Metropolis has been back up, and running even better, for a few days now...maybe a week, I can't keep track of time as well as I used to be able to...lol
The politics issues is not Metropolis's and you will find if you simply wish to have access to good asset structures and enjoy the free Metaverse, Metro is a cool place to be.
http://www.hypergrid.org/metro... is the Metro configured version of os and you will note they speak to some other differences integrated into it.
As to your opinion that commercial grids are somehow doing well "I think the hypergrid itself is seeing a metamorphasis from what had been goodwill open source model (donation based), to being more consumer (commercial) based." I would strongly disagree with that.
Commercial grids being for-profit enterprises usually run by 1 or a handful of people, it behooves them to show good numbers, when a reality check and a more in-depth look often shows something is amiss. Not for all of them, of course-))
I am actually seeing more and more free grids coming up. You can see some of this activity in the google+ community of Opensim Virtual.
You do not have to even join it to read what is happening, and it is quite a lot.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/...
be well-))