Also consider that at least some of the methods mentioned for html on a prim are replacing a texture with a URL feed, much like video streaming currently works. Other methods may actually be implemented of course, but if that is the case you’re only replacing one texture (so good bye plywood) with one other texture, whatever it may be.

I rather suspect that 10L isn’t designed to cover the costs. The current business plan more or less relies on premium members and tier in combination income from Supply Linden selling on Lindex.

The ecconomic stats page http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php show in October total uploads (textures, anims and sounds) L$8.4M, Nov to date L$8.7M. Stipends 96.1 and 90.7 Million respectively. Supply Linden sales 49.7 and 72.8 Million respectively. At L$272 to US$1 that’s about US$182,000 and US$268,000 in Lindex income, and rather less than US$10,000 for total uploads if they’re all replaced by LindeX sales.

Which do you think they’re more interested in?

On the other hand, a *lot* of those textures are stolen intellectual property, so if I were a platform owner I would jump at the html solution just to stay out of DMCA tangles.

(Virtually) nothing is impossible, but some things are more costly than others.

With most of your points, and the reasons why they have not been addressed in Second Life is probably down to the fact that either it would break the current 1st World financial model, through either loss of revenue directly from subscribers, or from “significant” investors pulling the plug.

I’d love HTML on a prim… but if that involves bringing textures in as well, thats a lot of lost revenue.

External investment is another thing which will also drive what features are seen next.

While its fine to have an altruistic view of what the perfect Second Life would be like, the servers, bandwidth, and salaries in the 1st World still need paying. And innovation. And innovation costs money. Lots of money.

If Linden Labs were already so minted that they could build a Second Life for free, and host it, you really have to ask yourself why would they? At least at the moment it is a fairly innocent innovation. The good old capitalist desire to make more money. Not greed. The money made is used in part to pay for additional hardware, staff, bandwidth, R&D, etc… Sure, the Lindens will make money too, but its their idea. They deserve it.

I have to say though that two years ago I gave a talk at State of Play, arguing that open source platforms like Croquet and Muppets was going to replace Second Life, and Cory Ondrejka told me I was full of it, and as much as it pains me to say it, so far he is right. One problem is those open source platforms are developing too slowly. Few people are working on them and in at least one case I know of a key person was hired off the project by Linden Lab.

The other problem is that the key to success is having a critical mass of users. People in social networks will tolerate crappy tools for an awful long time before they abandon a platform. social platforms are just too sticky. People are still in TSO, after all. I think the Lindens figured out it was better to be first and shitty than late and good.

I could talk about each point you make, but this is a blog comment so instead I’ll just say that Second Life cannot mature beyond its current form to be the metaverse as the Lindens originally conceived without a hard left turn towards opening the platform and supporting diversification of culture.

Imagine a world with only one ISP and only one web hosting company.

As good as your requirements are, there are dozens of equally important requirements for others’ needs and the only way to prioritize and address them is to figure out how third parties can build their own sims and join the grid without being capable of crashing the world.

What we have right now is a company town, and what we need is a network of global cities.