The Alphaville Herald

18 Responses to “New SL Developers Circle Develops — Residents Cry FIC”

1. 

   Hiro Pendragon
   

   Feb 14th, 2006
   

   > “only concrete initiative”

   I wanted to add that while other brainstorming was done, this was intentional. The whole point was to get the ball rolling on the issue and create an interface for communication, not have 17 people decide on matters for the rest of the development community.
2. 

   Walker Spaight
   

   Feb 14th, 2006
   

   I’m down. Didn’t mean to imply you didn’t get any work done.
3. 

   Hiro Pendragon
   

   Feb 14th, 2006
   

   I didn’t think you did, but you know how readers can be.
4. 

   Qarl Fizz
   

   Feb 14th, 2006
   

   I M SMART. KIN ME BE DEVIPUR TOO?
5. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Feb 14th, 2006
   

   Ugh. Now, why am I not surprised that something that bills itself to be merely about “RL Work in SL” or about “just technically developing the platform” draws people like SNOOPYZamboni, who claims he’s not technical, and not developing or running anything or not in business (though he is in the Electric Sheep Company, maybe only because it’s “kewl”), but just um setting stuff up in now 30 cities and trying to be as influential as possible in the Metaverse? Or Gwyn Llewelyn who delights in subtely influencing everything she can in all kinds of not-visible ways?

   Actually, re: “some forum-watchers saw shades of a new Feted Inner Core developing around the proposed developers circle.” I saw this weeks ago, and thought up a new name for it, SIC, or “superior inner core” — and blogged quite a bit about it — these are people who actually don’t bother with the forums, but just more quietly do big things, often with RL big things, and just laugh at Prok spouting off about the FIC, and run and rule SL without the rest of us anyway, where we can’t see them lol. The FIC/SIC interplay is forcing a split in the FIC. The old FIC is now being jettisoned as “baggage” by the new FIC. You can tell who’s “in,” by noting who’s *not* commenting on Hiro’s shenanigans (Forseti) and who’s *out* by saying they weren’t invited and making pointed remarks (Aimee) and who’s even more out by not getting the memos or the apologies (Newfie).

   Funny to watch! But scary, given that in fact this sort of thing is EXACTLY what we mean by “government that isn’t government”. It *is* government by the school of politics that says “code is law” and it bears the most careful watching and probably strangulation in its cradle, not unlike Bolshevism.

   Walker, you seem to like to remain chummy with the powers-that-be like any journalist, especially with RL credentials, and you don’t appear very critical of this bunch, if you think it’s a “good idea” for a group to form and push the “developers’ agenda” if it is THESE people with their track record not only of unaccountable, secret, and non-democratic running of the SLCC (which they did in a tiny group) but many other things, visible and not visible.

   Who the hell decided THEY are the developers? And what are the developers! Developers don’t just develop the platform’s technical capacities — indeed, you can’t *let them* develop in a vacuum like that! Developers include people like me who develop non-inventoriable content and non-coded structures like business and communities, too. Of course, they could magnanimously include “anybody” in the group but they don’t really want to, and they don’t really get it; they want developers to be the techno-elite that they themselves can pick and choose and keep in good with the Lindens.

   And what about “evangelist Reuben Linden”? If I were a techno-developer, I’d have to worry about my “access” if all I got was somebody whose job description might read “company flak” — evangelism runs one way, pushing the company product, but does evangelism have an intake mode, where it listens to these high-end “pro-sumers” like Hiro who has taken the game of SL and made it the game of FL? Evidently it does, but I’m unclear about Reuben’s actual positioning in the LL food chain and decision-making chain.

   I dunno, I can tell you my own experience with him. I happened to get an IM from Reuben in which he said first that he wasn’t going to GOM me, and second, could he ask me questions about the rentals business after promising not to GOM me. I think Lindens are under instruction these days now to open every discussion with a resident with a promise not to GOM. Of course, hearing a Linden promising not to GOM, I hurried to cash out my Lindens on the Lindex into dollars, you never can be too careful!

   I figured Reuben was just about to help his confreres there at Kremlinden put rental tools into the client, and harm a lot of rentals businesses who have customized scripts, or put out even more of these freebie newbie communities that compete with my businesss and that of literally hundreds of other landlords renting out land and homes in SL for free or for low or high cost. It’s a booming sector.

   So I must have said 100 times to Reuben, don’t do me any favours, don’t get any ideas about “helping” me because his patter consisted about all kinds of ways in which he and his pals at LL were going to “help” me. He seemed to “get it”. Only time will tell…

   Reuben is intelligent, a “good Linden” as opposed to some “bad Lindens” (and you know who you are!). That is, he seems fairly fair, intelligent, straightforward, and doesn’t seem to be pursuing an “agenda” or have a hidden past as a resident who already acquired networks, posses, biases, etc. I could be wrong on that, but there it is.

