A story of copy-competition in RL

Quite interestingly, I've stumbled across the relevant article on Vindy.

This shows interesting view that what we want to call "copycat" is not necessarily a copycat - and even does not technically violate the patents submitted - and you can bite your nails as much as you want - and even if you have a strong feeling they "stole" your idea - alas, they did not do anything wrong.

So, indeed coming up with the new stuff all the time will allow to stay ahead of the curve with the copy-competition.

23|!23=?

("decompressed" version of the title for those 'normal' people out there: "To free or not to free, that's the question" :)

I've shamelessly borrowed (or stolen?:) the title from dandellion, who wrote an article about her ethical questions with giving away the content.

At first I thought to reply on the blog, but given that it would've been probably too long and make the discussion tedious to read, I'm going to pollute my own blog with some typing.

Action: giving away free high quality skins
Assumption: this damages the SL economy by forcing the prices down for the 'professional content creators'

There is an interesting comment from London Spengler, with which I'd like to start my musings:

"Negating that Open Source, good as it is, and I think it is, can also be damaging is blinding yourself; paraphrasing a most favorite blogger of mine…"

I'd paraphrase and put it broader. Negating that any action of yours that brings benefit to someone, also damages someone else, is blinding yourself.

The competition in business. Every worker who achieves the success of a company, which allows this company to tank the competitors, essentially ruins the life of the workers within these competitors - for obvious reasons that there's no money to pay their salary.

Now, of course, the obvious argument that I am expecting to hear is that those two companies are operating in a similar "domain" - they use similar tools, are subject to the similar regulations, etc. However, that's the whole reason why all the companies pursue the R&D - to gain something that allows to break out of that 'same domain' cage. This allows to either produce higher quality stuff - or - lower the prices, hence lure the customers, and get more money. Shortsighted companies sit back and relax, smart companies use this money to make more R&D and further break into a separate domain. In the meantime the competitors might have found some other advantage which is *their* differentiating factor.

Is the company that is winning the market doing harm ?
If yes - it means that the competition is evil, and we've been getting it wrong all the way with all these antitrust laws and such.

Now, let's take a look at the mentioned open source. It does have a head-start competetive advantage of having a low (or zero) price. And, from some studies - the code quality is comparable.

So what in the world are we paying for ? Well, my take is that the "for-money software" is merely the way to shift the responsibility if needed. If you take apache, it's *your* headache if there are bugs which cause you the problems, whereas with a vendor - you can simply give the boss the phone number where to shout at, and the problems will get fixed. And it is this predictability of the fact that if you have a problem someone will pay attention to it that is worth the buck. In opensource, unless your problem is also considered a problem by the community - or by someone in that community who is willing to spend the time attending it - it's *your* problem, period. This is why opensource and commercial software, and even commercial software based on opensource work so well, in my opinion - they are simply targeting different segments.

And if you are producing the software, and are afraid that someone making the opensource software that threatens your job - then either you are making perfect software which does not have the bugs (theoretically possible, but doubtful), or are forgetting to take care of the customers when they are in need .

Of course, this applies way much less to SL clothes, skins and hair, you either like them or not, they do not deteriorate and normally there are no bugs in the hair (hmm now *that* might be a killer feature to suggest in JIRA - anyone ready to vote ?:).

However, how would it look if everyone weared the same freebie skin and hair ? Dull. And this is worth paying the money for. Now, of course, overtime there are more and more freebie skins - so there is more and more variety.

Then the question of quality comes in - if you, as a professional creator, are unable to keep up with the quality of work by the "amateurs" - what is your competetive advantage ?

Of course, another thing is competing with other professionals who decided to "do it for fun". However, again - here I ask - what is your competetive advantage, something that can not be done "for fun" ? And preferrably, something that can not be replicated digitally. Think of it - and when you have the answer, you would not be afraid of any freebies out there.

If your only core competency is something that is a commodity - maybe it is time to reprofile. Before it becomes commodity in RL. The beauty of SL is that stuff happens so much faster in here, and you can really use it to *model* the situations that would occur in RL. And it does mimic to what RL would be if we were figuring out the proper nanotechnology.

In short - I do not think that giving away for free damages the SL economy. Yes, it probably damages those who think that they can do sell the same stuff over and over - it's an unfortunate fact of life. But on the other hand, it pushes to think about what *else* can be done beyond what is already there, how to be the first and how to offer something that can be uniquely yours. What *else* can you do to attract customers besides lowering the prices ?

If you can find something unique which you can offer, which is needed by the consumers, or, better yet - find something unique which you can offer, and which *may* be needed by the consumers but they do not know it - then you are in even a better position - you have just created a whole new market.

And giving away for free may be part of the strategy.

Random freebies of varying uselessness to give away

Even though they are by no means have the same amount of inspiration nor work put in them, I've put a few things under GPL, in a red box near to the primskirtbuilder distribution area.

The list for now is:

• DT heavy lifter script - juggles with physics, allows to lift the things high (up to 4km).


• IM relay - allows you to IM the person not from your contact list when the "search" is down. Reasonably useless, left for curiosity reasons.


• DeliHUD - allows you to see the SLURLs you would post on your del.icio.us account, on the HUD, and visit them.

As the times goes I will see if I put more stuff in there.

All these come full-mod...

The sky is the limit... (within reasonable bounds)

In the previous post I did ramble a bit about privacy and all, but 768 meters is not much, and quick to fly through. On the other hand, you can not move any object higher than 768 meters... So - what ?

Well, there is still something. Even though I am lazy enough not to present you with the full solution, you might experiment.




This is a building in 1.5km above the ground.

How did I do it ? Quite trivial. First you make a platform and lift it up very high (with yourself being there, or you remember the coordinates where you lift it, and fly over there later on). Then you just rez the stuff on it. Important: do not move anything - it will immediately fall to 768 meters!

Another quirk that I have noticed - seems like these "objects in hyperspace" do not survive the sim reboot. So, do not put anything precious - I warned you :-)

Another thing is that while theoretically funny and interesting - if you take the practical application of building high above as a means to provide the animation privacy (*grins*), most of the devices tend to *move* the poseball with the scripts, which as we noticed does prove lethal.

I did have some encouraging experiments with moving the poseballs, but this happens quite slowly, I think it is easier to kill the old ones, and rez the new ones in exactly the right places.

Now - the last question - how to move the thing up more than 768 meters if as we figured it is impossible ?

Well, there is a funny quirk with the physics. You can do it with the script. Go to primskirtbuilder area, and you will see the red freebie box to the right - take the "DT heavy lifter script", and feel free to use it - I've decided to push it around under GPL as well.