Firestorm Users Donate Only $8417 in Linden Dollars to Volunteer Team of Second Life's Most-Used Viewer

Firestorm, the third party viewer that's by far the most popular software for using Second Life -- more popular, in fact, than the official viewer put out by Linden Lab itself-- is created and maintained by a large team of dedicated volunteers. The team recently asked the Firestorm user community to donate Linden Dollars they could convert into cash to help pay some important maintenance bills, and here's what they got:

At the time of writing this [January 31st] 12:46PM SLT, the balance is L$2,087,455. Our target goal—which I didn’t think we had much hope of hitting—was L$1.6 million. This would give us enough for our Kakadu license, some money for marketing and some money for an accountant, a lawyer and the taxes which we’ll certainly have to pay because of this fund drive. We are over 2 million Linden Dollars right now, and actually it is too much! Really it is!

Team lead Jessica Lyon says she's happy, and I'm happy she's happy, but I'm not: L$2,087,455 is roughly just $8417 in US dollars -- a paltry amount to maintain software used by roughly 400,000 people. About 65-75% of the 600,000 active SLers use Firestorm, by my estimate based on past Linden Lab stats. So $8417 comes down to pennies per each user.

This is disappointing (if unsurprising), especially when Ms. Lyon talks about what her team has to contend with in her very same Thank You note:

The unfortunate reality in what we do is that most of the time we only hear from the disgruntled, upset, screaming, frustrated, angry users while only occasionally hearing from the folks who genuinely appreciate what we do and offer us a thank you.

So not only are they mostly not getting thanked or financially supported for their volunteer efforts, they're also getting abused.

Understand, I'm not criticizing the Firestorm community as a whole:

No doubt there's a minority of dedicated 'Stormers who generously contributed that L$2,087,455 amount (while the rest ride for free, squabbling as they go). And I bet the Firestorm community could have raised much more Linden Dollars if they'd organized the drive a bit more ambitiously. (They gave out a virtual leather jacket to donors.) I guess the real mystery is why Linden Lab didn't anonymously donate a whole buttload of Linden Dollars to this team of volunteers who are effectively acting as the for-profit company's first line of community management, technical support, and its engineering and ops team.

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Comments

[Thumperstorm]

Are you kidding? Linden Lab bankrolled the project since its creation. That's why they're only asking for donations now that they've been cut loose!

[Ezra]

Read their original fund raising post: http://www.firestormviewer.org/firestorm-fund-raising/

It explains that they've been getting by on Google AdSense and Linden Lab AdBuy and actively declining donations over the years.

[Taylor]

"I guess the real mystery is why Linden Lab didn't anonymously donate a whole buttload of Linden Dollars to this team of volunteers who are effectively acting as the for-profit company's first line of community management, technical support, and its engineering and ops team."

Based on what I've heard lately, I strongly suspect that Linden Lab isn't happy about how popular Firestorm is. In a real sense the Lab has lost lot of control over their own platform: every time they want to make a change that requires a viewer update they have to wait (and wait and wait) on Firestorm.

I've had conversations with some prominent TPV developers and it seems that there's a shared concern that Firestorm's codebase has become too divergent from the Lab's, making it impossible for the Firestorm team to keep up. The extraordinarily slow release of Firestorm updates would seem to support to that assertion.

What really drove the point home for me was when someone pointed out that there've been about 25 Linden Lab viewer releases (not RCs or project viewers, but releases) since the last Firestorm update. Yikes :(

[JohnC]

This does not surprise me at all. We once charged L$500,$2 in real money, as a one off payment for our game HUD which took about a year or two to develop in our spare time and allowed people to RP in all our sims for as long as we could take the extortionate rent tiers, which in fact was why we decided to sell the Game anyway. You would have though we asked for blood and souls by the reaction we got from many people.I would often get asked to build a whole sim for people for what amounted to peanuts for the huge amount of work it would involve. The great majority of SL users think L$ are the same as real $.
Second life has a bad attitude when it comes to the appreciation of the hard work and creativity of many of those who make it what it is. My builds and textures were ripped of left right and center by a culture that seemed for the most part based on "IF it's in SL I can take it for free anyway and there is little or nothing you can do about it" In that kind of mind set no one is going to pay much for anything.

[Ugh]

Well, firestorm is mostly used by fuck fiends, so it's naive to expect any viable donations from ppl who spend all their sl money on sex toys and porn whatever. All good creative ppl are using official viewer, partially because it has proper LODs management for mesh uploads.

