Fufilling New CEO Promise, Second Life's Bug Tracker Now Transparent, Open & Re-Accepting New Feature Requests

"Transparency and empowerment are core to me," new Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg said only a couple days ago (and only a few days after becoming CEO), and he already seems to be fulfilling that pledge: Linden Lab's JIRA bug tracker for Second Life now allows users to post comments and see all active bugs, and Altberg has restored the much-loved (and historically, much ignored by Linden Lab) New Feature Request. Great moves, though I suspect Alteberg is about to be overwhelmed by a deluge of comments and requests. (Insert "Brace yourself" meme here.) Hat tip: Nalates, who has more thoughts.

Comments

[Ciaran_Laval]

The right move but it still has some issues, are they now going to inform the reporter a bug is fixed or will they still be left to the mercy of the release notes?

The odd part about once its triaged it gets locked to the select few is also a tad disappointing.

However the positives of the change far outweigh the negatives.

[Desmond Shang]

Quite frankly, this move disappoints.

What percentage of the residents use the jira? Of course it should be open. This is a no brainer, and essentially an afterthought. If Ebbe is going after low hanging fruit, sure.

But this is a very poor indication of 'transparency' ~ if anything, it's leaving the big transparency issues hushed behind closed doors. If this were the opening of a chessgame, it's just handed the center to the opponent. Opening the jira would have made a great, Steve Jobbsian "ah, and one last thing."

Meanwhile, the August 2013 content creator clauses are just screaming for transparency. Some of SL's best most creative residents (Qarl, Shava, others) dumped the platform due to the (and I quote): 'exploit in any manner whatsoever' service terms. It offended many more, including many of us who are so deeply entrenched that we can't just quit without harming hundreds of people.

So here's real transparency: *why* such overreaching terms? This isn't about virtual marketplaces; Amazon and iTunes do not need full rights to sell ebooks. This is the elephant in the room, when it comes to transparency.

Though, granted, soon enough all the people who care about this issue will leave. And then it won't be a priority any more.

* * * * *

I'll just put this out here, for those who remember transparency.

a) how many $L they are printing out of thin air and selling on Lindex each month

b) quarterly grid reports like we used to see

c) town hall meetings, even if a bit 'prepped' ~ sort of like a reddit 'ask me anything'

I don't expect miracles from a private company; in fact I expect them to keep some things private (by definition). But if transparency's a thing, let's see it. I can take not so great news. But I'm going to have a real rough time with just the illusion of transparency.

* * * * *

Anyway, it's too early to tell what we've got here. I'm still quietly hoping to be pleasantly surprised, amazed, &c. But we'll know sooner than later, I think.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

@Desmond and Dont Get Hairy: Ebbe did this because it was an easy, popular and important 'quick win' for both Lindens and their customers without any technical and legal consequencies. Hopefully he will look at the content creator clauses issue again - but I know I always fix easy stuff if I can while working on harder, more important stuff... and I'm sure Linden Lab's CEO will do the same.

[Desmond Shang]

Hitomi, I hope you are right.

Nothing would make me happier. Unlike many, I actually do believe there are things that can be done to really turn this platform around, totally around, and keep it that way. But it will take bold moves.

If I recall correctly, Hamlet was hoping for bold moves from Rodvik and even wrote about it (citation missing, it's back there somewhere). Rodvik actually made some bold moves, but they were well outside the scope of the flagship product and largely didn't pan out.

Dont Get Hairy? Who or what is that? Was there a comment deleted? Anyway, I've said enough on this I think.

[DontGetHairy]

@desmond

Indeed, there has been censoring...

Due to out-of-proportion censoring, this thread does not comply with Journalist Code of Ethics
http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

Virtual Worlds lacks a culture of quality continuous improvement (also called Kaizen) based on empowering consumers, it is not about empowering platforms or tools
What is Kaizen? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

It is a Buyer's market, not a Seller's market.

[AmandaD]

You're wrong Hairy. If it was a Buyer's market then SL would see a mass exodus not the trickle away we've seen for several years which is starting to reverse.

I hope they keep something simpler than the Jira to report bugs. The Jira is great for those who have some basic knowledge but for the average SL user it's cumbersome and complicated.

[Pussycat Catnap]

@People critical of this move:

I think this is the right move at the moment.

Its an easy thing to open up, not yet requiring huge culture sweeps that LLs needs but will take time.

It hits not the masses Desmond wants, but "some" of the trendsetters - the people who in turn shape everyone else's opinions of LLs. That is actually the more important crowd to reach.

I say some because it hits the techie trendsetters, and they are not as vital here as hitting the 'SL Life' trendsetters: the fashion bloggers and event bloggers.

But they're easy to reach, and speak the same kind of 'lingo' as the Lindens. So its a good first move.

[Pussycat Catnap]

@Hairy: That's an incredible info dump of things that I've never seen anyone push as relevant in an SL context like that before - so I don't have a response to most of your comments as its not from a frame I've been thinking with this.

