The Forder Foundation

Linden Labs has announced changes in its pricing for XStreetSL.com listings yesterday, and the furor over it is still unfolding. In brief,  the changes are:

• For every item listed for sale in XStreetSL, vendors will be charged L$10 a month.
• For every free item listed in XStreetSL, vendors will be charged L$99 a month.

These are in addition to the commission of up to 10% for items sold via XStreetSL that the Lindens already collect.
I won’t go into the alleged justification for this policy, as it’s laughable and specious. The comment thread for the post contains several alternative motivations for the policy; a power-play by large-scale vendors trying to drive out competition, a money-grab by LL desperate to squeeze money from the platform, and so on. All of these are plausible, each is more plausible than any of the official reasons for the change.
Whatever the motivation, the exodus from XStreetSL has begun.
As a vendor with products on XStreetSL, the new policy effectively wipes out my entire business. My top-selling item goes is listed for L$10. I sell, on average, one of these per month. under the new policy, I will pay L$13 a month to maintain that listing. Unless the policy changes, I see no alternative except to pull my listings from XStreetSL.com.
I’ll be looking hard at Apez.bin for the next few days, but at the moment it looks like an in-world storefront is the best alternative.

My mainland parcel is intersected by Linden right-of-way on one side, and bordered by a different Linden right-of-way on the other.
I really want to know when the roads will be built, but apparently there isn’t a schedule for doing it.
I’d even build the road for you, but Michael says that you lawyers say that I can’t unless I’m a mole, and if I become a mole, I won’t be able to influence which roads are worked on next.
If you ask me to, I’ll sign a notarized letter indicating that I’m doing the work for free, and that the roads will be Linden property. I’ll use textures that LL provides, so that they match the rest of the roads, and so that there are no digital media rights issues.
I’d really like to have some roads built in Blanda.

We’ve moved to our own domain. For updates, please visit www.forderfoundation.org.

You want a killer app that integrates the existing SL infrastructure and user base with the rest of the Web 2.0 revolution? Well, why don’t we have these now?

• Why isn’t SL’s instant message platform Jabber? Why doesn’t it interoperate with other IM platforms that are pervasive today?
• Why isn’t SL’s voice chat platform Skype, or at least some open standard-compliant voice platform?
• Why aren’t SL Avatar and group profiles integrated with Facebook and/or MySpace?

Tonight’s episode: It Begins With Desire