[sldev] Re: [ARCH] Raw notes from the Second Life Grid Architecture Working Group.

[Lawson English]

Dale Glass wrote:
> On Sunday 16 September 2007 19:51:23 Lawson English wrote:
>   
>> Callum Lerwick wrote:
>>     
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> Users would no longer have to compete for space. You would no longer
>>> be forced to live your second life next to an obnoxious neighbor.
>>> There would no longer be a market for land sales. The market would
>>> become the CPU cycles needed to simulate your dimension, as it should
>>> be. Suck it, Anshe. :)
>>>       
>> And...
>>
>> You've just explained why Linden Labs won't support such an architecture
>> within its own simulators, at least not in the near future:
>>
>>
>> you don't threaten the income of your largest single customer with your
>> far-off-plans for expansion.
>>     
> My impression is that doesn't like Anshe all that much.
>
> On one hand, she's a huge customer. One they can point at and say "See? You 
> can get big bucks here". That's good to have.
>
> On the other hand, she's too big, and wields considerable power. She 
> threatened to create her own alternative to L$ in one ocassion, IIRC.
>
> So while I don't think LL would go and screw over Anshe outright, they're 
> probably not completely opposed to her losing a bit of influence either.
>   
>   
I've seen enough of the politics between the big computer software 
makers: Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, etc., to realize that they play all 
sorts of interesting games at various levels. Entire product-lines 
within Apple get created in cooperation with Microsoft (TruetType) in 
order to put business pressure on Adobe to make PostScript less 
expensive. Other products, originally meant to threaten Adobe and 
Microsoft, (GX, OpenDoc), are thrown away in order to curry political 
favor with those some companies during Jobs' boardroom battles to take 
over Apple. Jobs denigrates the Newton and PDAs in general while 
secretly trying to buy the Palm Pilot from US Robotics for $1 billion. 
You see it in long-term patent-wars as well where companies procure 
obviously ludicrous patents in order to gain easier licensing terms for 
other, more valid patents--its easier to cut someone a better deal on 
licensing than to challenge patents in court and no-one wants to rock 
the boat by creating precedents that might screw up their OWN account of 
patent-currency anyway.

No doubt, if LL's leadership has any savvy at all, there are similar 
maneuverings going on here as well, though not as obvious, at least to me.