Some... and I stress SOME... Opensim users are ripping off creators. It saddens me and angers me. We here at Virtual Highway have been trying for along time to attract some of the best creators to our closed commercial grid. Their first question is, "Are you Hypergrid Enabled, because if you are I am not interested." The second one is the famous "cart before the horse" situation, "How many active members do you have?" Unless people can come in and enjoy themselves with things like dancing as an example, they just log in and out and don't spend alot of time in a grid. The builders are the exception, they spend hours working on their builds and projects.
I have checked out several of the FREE OARS available out on the metaverse, and we do use some of what has been given there. However, now I am becoming leery of even doing that. Linda Kellie is the safest we know of for only giving out her own creations, but we have also run into some that pass out free copies of creations that we know for a fact have been stolen. It's very difficult to kick that "rip off" reputation in Opensim when the top name creators see their creations being handed out for free across the "Free Metaverse".
This "everything should be free" attitude damages Opensim, in my opinion. Anyone who loves to build and give their creations away is not only free
to do so, of course, but appreciated by many. My problem is with those
who pass out OARS with other people's creations and don't seem to care
if that creator would be upset or feel ripped off. IMO... if it is "FREE" someone still spent money or time creating it, and their rights and ownership have to be honored.
Hypergrid sounds wonderful and hopefully will someday be completely safe from content theft possibilities. But, in our opinion, it is not there yet.