But in regards to:
"MILLIONS are AVOIDING AND BALKING Second Life, just check with concurrent users of Steam (the competitor of Desura), and with Google Trends."

To me that reads like claiming that every Hamburger sold at McDonalds is a loss of business to Starbucks.
- Both are fastfood joints, but they're not competing for the same interest / consumer want.

It is true that driving down a freeway you might stop into one and buy a drink or a snack and as a result not stop in the other. So they are ancillary competitors.

Just like playing a game on steam means X-hours of gaming that could have been spent in SL instead.

But the people who seek out SL as their prime interest are not seeking it to satisfy the same need as the people who go on Steam to play a first-person shooter action game (or whatever it is they have on Steam).
- You might get a game on Steam and hang out in an MMO Inn and XXX-chat the elf next to you... and you might go into SL and join a roleplay and act out fighting a monster... but this is the "snack" in each platform, not the main course.

- they compete only indirectly.

[Pussycat Catnap]

@Hairy re:
"Indeed, there has been censoring...

Due to out-of-proportion censoring, this thread does not comply with Journalist Code of Ethics"
**************

It is easy to get carried away on this blog and think of it as a journalistic website of news articles and editorials - because Hamlet and Iris make a point of 1-2 updates every weekday and the commentators are so absurdly active (/emote looks in the mirror).

But this is just Hamlet's personal blogging space. And its his prerogative on what to include or not. And the software used here is glitchy over sensitive with its built in word filter. A LOT of posts just fail to show or get zapped without human action. And others get zapped because again: Hamlet's personal blog and such.

[DontGetHairy]

@pussycat

Hamlet wants exactly what is coming...

"...though I suspect Alteberg is about to be overwhelmed by a deluge of comments and requests. (Insert "Brace yourself" meme here.) Hat tip: Nalates, who has more thoughts."

[Pussycat Catnap]

@Hairy: http://www.drbronner.com/
- Look at the packaging on those soap bottles. That's how you're reading to me right now. All kinds of links and random stuff that is all over the place and just leaves me having no context or idea what you're getting at.

I noted above that its a massive info-dump you keep spamming in repeated posts with the same links. You response to that was a series of posts with the links again, plus some insults.

Try this instead. Whatever your point is, boil it down to a few basic paragraphs. NO LINKS. And maybe something on who this Gary guy is you keep bringing up. I'm not sure somebody's 'Mod' to some other video game is a product to be considered in contrast with SL - I have no context there. "Gary" and his "Mod" to something - is just text on my screen at this point.

[Desmond Shang]

Whoa... and I thought I was an acerbic critic...

I've been pretty unhappy lately, but as someone who has also had to take over the reins in business in the past, let's give the new guy at least 30 days!

It took me 90 days just to remember everyone's name and what they did, let alone change anything, in far less complicated circumstances.

DontGetHairy, is that your name in SL? You sound like someone who has been around a while, yet I've never even once heard of you until now.

Are you someone's alt?

[aksharanaitik]

Unbelievable. I cann't believe. I think that there is an issue so it may take long to resolve this.

indian army

[DontGetHairy]

How unspeakable, ridiculous and pathetic do things have to get?

Un-quality as well as Lack of Culture for Continuous Improvement is hanging on the noses of the Founder and the new CEO

1. Philip Rosedale complains 00:04 about needing ONE HOUR himself as SL creator to get his audio in Second Life running, next to crashing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rv91AwOkJQ

2. Eight months later, there was no remedy of the above shoddy incident in the video, does Linden Lab think that Consumers are stupid, then scam us all in August 2013 with their TOS 2.3.

I don't care if "die-hard in-the box" sheep try to whitewash these un-acceptable incidents.

"Linden Lab invited Mal Burns, Daniel Voyager, Inara Pey, Draxtor Despres and myself to a meet & greet with its new CEO Ebbe Altberg.

We started with a little delay due to technological issues and unfortunately quite a few of us had problems with the sound.

Ebbe wanted to know if it was normal to have this much audio difficulty, we explained that many of us used Skype for recordings and such.

I could almost hear Ebbe make a mental note of this"

http://joyardley.wordpress.com/2014/02/19/chatting-with-ebbe-altberg-new-ceo-of-linden-lab/

It's a Buyer's, not a Seller's market.

This valid posting was censored...

[Ms. CC Creeggan (CronoCloud Creeggan)]

Opening up the JIRA again is a start.

As an aside, I've not had much trouble with SL audio including voice On Linux the hard part is making sure one has the right i686 libraries installed, if you do then it works out of the box. In fact, I had voice working sooner than I had streaming audio the first time I installed SL on Linux.

Until recently SL's default audio system, fmod didn't play nice with Linux, so you had to disable it and force ALSA, but it does now.

And Hairy, Garry's Mod is NOT and SL competitor...well except perhaps amongst the "geeky sandboxer" crowd, but they're not even in the same market.