   So since Reuben asked me a few basic questions about the rentals business, I spent probably 2 hours with him trying to get something across to him: the mainland and the private islands are different, deeding is different, etc. This would seem like an obvious thing to a Linden, who made the stuff, but it actually isn’t, because they don’t live it. Remember, it took the Lindens 8 sessions with some 40 people to grasp two basics of our world: the mainland can be sold but not zoned; the private islands can be zoned but not sold. Hey, now THIS is progress, trust me! REAL progress that we can build on, and I’m serious!

   Anyway, I view this developers’ interest-group FIC/SIC posse as just like any interest group, not something to buff up and bless as a prototype of a Microsoft-like partnership program.

   Let it come into being and fight for its interests, and let other groups come into being and fight for their interests, often directly opposed to the techernati scripterati FICerati rootie-tootie-wooties (how about that pernicious bounce script, Hiro!). Let what they do be available to public scrutiny — I’m all for the groups forums and the SL Volunteer forums remaining visible to the public and for LL to resist calls to hide them and have secret channels and Dick Tracy two-way wrist-radios like the Mentors are developing with private off-list chat to have secret chat in!

   The Partnership Program already exists in one form and by that name. It’s apparently the thing that enabled Suicide Girls to be brought into SL. Look on the website at http://www.secondlife.com to see it. If you have a website/community with enough hits that could potentially give the Lindens enough subscribers, and you past the kewl test, as administered by Wilder or Pathfinder or whatever, then you’re in. Both parties will help each other, etc. — read the blog.

   Developers? Well, this is merely Aimee’s idea of a union, but apparently started without Aimee in attendance ROFL. Maybe, as someone put in helpfully, it’s because she has a day job?

   It’s not really about “RL in SL” because lots of people who make RL income from SL like myself aren’t included — that’s just a silly cover to include just the people they want and give them heft and woofers and tweaters about how wonderful they are that someone actually pays them a consulting fee out of a government grant to go muck around in a virtual world (Like Hiro).

   Re: “A number of key projects have fallen apart in SL due to the informal manner in which Linden Lab refers work to in-world developers. Sources both inside the company and within the development community tell the Herald that both the SL Television project and Wells Fargo’s experiment in banking education — which could have been a flagship undertaking for Linden Lab — dissolved after the residents chosen to run them simply failed to meet their commitments.”

   I do wonder whether Democracy Island will join this list, but probably not, because it’s “product,” unlike SL TV or Wells Fargo, is harder to measure. I’m thinking some participants in these projects will have some pointed things to say about the commitment of LL and the other parties to *them*. But the probably persists, that LL reaches not for the excellent achieved by publicly-recognizable criteria, through public notices, bids out to three parties and review, standards, testing, etc. normally used to give jobs, but by a kind of “excellent crony patronage system” whereby the cronies who benefit are just figured to be cool because, well, they’re cool, and known as buddies from beta days or whatever.

   What astounds me, Walker, is that you could first write this very important paragraph, that should be emblazoned on memos today to all LL investors and officers:

   “Having Linden Lab casually refer such projects to residents is a questionable practice in any case. In most development contexts, third parties would seek out reputable developers on their own or through a partnership program like Microsoft’s, and would vet developers for their references and reputation, rather than simply taking a recommendation from someone at the company that developed the platform. The fact that Second Life is a new platform has no bearing. Software development is nothing new, and there’s no reason to think it should work any differently in Second Life than anywhere else. If you want your project to succeed, go to people with a track record. If you want work, demonstrate that you can do that job.”

   …but then go write the remedy as involving an “SL Developers’ Circle” run by the fanboyz like Hiro. Geez. That’s not the way to do it! What immediately happens is that when people like me bitch at their “star system” and feting, they say acidly, with enormous scorn, well, shouldn’t LL go to their own residents, those with a *proven track record*, those with a “demonstrable ability to do their job”? Isn’t Bedazzle indeed something “with a proven track record” with “demonstrable accomlishments” in the form of buildings or events sites inworld?

   Obviously, non-residents, in other worlds, or no worlds, aren’t going to be familiar with the building tools, etc. of SL, so the FIC can say, oh, well geez, you said go with those with a proven track record, and look, we built this giant public building in the modern architectural virtual world kewl style and called it a recruiting center or an instructional center, so we’re in! No matter that the thing looks like a giant public toilet. Or no matter that these are kids who don’t know how to manage projects, or adults who have a lot of big ideas about how to manage projects but from other sectors of life.

