Today, Philip Linden spoke with Adam Reuters from the World Economic Summit in Davos. Fleep Tuque wrote an article about Adam Reuters’ Interview with Philip Linden. Fleep wrote:

Adam Reuters remarked that in some ways, 2007 was the Year of Restrictions in Second Life, and Philip responded that it really made him sad every time they have to restrict behavior, and that despite these changes, SL is still an incredibly open platform.

Fleep goes on to talk about getting the sense of the person behind the CEO’s role and believes in the Philip is sincere in his sadness. I’ve been impressed by Philip when I’ve heard him speak as well, yet I want to follow Fleep’s lead even deeper. Companies often reflect the personality of their CEO and I wonder what all of this is really telling us about Philip or about Linden Lab.

People have commented to me about Linden Lab’s method of dealing with conflict as ‘passive aggressive’. The ranks of people who are getting fed up with the way Linden Lab handles conflict seems to be growing, and the only thing preventing a large exodus is that alternative grids are still in alpha testing. Linden Lab has a little bit of time to repair the damage they’ve caused over the past year, but that time is running out.

This ‘passive aggressive’ nature seems to reflect on a CEO who is ‘sad’ about what is happening and incapable of making any substantive changes to improve the situation. Does Philip Linden have any ideas about how to better understand the ‘God Paradox’, the conflict of a game provider trying to provide a safe environment while at the same time trying to be a hands off service provider? Does Philip Linden have any ideas about whether the Linden Dollar is a “limited license right available for purchase or free distribution at Linden Lab's discretion” or if it is something closer to a currency which banking regulators would be interested in? Is Philip interested in hearing the opinions of residents, or going to continue to have messages from Linden Lab sent out from the email address ‘no-reply@secondlife.com’.

Yes, I feel sad too. I feel sad for Philip failing to demonstrate any leadership. I feel sad for people who want to make Second Life a more vibrant environment and keep bumping up against arbitrary and capricious restrictions by Linden Lab that are never sufficiently explained. Yet unless the folks at Linden Lab change their tune, the folks that I won’t be sad for are those people gearing up to provide alternative grids where the residents are actually valued and listened to.