What irritates me is how the land barons are playing the role of innocent victim, yet they have been making a profit over the past few months by buying cheap land and then using it to generate income. I have NOT heard any of these folks offering to refund their rents to residents who are now being evicted. In fact, I suspect they are probably directing all the blame at LL rather than take any responsibility for breaking the rules in the first place.

I could, of course, be wrong. Maybe I have missed some vital documentation that allowed folks to buy cheap land and rent it. Maybe the original blog that said, explicitly, “…not for building, living in, renting as homes” was wrong. I’d love to hear from anyone where I can find contrary information. In the mean time, I liken the land barons to the Wall Street banks, who after using sub-prime mortgages now want a bail out in the form of reduced fees for their OS sims.

please do not try to misunderstand me. I never said, that 4 Openspaces do NOT cause a greater load on the Grid than one standard region in a comparable situation. Actually, any systems architect with a minimum of experience and only a rough understanding of the grid’s architecture can tell you that.

What I am saying is:
(1) This is not a “surprise”
(2) When LL changed the specs for Opensims earlier this year and lowered the prices the big surge in demand for them was not a “surprise”
(3) Residents using them for residential purposes was not a “surprise” – but established standard in 2007 already
(4) Offering 3750 prims on such a region does not actually emphasize a use as empty “buffer” – or does it? ;-)
(5) Removing the requirement, that an Openspace has to be connected to at least one other sim, does not actually emphasize a use as empty “buffer” – or does it? ;-)

I leave it as an exercise to the reader, what might be the reason for the Lab to initiate a price raise of 66% – 150% for a product which obviously is in great demand. Let’s be reasonable: if it was Linden Lab’s intention to “protect Second Life/The Grid” from the ebil Openspace abusers – which REALLY IS a nice spin – there would be many technical ways to limit their load on the system. I am not sure, if you know LSL, but if not, ask someone who does and you will see, there are already a lot of “throttling limits” build into servers …

Or, let me ask you a rhetorical question: Do you really believe, that the OPEC is trying to save the environment, when they raise prices on crude oil? ;-)

p.s.: Its not really essential, when Openspaces were introduced on the grid. But please believe me that they do appear on my invoices from Linden Lab in the Spring of 2006; I checked :=) Even before that date, there were Openspaces for special projects (yesterday there was a protest regatta on Santa Barbara,Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and Santa Catalina. This cluster of 4 Openspace appeared on the grid even earlier …) You can easily verify this by searching the old forums. This information is available to the public. :=)

Please forgive me. I don’t say this, to win a senseless argument. What I want to emphasize is:

Openspaces are NOT a new product. Linden Lab has a lot of experience with them. They knew for a long time, how people are using them, when they invited people to use them even more intensely half a year ago by improving specs and lowering prices.

If you do the math, imagine the amount of lag and system strain that items can have on a regular sim that runs on 1 CPU core. Now imagine that running on a system that has a 4th of that, and you can see where the problem begins.

I feel that while many have become creative in their use of OS (and using it for things that it was not intended for) and while OS was given more resources (such as more prims), it was silly not to think that a price increase in the added use was to follow.

Small correction:
Openspaces were not “introduced in September 2006″. We bought our first ones in April or May of 2006 and we sell land on this type of region since June 2006. Linden Lab themselves introduced this product a few months earlier with a 4 sim cluster, which was used for a scripted sailing environment. (One might mention, that scripted vehicles do not actually constitute “light use” for a sim …)

As mentioned, there were never more performance problems with this type of land (some on Class 4 servers) in a timespan of more than 2 years, than on full prim servers. We hat three or four cases, where the customers had issues with script performance. These issues were solved with refunds or relocations. And there never was a case where a customer bought such land “accidentally” under the impression that he bought full prim land as you implied in your post.

Another small correction regarding “to offset a rise in costs to Class 5 servers when they were introduced”: When Class 5 servers were introduced, they were sold at the same price as Class 4 servers. Class 4 servers were discontinued later and the prices for new servers were raised – implying that the new prices were caused by better performing Class 5 servers. ;-) This is at least debatable as the cost of hardware and bandwidth fell substantially between the time Class 4 was introduced and Class 5 appeared on the market.

I understand the need for Linden Lab to improve its bottom line. I feel this need, too, especially after the Lab nearly killed the real estate market in 2008. But this should be communicated honestly, without trying to sell a business decision as being for “the greater good” and without insulting customers.

as one of the other commenters said: I have to respectfully disagree.

It is very, very, very hard for me to believe that this price explosion is happening because someone at Linden Lab was “surprised” about how residents are using the Openspaces and how this will effect overall load on the grid. Calling this usage “abusive” is adding insult to injury.

We at Otherland are renting out more than 100 Openspaces. Most of them are part of our sub-continent. Some are free floating. Half a dozen are used as spacers/buffers. We do that since 2006 when the first ones appeared on the market. It is the perfect material for our work. The number of problems or complaints about lag or generally low performance we experienced on this type of region (and we still use some class 4 based ones) is actually LOWER. We get more complaints (in relation to customer numbers) for our full prim regions. This is because nearly all of land is explicitely sold for RESIDENTIAL use and used like that. On the Openspaces you will rarely find more than 3 or 4 avatars at the same time. The total script time is around (or lower than) one millisecond on most of our Openspaces.

Some people – you among them – might not like the idea of Openspaces to be used as more than “buffers” between “real” regions. I have heard that opinion before. Usually from people who like to build and script a lot. Yes, if that is what you like to do in SL, an Openspace provides less performance and more L$ per prim.

Other people like to surround themselves with a beautiful landscape. For them, land on an Openspace is perfect. We have many, many happy customers who buy this kind of land exactly for this purpose.

Jack Lindens statement – and pointing to an obscure Knowledge Base article, that those regions were never intended to be used for more than water and forests seems at least to be a little hypocritical to me. One might ask, as others did, why Linden Lab doubled the prim capacity of Openspaces a few months ago if they intended them to be used as open water, forests, or deserts ;-) You can create a LOT of waves or rocks with 3750 prims …

Openspaces where a fine and rather popular product within our estate already before the latest changes. When those changes happened, demand soared. (NOT surprisingly.) Another thing happened, too: before the changes all Openspaces where connected to larger estates. In our case (with the Otherland Covenant) that made sure, people did NOT build clubs or malls there. I guess it was similar with many others of the better-managed estates. But with the relaxed rules about Openspace placement came a flood of single, isolated regions. Most of them where still used residential purposes. Some became cheap malls and clubs (anyone surprised here?).

So, the usage patterns, which Jack Linden described as “abusive”, did appear exactly because of a set of design and rule changes, which Linden Lab introduced half a year ago – which made this product especially attractive to this kind of usage patterns. Interesting, isn’t it?

Please do not get me wrong: I don’t think, that a higher price for Openspaces is not justified. Contrary to your assessment (which is fine for your preferences and needs), I do consider an Openspace region to be more valuable than 1/4 full prim region. What I find questionable is selling a few thousand items of a product first and then announcing a price hike of 60% to 70% for the running costs. Honi soit qui mal y pense …

To me this smells more like milking the market and not protecting the user experience (like Jack and M liked to phrase it). If they misjudged the resource demands of Openspaces they should admit it. If they want more many to prepare for bad times or an IPO, they should admit it. But accusing customers of “abusing” a product, when the majority of them does not put more load on those regions than on Linden Lab’s own Openspaces is insulting and bad style.

If “performance” would be the true cause for the price hike, there would be other solutions available, which would not destroy a lot of existing communities.