   I don’t see HOW you think this same bunch, including some of the very same bunch involved in the Wells Fargo thing, are capable of supplying what you say is needed, a quality-tested, impartially-selected, ready-to-go developers’ pool.

   Whatever the merits and individual talents of this group, their self-selection, their existent Linden feting, and the legitimate queries raised about them on the forums are warning flags all over the place. Just like the Lindens lame and lukeworm “developers’ list” which nobody really knows about or sees how gets formed, this group will have to be urged to keep an open “developers’ list”.

   Also, the free press has to remain free and keep a weather eye on them. Applauding something called a “circle” seems the wrong way to go as a step in creating an open, publicly accountable, quality-tested and publicly-reviewed process. It’s not a little “quality circle” that is needed under authoritarian rule. We have to ask, as members of the public, what has Hiro Pendragon made lately? Are there any NEW crossed swords at his store? Or has he given up making stuff for the inworlders, given that outworlders in the SIC tend to view inworlders as so many server load tests and green dots?

   Has he made something for the outworlders’ Democracy Island? Yes, but it seemed like some sort of glorified teleporter to take groups of people seated at a table and shoot them up in the air to have um “private discussions”.

   I mean, honestly, Walker, this needs a closer look-see.

   I am glad that you are giving some currency to the concept that just because SL is a virtual world and revolutionary, that it gets to disobey all the norms and laws — it is, at the end of the day, software, for people, for consumers. It can be developed, reviewed, market-tested in the normal and usual way.
6. 

   Walker Spaight
   

   Feb 14th, 2006
   

   Prok, to be honest, I think it could go either way. I’m withholding judgment until I see more.
7. 

   Hiro Pendragon
   

   Feb 14th, 2006
   

   Prok>
   My hope is that once the wiki and forum is up and communication flowing for any developer – that is, anyone who themselves choose to call themselves that – that I can start to change your mindset on this.

   > “what has Hiro Pendragon made lately?”

   http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/02/make_the_happening_mixedrealit.html
8. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Feb 14th, 2006
   

   Um, Hiro, I’m not sure what that Make website link is supposed to tell me. I realize that Make is teh kewl and l33t and stuff, yeah, got it. I realize you’re doing some kind of er “happening” as we used to call them back in the ’70s. Um, are you going to be playing Iron Butterfly’s Inna-Godda-Davida? And should I wear my tie-dye shirt?

   I realize that such um Happenings are the happenin’ kinda thing. In fact, I often schedule happenings here at [my RL home location] with [RL people] who get on SL and also have one foot in RL, and one mouse-click in SL and we [talk and hang out and do stuff]. I just don’t always put it on the events calendar!

   I realize that it’s unbearably cool to have a RL coffee-house with you all in it, and us in SL to do “Hello Avatar” and /wave and stuff. Woot! But…I still have to ask what you’ve done lately. Have you made any inventoriable content, Hiro? Have you done anything for the world we live in, the actual inworld-world, not the world of saloning and hanging out and talking about…other kewl new tools to salon and hang out with. (I’m not going to ask any RL questions like “have you made your bed?” or “Have you saved the people of Darfur?” or anything too hard like that).

   I mean, I’m all for salons! I’m having one inworld today at 3 p.m. game-time called “Who Develops Whom?” if you’d like to come and say a few words : )

   But…I still do keep asking: what have you done LATELY?
9. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Feb 14th, 2006
   

   P.S. looking forward to when I can change YOUR mindset, too, Hiro! Um…there…I see in the distance…ice…hell freezing over…
10. 

    TrannyPet Barmy
    

    Feb 14th, 2006
    

    hmmm Prok wonders what Hiro has done lately ………… I wonder what Prok has done lately, let alone specifically what Prok has done lately ‘development’ wise.

    I’m also wondering why Prok feels that Hiro wouldn’t be a part of this development group, not so much because of anything he may or may not have done lately, but simply because of his well known name in the SL development world.

    I wonder if Prok still feels that he/she is some champion/god of SL, and that compared to him/her every one’s elses acheivements are miniscule. No need for me to go into the whole lack of acheivement/ability on Prok’s part again, it was all covered in the TrannyPet Barmy interview thread It’s a good idea to not throw stones if you live in a glass house Prok

    I could say more on the Communication Standard mentioned, but i prefer to play that one more close to my chest

    TrannyPet Barmy
    The REAL ONE
11. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Feb 15th, 2006
    

    The public has the right to question self-appointed “development teams” and ask: what have they done lately? What have they created? What have they done for the world? For the community? Even for their own business? People who arrogate themselves to the head of some kind of cutting-edge “development circle” that’s going to not only advise Linden Lab but partner with it really need to be demonstrably superior.