[Adeon Writer]

"Well, firestorm is mostly used by fuck fiends, so it's naive to expect any viable donations from ppl who spend all their sl money on sex toys and porn whatever. All good creative ppl are using official viewer, partially because it has proper LODs management for mesh uploads."

I'd like to see your data on this.

[Arthur Scanlan]

This post was the only reason I knew there was even a fundraiser afoot. I'm pleased to take a momentary break from constant fuck fiendishness to chip in. I'm evil and uncreative, so in addition to using Firestorm to help build up good, thick calluses in unspeakable places, I appreciate the extra features and higher level of control Firestorm affords. I'm far more comfortable with its interface than the official viewer's.

[Clara Seller]

I use Firestorm and enjoy it. Frankly, I didn't know about any fundraising and I'm sure many of my friends didn't either. I wish the best for the Firestorm team and thank them for their contributions.

BUT... you can't point fingers at those of us who are spending hundreds of dollars on sim costs, premium account fees, upload fees, buying products, tipping DJ's, and just lump us into a group of takers who are looking for a free ride to the easy street carnival.

There's no need to preach. A lot of us completely understand what it's like to feel tapped out and unappreciated for our contributions. After all, we're active inworld SL residents.

[Tankgirl]

The amount you mention is from 3 weeks ago. I donated 25000 L$ after that dat. Because I did not know about the fundraising before. I imagine more money would have ben donated, if more people had known.

Wouldn't it have been great, if you had written a post about the fundraiser so more people would have known about it? Instead of writing about 3 week old news, not even bothering to ask what the amount is now, just to make the sl community look bad?

[Bine]

What part of volunteers don't you understand?

[zz bottom]

I don't use firestorm, i do use kokua and ukando and i never heard any speaking about those.
Still i do wish all the help firestorm can get and i cant understand the reason of this post in 1st place!
To bash Firestorm? LL? it's users?
If any to speak of, is why firestorm is getting so much support form the lab, regardless of all the rest of tpv's being used.

[Saffia Widdershins]

Firestorm had a specific target they wanted to raise.

They devised a small, limited campaign to meet that.

They raised the money (and beat the target handsomely) in under 36 hours. Closer to 24, I think.

The speed with which they raised the money took them totally by surprise. They left the jackets on sale because they didn't want to disappoint people who had missed the first notice.

But they didn't just raise the money. They also attracted thanks expressed on the blog - the kind of comments and appreciation that is seen very, very rarely on any website, but which any blog writer would be thrilled to receive.

[JoshR Woodrunner]

Very strange post, that seems to turn a good news story about a successful fund-raising drive into something negative. Only 2 days after the announcement was made that they needed support, Firestorm reported that they had "well surpassed our goal". Are you criticizing people for not contributing to a fund-raising drive after it announces it has met its goals? Are you criticizing Firestorm for not asking for more funding support than it needs? As I see it, the quick response to the call for support showed the good feelings that exist in the Firestorm community, and the real appreciation people have for the hard work and dedication of the volunteers.

[zz bottom]

Right on the spot JosR, this post is some i can not understand.

[Nalates]

Hamlet,
welcome to life with the entitlement generation.

Ideology has consequences.

[Amanda Dallin]

I also would have donated if I'd known about the fund raiser.

If NWN just found out about the fundraiser then apologize for bashing Firestorm users for also not knowing about it. If NWN did know about the fundraiser weeks ago, then apologize for sitting on the story until you could use it to bash LL and Firestorm users.

As far as Firestorm being used by F*** Freaks. I use Firestorm mostly for the ability to mark dots on the mini-map in sailing ship battles with pirates. It can be difficult to tell pirate ships apart from my navy fleet in a fast moving ship battle. I generally use Catznip, since they updated recently, for more social events. Most of those I know who create mesh do upload it in the offical viewer but they use something else for other things. We do a lot of things in SL. If you only see one activity, that says more about where you hangout than about SL.

[pussycat catnap]

You know...

People who spend a lot of money on sex toys and SL-porn are at least spending money on SL...

If someone is looking to criticize people for being cheap that's a complete miss of a target there.

I don't use Firestorm, or any TPV.

After Emerald DOS attack, and the Kirsten Viewer auto logging its users into a private external chat "support" website using their SL credentials... I'd rather trust my SL connection to someone that already has a right to my credentials. Kirtsen was the last straw for me on TPVs. The day I loaded it up and found myself connected to a chat window that was not a part of SL, I went to and have stuck with the official viewer.

Besides the TPVs lag behind the official viewer in many features, often by many months.