I cant believe you are still tugging at the apron strings of Linden Labs.
Firstly what you seem to be doing here is suggesting that LL abandon its current business model (mega million dollar operation) for some reason. They make business decisions every day based on multiple layers of data and years of experience but you think they should change it.
Think about this for a sec, it would mean sacking everyone at LL, rewriting their business charter, and recoding their product. you would have to be insane to even think they would for consider this one second. And for what result? To share the profits, and share the customer base, it just gets sillier by the line.
They have a reputation for completely ignoring the pleas of their own user base, what makes you think they would listen to anything you or I (their competition) may have to say.
When Philip Rosedale stepped away from the helm he took the progressive thinking and innovative attitudes with him, LL turned into a corporate machine with the sole purpose of keeping Second LIfe going, not making it better, not making it friendlier, not making it cheaper or any of those things that we might want, but keeping it alive, and certainly not changing it from what is seen to be a successful formula irrespective of your opinion or questionable data.
Second Life has ALWAYS been overpriced and that hasnt affected the sales, what is causing the recent downturn is boredom, people are just over it, you can only walk around and sit in empty clubs for so long before you've "done that".
I am sure every single person reading this has felt that feeling by now.
Facebook came after Second Life and its already showing signs that everyone has had enough and arent as excited anymore by something that once kept us entertained for hours at a time. Now logging off in droves. These things only have a limited life span. SL has just about reached its age and unfortunately there too goes OpenSim.
No Alex you are not the negative one here, I am and here's why...
OpenSim is the unwanted bastard child of Linden Labs and they just wish it would go away, also you speak of "What OpenSim has now"
Opensim has everything that is wrong with Second LIfe and then some, it depends on 10 year old technology that simply doesnt scale well, which in this fast paced obsolete-by-the-minute world is absolutely archaic, and it still isnt out of Alpha, still full of bugs, development is hampered by constant infighting lack of common direction, selfishness and the occasional sabotage.
Dont get me wrong I love OpenSIm, I have hosted several grids and community projects and I have fallen flat on my face several times and got up again, just like most other grid owners and for the same reason, no users, nobody is interested, the only people that are interested are in SL., the only people left that are interested in OpenSim are developers, coders, and enthusiasts, there are NO users, zero players, (well very few) they moved on, we didnt.
Here is the bad news that you all know but nobody wants to face, the only thing that stands between OpenSIm and extinction is the possibility that someone somewhere develops a code that allows OpenSim to run in a web-browser.
If this were to happen then suddenly instead of having some pointless virtual world where nothing ever happens, and there's nothing to do, we would instantly have the most advanced 3d websites in the world, it would be a game changer because people could just float into your grid from ebay or facebook, then it would take off (I personally dont think it can be done but still await results from pixieviewer in case Sunny pulls a rabbit out of his hat)
I did a 3 year study into the commercial uptake of OpenSIm and here is a summary of the results. Commerce wont use any software that is in Alpha development stage because of the attrition rate of alpha software and business cant afford to take risks in a tight economy, so while OpenSim languishes in alpha, opportunities float by and the code gets older. The other thing that stops commerce from using anything is lack of security, and we have an abundance of that, in fact if there is one thing that OpenSim is famous for it is lack of security still after all these years. So for commercial use it is rotting on the vine.
So lets talk about social and recreational use, Do a google trends analysis starting with "Opensim" ok some result there even if you allow for the slow fade after 2009, now add the term "virtual worlds" and notice how Opensim is dwarfed by this, it means that Opensim is not the main choice for virtual worlds. Now add the term Second Life and see how Opensim fades to almost flatline in comparison, now for the reality shock add the term "Minecraft" and you begin to see what we're up against. I could go on about why Minecraft is killing OS and SL but that another story, (and dont say "because Minecraft is a game" because people are also using it as a virtual world) lets just say when Philip Rosedale combines the best of SL with the best of Minecraft, and uses the latest and best of tech, then HI-Fi is going to do to Minecraft what minecraft did to SL, and this argument will be moot. That will be your platform, global adoption, open source, scalable, and most importantly, new. What will I do?
I will stop flogging what appears to be a dead horse and move on,
sorry.