    Of course, anybody can form any interest group they want in SL. Then other interest groups are also entitled to form and cry “foul” and cry “FIC”. Note that I don’t deny Hiro’s right to lead, or participate in something called the “developers’ group”. I ask WHAT he’s developing, FOR WHOM? WHO develops? And for WHOM? These are all reasonable questions for people arrogating to themselves the godlike powers of actually creating the world and its features.

    For example, one funny little idea someone had recently was to have “script bounties”. They’d put up ideas on the forums and offer money, and get others to pool money, for ideas for scripts that would “help the community”. It’s the quintessential tekkie-wiki. The oldfashioned way would be to have a start-up company with a good idea hire good staff and attract venture capital. In fact, that’s the old-fashioned thing that Linden Lab itself did in that old-fashioned meatworld. But of course, in virtual worlds, developers think they can re-invent the world, so they get up a kind of barn-raising or, er, wiki. A paid-for wiki, lol (usually wikis are free and are supposed to be open-sourced and are said to benefit the community — whatever *that* is!).

    So Hiro puts up $50k and others come along like Gwyn and put up $4k or whatever. Hiro’s idea is to have a website where you have an automated shopper service. That is, if I want a 50-prim men’s boutineer for my tuxedo, I post that on this http://www.mySLshopper.com and then within 30 minutes, someone has to start the clock to go racing around websites and inworld hunting for my 50-prim men’s boutineer, which I then pay them a commission for.

    Of course, there are at least 10 goofy things with this idea — all the fun of shopping is looking around, asking friends, and buying stuff on the way which you had no intention of buying. Shopping for others is hard work, and should have more than 30 minutes without this imposed, fake competition of others appearing to undo all the work you just did. It will easily be gamed as people prime it with their own lossleaders and fake shopping expeditions to amp up their points on the “reputation board” to make it appear that they are excellent shoppers. Etc. etc. The usual automated Internet junk designed to improve human relations and actually destroying them further.

    Of course, there may be someone out there for whom $172 USD is so attractive, that they’ll spend days wiring this stuff up LOL. What I liked best about this Hiro-size exercise is that he said he was doing it “because he didn’t have time but liked to give ideas to the community” ROFL.

    I think it’s important to keep criticizing pompous and ridiculous stuff like this that appears in SL, and whether or not I’m some profound “achiever” or not is besides the point. Hey, I sold $4 worth of Flamingo Court ashtrays today and at least a half dozen of my $10 Flamingo Court postcards, and several Aging Hippie Tie-Dyed Men’s Pajamas. I make $100 a day in content sales of stuff I just made out of the library or appearance mode. God, I love this game : )

    Um, I’m blanking on the reference to the “Communication Standard”.

    Yes, it’s very hard to get things done in SL, do I know it. There’s always a peanut gallery of naysayers and critics. Yep, been there, done that. And I’m going to be a particularly harsh critic, knowing just how hard this bunch harassed and bullied and intimidated me and forced me off the forums for doing simple things like buying a whole sim, parceling it, and selling it as zoned — and trying to defend property rights and decency (yes, hard to remember, but that was once a big deal attracting hatred on the forums! now there are dozens of new people doing it a week lol).
12. 

    HiroPendragon
    

    Feb 15th, 2006
    

    Prok > um, Hiro, I’m not sure what that Make website link is supposed to tell me.

    Okay, then… try this one:
    http://games.slashdot.org/games/06/02/15/1427222.shtml
13. 

    Jiggly Puff
    

    Feb 15th, 2006
    

    Can we get Philip Linden out on a stage jumping around screaming “DEVELOPERS” ?
14. 

    Mr. F
    

    Feb 16th, 2006
    

    I believe if somone has a desire to make a RL living in SL and provides enough content to meet this goal they should be allowed to meet with the lindens on this subject. Hiro should be allowed to invite whomever he pleases if he organized the meeting. Now, I also believe if I have the same concerns and provide significant content I should be able to meet with the lindens as well, either in Hiro’s meeting or in another venue.
15. 

    TrannyPet Barmy
    

    Feb 16th, 2006
    

    lol like that freak from Microsoft, lol that guy was a nut !!!

    TrannyPet Barmy
    The REAL ONE
16. 

    joe public
    

    Feb 16th, 2006
    

    Prok, why don’t you just shut the fuck up and post your long rambling bs comments on your own septic blog, instead of clogging up this one?

    wtf have you done lately anyway – except whine, winge and biatch???
17. 

    Nbkvqfw
    

    Jun 2nd, 2007
    

    http://18.pornfielity.info x
18. 

    Zmajrua
    

    Jun 3rd, 2007
    

    http://sextasexxx.info x

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