I assume that most readers will be at least familiar with recent news regarding the Not-At-All-Cost-Cutting Measures taken to sack a third of the workforce at Linden Laboratories.
While I do not know the exact job descriptions of all of the hundred-odd Lindens who will be receiving their final Laboratory Paycheque soon, it strikes me that a large proportion of them were those involved in infrastructure development - whether it be projects such as Mono or script limits, or simply Fixing The Grid. (This is not at all to say that those remaining are incompetent by the way, just that I can see that resource has been greatly diminished.)
These were not things that were exactly racing forwards at top speed when everybody was employed. After this cull, I would not expect any sort of technical improvements to the server side of Second Life at all. Forever. Even fixes for the obvious ongoing problems are unlikely. Bear in mind here that existing technical Lindens, whilst not necessarily the same people who developed the original systems, at least had some period of "handover" from those who did - those coming in now will not have even that. This is not something that can be conveniently outsourced.
So: all problems remain, and nothing new arrives. Selfishly, I had been hoping that scripting improvements would appear which would tempt me back, but not only will those not happen, there will not even be things which more normal folk would be interested in, such as perhaps having group chat work.
At the same time as this, we have the statement that "The restructuring enables us to focus and put more emphasis on the consumer business". But surely "consumers" (whoever they might be - surely everyone is a consumer? I assume this means the group that used to be called "residents") need server-side improvements? Not if this "focussing" means cutting down what systems are available to "consumers", and assuming that they are people to have virtual goods sold to them by "creators". Simplified systems to allow one to buy frocks and sofas and show them off in a web browser. Because, of course, that is all that Second Life is - and that is why it has continued when other worlds that basically just allowed this have without exception disappeared. There could not possibly be more to it than that.
You know, I really did want to be drawn back to SL, to look at it again and think "oh for goodness' sake, Ordinal, what an utterly dramatic idiot you have been, say your apologies and make more nonsense widgetry". I still do; I miss the Grid achingly, the unprecedented possibilities and freedoms that it allowed me. But the things which made me leave appear to be just increasing in volume.
P.S. A sad wave goodbye to the already-neglected Teen Grid.
