if you were reading us back in November, then you know that the OpenSpace debacle really affected us. so many lovely homes were lost (hmm, maybe this explains Ener’s fascination with building bomb shelters? a survivor!) =)

like lots of peeps, we started looking at alternatives, like Openlifegrid.com and OSgrid.org, and we even set up OpenSim on subQ’s machine (lol, but no stable physics at that time, you’d fall through everything you made!) o_O

over at Openlifegrid.net, we ran into tons of sl peeps.  it was kinda funny, new peeps would rez and the first thing many would ask is: “where can I get hair?”

lol, obviously they had no clue how new this all was.  it will be hard to compete with SL, inevitably someone will offer their own hosted OpenSim dealio that may be on par with the SL experience (sl does have a HUGE content advantage).  that gets way complicated super fast and is certainly no easy task. people always think of SL as the viewer, but what Linden Lab has, that OpenSim does not, is the network

Second Life is about the grid, not the viewer.  OpenSim is about the software, not the grid

it’s a HUGE diff and one that people often don’t understand. it would be like saying:

“i can make web pages, do CSS, connect to SQL databases, . . . ” BUT that does not mean you can start an amazon.com

Network Solutions experienced the same thing.  for a long time they were pretty much the only game in town for domain name registrations and made a zillion dollars.  but then, things changed and Go Daddy came on the scene (we love Danica; that’s the inspiration for having Ener as our “spokesperson” – very opposite of Ener’s disposition, which is to stay in the shadows and give credit to everyone else – and secretly seek out the best poutine in the second-largest French-speaking city in the world) :)

NetSol and Go Daddy offer the same exact service: domain name registration: one is $35 a year, the other is $8. both do very well

OSGrid registrations

this graph, plus great details, are from here