in core Opensim, would seem to me to show this plainly. I can't imagine those people designing the new systems would continue to use old tech limited landmasses in any new and current technology.
I very much expect that old business model idea will be completely different, and since it is often said that the SL land barons are the glue, in so many words, that sticks SL together, this aspect, alone, will cause large rippling effects.
"The difference under Kitely’s model is that Kitely is the sole entity providing servers for content creation. HF, by contrast, allows anyone to be a ‘virtual world provider’"
I don't see Kitely this way. I see Kitely as providing a stable, large, grid structure doing pretty much the same as is done in the rest of the hypergated Meta...that is, providing regions on demand, that have stretched the SL imposed limitations to be more in line with current tech.
Any who run their own simulators do this, but mostly not in a connected grid structure such as here..but they are on-demand, for the most part, simply because they turn their computers off. This is why Metropolis, for example, shows on their splash screen current overall reserved region map numbers, the last 30 days of online regions, and the current at-this-moment regions online [let's not speak of obvious omission by Qwyneth of Metropolis...lol]. Of course there are other differences. But this is all similar to the rest of the hypergated Meta, simply because they go along with current OS development.
"And obviously there will be a huge content marketplace — think about what Kitely is doing, selling OpenSimulator content to all Hypergrid-enabled grids."
I would not be at all surprised of this, as suggested in this article;
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2014/0 ... -fidelity/....
Heck, I would not be surprised at all if either some collaboration was done, or if Kitely was somehow integrated, or if they sold it to them...[or vice versa...wouldn't THAT be fun!!]
"They can, in a manner similar to OSGrid, just ignore content on HF’s ‘official’ virtual world, and create their own ‘underground’ servers. They can create a model where all content is for free, and all visits to each other’s servers is free, too — and develop their own location service."
Just as freenet and it's even deeper wayward son, darknet, does. And, all of the free non-commercial Meta, already does.
" it also means that no information about what you’re doing is being sold to third parties or advertisers."
I would never think SL does not use it's data in all sorts of ways, why would anyone think that? because they say so?
Seems to me, even not paying much attention to such things anymore, that data mining is done in all sorts of ways, despite, well, for example, what our own governments tell us....why would a commercial enterprise not use all the tools at it's disposal to further increase its profit margins, especially when you have a board of directions to answer to? because they say so?
"So all three competitors will start with a huge handicap: zero content.
Aside from the fact I disagree with the premise that there are only 3 competitors [opensim is vast and mostly uncounted], it also seems to my eyes that any arguments based upon any of those having zero content, are not valid. It is all just conjecture, and, afaik, based upon just a few words from Ebbe [am I missing something? possible]
Frankly, this over commercialized business model is outdated anyway, to my eyes, and I see the likelihood of more paradigm changers a'comin'...it is all based upon 11 year old tech.
"The next thing that the common resident will want is to keep in touch with their friends and communities. Here, HF is at the losing end: sorry, guys, you will need to start completely from scratch. Facebook, by contrast, offers you a different community right from the start: your Facebook friends will all be there."
I think this is a bit short-sighted at this point for sure [and yes, I did read her disclaimer at the bottom of her article to this effect]. I refer to the part about HF being on the losing end.
For one example, g+ has become quite a focal point for opensim activities now, and growing in that regard daily. There is no reason why other tech changes cannot use such concepts...I think it is a bit old tech to rely only on inworld ways of fermenting collaborations, acquaintances and friendships, anyway. A bit short-sighted, to my eyes.
Anyone who has not understood that, for all sorts of reasons, ones inworld contacts can be gone the next day, knows this well.
""In fact, that’s precisely the problem that OpenSimulator grid owners also face: many residents are reluctant to switch to OpenSimulator because it means losing everything. And even if you’ve joined one grid, that grid might fail — or all your friends might have moved to a different grid — and that means starting over and over again from scratch. That’s the reason why OpenSimulator grids have been around for 7 years or so, but still failed to attract more than a few dozens thousands of users, and grow very, very slowly (even though their combined landmass is nowadays bigger than the SL Grid)."
I don't agree with this at all. In fact, this grid, alone, is helping people to be more free to exercise their adult decisions and not be fettered by the imposed limitations of all other commercial grids, of the closed mentality.
Kitely uses tech that is available for all users of opensim. The business model of locking in people with artificial limitations designed to increase profit margins at the expense of being more free, is going away...
The reluctance, to my eyes, is a result of disinformation, misinformation, and too few people trying to open people's eyes to the reality of this moving tech.
Yes, those people do need to be able to see clearly the advantages to such as Kitely offers, from the get-go, and yes, they will have to move their stuff out initially...but with Kitely and current OS, once this is done, it is available to be used anyplace they wish. Once they lay their content down in a region in Kitely, and save that OAR [world] they can run up their own simulator[s], upload that oar to it, and either enable hypergating themselves, or connect to other places, or just work on it inside the confines of their own computers.
So, no, it does not have to be a continuing upload thang, at all, if only more people can get the word out of the possibilities and stop letting the grids who wish to maintain such illusions hold sway.
The fact is that people have very good choices that more should be made aware of, that does not lock them into systems, and as more and more become aware of this, that, alone, will be changing things.
As well, opensimulator is run by volunteers, most if not all who have day jobs, and not for profit enterprises. Thus it cannot afford to pay programmers to further it along faster, and, in fact, Oren's contributions are the exception...he is, obviously, making some sort of money doing this, and it behooves him to support OS as it then makes the entire Kitely experience, and the rest of opensim by fiat, better.
And all grids, with the exception of inwz, run on the same software as their base, current depending upon the particular grid's owners and tech people's wherewithal. And with inwz, you can easily see that even paying devs does not mean they are any better than the rest of the Meta, in point of fact, they are growing behind more and more.
Same with SL, paying more money out to devs does not mean the experience is perfect, by any means, as we all know.
"will be not only possible in HF, but, free from any constraints existing in SL (ToS, prim limits, avatar limits, and so forth)"
Of course it will be much different, and I think, much more different than can even be imagined now, by most people...all those limits were imposed by the technical limitations --at that time-- which have moved far past that, and, of course, the profit margins they wanted to see.
"Although nobody knows how the land model will work, it’s expectable that they will have ‘wholesale retailers’ (the ‘land barons’ of today) because it’s more manageable for LL that way."
Yes, but in new ways that consider much larger landmasses [and, obversely, much smaller landmasses].
