I was passed a notecard labeled “Landbot Project Introduction” created by ‘Land Shepherd` which reads:
Fword Utorid is a programmer with experience making “bots” through the use of libsecondlife. She has been contacted about the possibility of making a public landbot that would be open to anyone to use and is confident that she can make one. She says she made a basic one several months ago but never kept up with it. Please contact her if you have questions about the landbot or would like a demonstration of some of the current bots she has created.
The overall purpose of this project is to create a landbot for public use as well as release open sourced landbot code. The goal is to both create a level playing field in the land market as well as to get Linden Lab to address the issue of landbots.
The landbot must be competitive with the models currently being used by other landbot owners. It should be fairly easy to use. Users of the public landbot will have to agree to use it honorably and do things like give back mistakes. The landbot and documentation will be available on a website that Fword will create.An upfront fee of L$(undisclosed) will be paid to Fword to begin development. Once a landbot is delivered that is proven to be fast enough to compete with the current landbots being used, another fee of L$(undisclosed) will be paid to Fword.
Users of the public landbot would also be encouraged to donate a part of any profits they get through the landbot to Fword as long as she is involved in the project. This would be both to encourage Fword to continue development of the landbot and to offset potential losses of her income from the release of the landbot source code.
What does this mean? Well the proof is in the pudding, so we’ll wait and see. If its another ‘Bob Perry’ Landbot deal or if it actually becomes “Competitive with current landbots and easy to use”
It looks like they now have their own website up so those interested can track progress.
*Edit: Removed dollar amounts at the request of ‘FWord Utorid’
The $(undisclosed)L up front makes me wonder. Even if they totally fail, they’re still up $(undisclosed)L. If they had the skill and ability to do what they say, they would produce the bot, demonstrate its stated ability, and then accept payment before they handed it over for full distribution. But thats just how I think. I’m also not sure why anyone with a quality working landbot would willingly pass it along. I hope this goes as planned and it does become a freely distributed item, but honestly I have a lot of doubts about if its possible.
I’m not as concerned with the developer, creating a landbot is really not that difficult – creating one that is competitive will be the real challenge for Fword.
I am however a bit confused about the real intentions of those commissioning this work to be done:
a) if they create a landbot which is open sourced that would pretty much eliminate this statement:
b) How do they expect this issue to be addressed with Linden Lab?
Will be interesting to see how this one plays out for sure.
- Stuck
“The $(undisclosed)L up front makes me wonder. Even if they totally fail, they’re still up $(undisclosed)L. If they had the skill and ability to do what they say, they would produce the bot, demonstrate its stated ability, and then accept payment before they handed it over for full distribution. But thats just how I think.”
You know, you could have asked me for more information if you wanted it. That’s what I would have done, when I have a question or concern about something. Not go to a blog.
Anyway, upfront fees are fairly normal in SL for large projects such as these. I paid the bulk of the upfront fee out of my own pocket. Some others chipped in to help. Others did not.
“I’m also not sure why anyone with a quality working landbot would willingly pass it along. I hope this goes as planned and it does become a freely distributed item, but honestly I have a lot of doubts about if its possible.”
I also hope this works out. But if it doesn’t for whatever reason, big deal, at least an attempt was made.
“a) if they create a landbot which is open sourced that would pretty much eliminate this statement:
Users of the public landbot will have to agree to use it honorably and do things like give back mistakes.”
No, it need not eliminate this statement actually. There could be a TOS added to the open sourced landbot that users agree they must give back mistakes. Of course, users could go back on their word but that’s on them, doesn’t make the above sentence invalid.
“b) How do they expect this issue to be addressed with Linden Lab?”
Well, as more people use landbots, it becomes more likely it will come to the attention of Linden Lab. I don’t think LL has ever really made a strong statement about their use one way or the other. They really should do so.
Well I apologize if sharing my feelings and concerns on a blog offended you, it wasn’t my intention. Generally I assume this type of thing is up for public discussion.
“Well I apologize if sharing my feelings and concerns on a blog offended you, it wasn’t my intention. Generally I assume this type of thing is up for public discussion.”
No problem, just guess I prefer to chat with people before blogging about it so I can have a better understanding. Though I’m weird and don’t really understand why everyone has to have a blog these days. I’m just interested in having landbots everyone can use if they are going to be used at all.
Don’t really understand the concept here or the logic. Everyone is against landbots because they are “unfair” to others that can’t make one and some people use them for malicious purposes. I personally don’t mind them as I have had a few mistakes returned in the past 18 months or so because of them from The Babenco Bros and Skye and Elan. Sure they beat me to cheap deals but what am I going to do sit around and bitch about it? Why can’t people get over it? Sure I’d love one but I don’t have the programming ability to make one. So good for the smart guys and I should have paid more attention in school. It’s still not hard to get good deals on land it just takes a bit of networking and some well phrased IM’s and you can do very well. Now as far as this idea that if everyone had a bot it would be better or more fair. Come on, use your head a bit. More landbots equals more moral judgements for people to go through. You think all these new people will return mistakes and be nice about it? You must think a bit more highly about peoples good nature than I do because I would expect there will be plenty of people trying to scam that never would have had the ability to do it before some good natured programmer just dropped it in their lap. I have heard of fighting fire with fire but it will only lead to alot more trouble for the people that make future mistakes with their land pricing. How about you just try talking to more people and find your land the way the rest of us do instead of trying to put potentionally dangerous tools into the hands of everyone.
I agree that land purchases need to be fair and equal . While all you land bot users may justify to yourself that there is nothing wrong with using bots, so long as you give land back taken in error, I fully disagree. Have you ever seen the movie Stock Exchange…”Greed is good.”? No matter how you try to justify your greed, you cannot do it.
Maybe you can play around with hundreds or thousands of USD$ in SL, but most cannot. Personally, I am in SL for social networking and increasing exposure for my real charity, The Habitat Trust for Wildlife. There are many people in SL for truely good reasons. While I have no problem with people wanting to make money, I do believe that land bots are an unethical way to do so.
There are many charities that would like to have SL land and places to inform people about the important real issues in life. When you greed heads use bots;
1. you no longer have a level playing field
2. you destroy the builds on the lands
3. cause extra LL billing problems
4. cause more lag with all the scanning from all the various bots
Simply returning lands taken in error is not good enough!!
I don’t want more bots! More bots will not resolve the ongoing list of problems. Please stop using your bots, for the sake of everyone.
Everyone can sell their land through ads, ebay or other auctions.
[...] 4, 2008 by Stuck Babenco I’ve mentioned the Public landbot project previously in this post. I’m not involved in any way in the project however since I run landbots I am kept fairly [...]
Now a later post specifies that this project is canceled, but…
What does “The landbot must be competitive with the models currently being used by other landbot owners. ” entail?
What exactly are the features used by the current models?
What are additional requirements requested by users?
*NOTE* My user is a software engineer, with a soft side for open source.