1. Well, I just started playing SL again, but I've always heard about the growing issues of bugs. It sounds like the letter idea made sense to a lot of people, however there's a reason it's pointless. The fact is, there's a very good chance that a large majority of LL's team is dedicated to the technical side of things - bug, databases, making sure it all runs like a well oiled machine. However, people forget that there is a creative side that may not be quite as good at fixing bugs in the system anyway. Now, we can just put a stop the to the creative team and make them toil with the other coders to maybe help fix a bug or two, or we can leave it as it is and let the debuggers do their job and the creators do theirs as well.

People also tend to forget that just because they are releasing new features DOES NOT mean they arn't fixing bugs. Updates usually come with bug fixes no matter what. It would be a waste to make an update with ONLY features. People need to calm down and realise that there is a system in place to handle it all. Maybe they could work the kinks out of that system, sure. Maybe it's just that SL is a complex game. I can tell you from a technical stand-point SL must be a nightmare.

Bottom line: Chill out. The bugs in SL are just like the bugs in any other online game and will get fixed as time goes on. SL is just a tad more complex so it's probably a little trickier to fix things.

Posted at 8:51PM on May 5th 2007 by Spex

2. If the Lindens had Proactively held the same meeting 30 days ago, and had given the same answers, there would have been no need for the Letter. That would have meant no bad press, no angry citizenry, etc., etc.

I'm happy that the Lindens deigned to speak to us. I'm still angry that they would do so only to prevent bad press. The actual CHANGES to Linden policies as a result of the letter and Town Hall Meeting are few and far between. (Are there any?)

The Lindens need to provide us MORE communication on a regular basis. And "NO", I did NOT put that on the JIRA feature request list. I cant' figure out if it belongs in SVC, VWR, WEB, or MISC.

Posted at 9:03PM on May 5th 2007 by Sterling Whitcroft

3. I didn't really expect anything different to come from it. All the problems were already known by them, being worked on by them as top priority, and aren't things that can be quickly fixed.
Most of the "new features" that are being done are completely unrelated, or done by a different team or company. Programmers aren't pegs you can just move around in the board so if anyone expected them to say "we're moving _everyone_ onto this" then they don't understand how software is developed.
As far as software projects go SL is an aircraft carrier. And those things don't turn very fast.
JC

Posted at 9:38PM on May 5th 2007 by Jaymin Carthage

4. Haha

Posted at 3:06AM on May 6th 2007 by Baba

5. Open letter had as much effect as was expected. It was not reasonable that we will get out world bugless this week. But it got media and Linden's attention. It is too early to do the aftermath. If it had any success we are to see it in a month or two. Maybe somebody took a bit of time and think about SL's future and plans in a different way. Maybe something come out of those thoughts....
I am too much of an optimist, right?

Posted at 8:17AM on May 6th 2007 by dandellion Kimban

6. While LL certainly needs to get some basics nailed, there will always be those who are not happy unless they are complaining about something or someone else - like bitching about RL traffic jams and how easy it is to fix them.

So this letter both gets some important issues on the table but also pulls the talking strings on the back of some chronic complainers, giving them cause for their sound and fury.

I am surprised though that items loosing their creator did not make the list as this seems to be a very key and fundamental part of SL's offering to me. What good is owning the IP if the object doesn't know who created it? How do you prove it is yours?

Posted at 9:07AM on May 6th 2007 by HatHead Rickenbacker

7. Hmm. Well, 'Go focus your energy on JIRA' is like saying 'please enjoy the BDSM'. Answers that pointed to JIRA were non-answers. If JIRA were effective, there probably wouldn't have been an open letter.

If I hear about a sculpted prim from anyone again, I will become irked. The sculpted prim is a feature which wasn't ready for showtime but apparently was whipped out so that those easily distracted would say... 'ooooh... sculpties...'.

Architecture wise - if Corey was predicting 250,000 concurrent users by the end of 2007 on his blog (yup!), then these architecture plans should have been in the process of being implemented during the 1st and 2nd quarters. Maybe they have been, but there's no tangible proof. And the way that they dance around land purchase/sale interface issues would make any breakdancer proud.

What do I think? I think that the open letter got a response as clearly thought out as the open letter itself. Read that as you will.

Posted at 10:46AM on May 6th 2007 by Nobody Fugazi

8. I understand that they can't just throw everybody at the problems, I understand that the creative team is different from the programming team, I understand that fixing the problems is their highest priority, and I understand that managing a system like this has problems I can't even dream of.

In return, I'd like LL to understand that when they announce great new innovative features while I'm still stuck without teleports or IMs or half my inventory, I couldn't care less. I have absolutely no enthusiasm about sculpted prims or voice or any other new features and I don't expect to for quite some time; I'm far too busy being frustrated at just trying to walk across a street.

Posted at 6:33PM on May 6th 2007 by Cabridges Fanwood

9. As the director and spokesperson for Project Open Letter, I wanted to offer a couple of comments. It is way too premature to call it a success or failure. It has not even been a week since the email went out. It has been an initial success - it certainly got Linden Lab's attention, as well as the attention of the media (which has responded with some fairly negative coverage of Second Life). Cory's response especially was quite candid, though the Town Hall was an enormous letdown. What happens next remains to be seen - but the work of the project is far from over. Linden Lab has not even officially responded yet. One thing is for certain - this is only the start.

Posted at 12:57AM on May 7th 2007 by Cristiano Midnight

10. Alas, some residents (not sure how many, but they certainly are of the more vocal sort) complain about _any_ added features. OK, that happened before the Open Letter, but I think the OL has egged them on.

Experience shows that _any_ program of any significance contains bugs. Putting off improvements until all bugs are fixed will postpone improvements forever, and LL can't afford to do that, however much people kvetch.

Devoting major resources to bug fixes is fine, but I hope LL will recall Brooks' Law: "Adding people to a late software project makes it later."Assigning people to portions of the SL software they are not familiar with may be counterproductive.

Posted at 6:22AM on May 7th 2007 by Melissa Yeuxdoux

11. I would think, given the names behind the letter's creation, LL certainly would have read and taken the criticisms under consideration. I'm pretty sure the public recognition and response to the letter was due more to those names than the 4,000-odd who signed the letter, for their multitude of reasons.

For better or for worse, I simply don't understand the need for such a letter. I log on and enter into quite an amazing immersive experience every single time. I look at all the thousands and thousands of hours of work, from people just like me, who have created this incredibly detailed and beautiful environment, for no other purpose than "creating an incredibly detailed and beautiful environment."

I go and read the letter, and I think: "What is it that's limiting all these people's experience, and why isn't it affecting me?" Tateru I believe you are from Australia.. I'm from Brisbane.. I look at all the things that the letter criticises, and I think: is it just because I log on when the rest of the world is asleep, that I don't see these troubles? Surely it can't be as simple as that. Perhaps it's that I'm lucky to have a strong, reliable ISP. Or perhaps it's because I've invested in a system built for high-end FPS games, which handles Second Life comfortably. For whatever reason, I just don't experience the troubles that everyone else seems to be experiencing.

On the five main points of the Letter: luckily I've not lost any inventory, but the 'clear cache' fix seems to help others; yes invariably search and friends drop from time to time, good point; everyone has experienced weird teleports and general 'instability', but Tateru posted today about 40k concurrency, no sky-falling incidents to note; yes build tools do seem to work better on low-populated sims, good point; and luckily I haven't experienced inventory delivery problems after a purchase, giving ample time for the transaction to process. All these things.. disastrous?

The thing I have noticed however, ever since (my) day one, is this: a never-ending torrent of complaints about some aspect of the service. And I'm not talking about things like Prokofy Neva's analysis/dissidence, or Clay Shirky's scepticisms of LL's promotional data. I do mean, every fella who's written some entry on the blog: "It's broke!! Fix it!! It sux!! LL sux!!" (I wonder how many of the signatories to the Letter really thought about what they were signing - would a lot of them have signed *any* LL-critical open letter?)

So I see and hear all this whining; thus, when I see something like the 'Open Letter', my first reaction is: here we go again. I try, and try, to have some understanding of the realities of the criticisms, but they just don't ring true to me in any sense, because for what it is, this thing works *great*.

Well there ya have it.. my negativity about everyone else's negativity. Go figure.

And I don't care what anyone thinks.. sculpties will be *excellent*.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/64711602@N00/485011303/

No I don't serve at the pleasure of the President.

Peace

Posted at 8:13AM on May 7th 2007 by Simondo Nebestanka

12. The letter had no effect... the town hall was pointless...

I don't understand why people still bitch about SL to LL... users bitch about problems, LL says we're working on it. Nothing has ever changed.

Posted at 12:18PM on May 7th 2007 by Doubledown Tandino

13. People who are complaining about SL need to put it into perspective.
SL is complicated. SL has lots of problems and bugs. LL is a small company.
Vista/XP is more complicated. Vista/XP has lots of problems and bugs. Microsoft is a HUGE company.
If Microsoft has billions of dollars and thousands of employees and they can't work out their bugs over a time period of 5-10 years, then why would LL be able to do that with what, 10s of thousands of dollars at their disposal and a team of like 20 people? In the end, it's about the same. If EA were working on SL, I'd bet they could put more resources into it and fix things much faster. But LL does not have those resources.
People complain so much about LL, but in the end, they're working as hard as they can. IT'S THEIR JOB. Do they just sit around all day responding to blogs or something? And besides, it's just a game (or whatever, you can argue with me about that some other time) that is for the most part free unless you are willing to pay them for it, which most aren't. If LL charged everyone to use SL, then I bet the bugs would be fixed much faster, but then how many people whould be bitching about that?

Posted at 6:42PM on May 7th 2007 by rp