Home / Covenant

There are several things that cost server power. The number of prims and textures in the region and the number of concurrent avatars are heavy counting. Also the moment that an avatar enters a region and the moment prims are rezzed, put burden on the server.

Swondo regions are meant for light use. With light use we mean building stuctures like houses with everything in, gardening, terraforming, creating and testing non-physical scripts and be around with up to six people concurrent as an average. If you like to use the region as a group with more than 5 members in, then please tell us up-front the plans. Camping (leaving your avatar inworld on the land for a longer time without really be at the stick) is not allowed on Freeland and land not owned by the avatar. Artificial avatars (bots) are not allowed.

Parcels come with a certain number of prims and limited usage of mesh and heavy textures. The mesh load and texture adding have to stay within reason of its price class. It is impossible to set a number on this but the use of a lot of mesh objects will definitely take you to the edge or over the intention of the server burden. You can always ask a Swondo manager if you are in doubt.

Swondo regions and parcels are meant for living and building. Not to have 'gatherings' with groups of people(avatars). This because avatars take a lot of server power and memory. It is therfor not allowed to build a club or other gathering place, or organize or have gatherings on a regular base. If you like to organize a party at home with more then 15 concurrent people, please notify Swondo up-front so we can appoint more server power to your region temporarily and help you to have a great party.

The usage of auto-prim-rezzing scripts and other heavy duty scripts are not allowed because they consume to much server power. Scripts that let prims move continuously or make other changes continuously are usually heavy duty. An exception are scripts that make prims rotate. Rotation scripts can be used with no problems. If you are in doubt about a certain script, please contact Swondo to test it first.

It is not allowed to sub-lease or sub-rent the region or parts of the region to others. It is not allowed to let others pay for the usage of the land or parts of the land in any way. This is mainly again to prevent more concurrent visitors and to prevent making others asume they have certain rights on the land. />
The use of Physics and physical objects is not allowed. OpenSim is not ready for physics and unfortunately physics make the region crash too often. If in the future OpenSim physics grow up, we will change this rule of course

It is not allowed to run scripts intended to scan or intrude the server or in any other way do things that have nothing to do with the land itself. It is also not allowed to run server scripts of any kind or scripts that make contact with other scripts or servers. Because almost always these scripts have malicious intentions, Swondo will stop the region directly at notice and suspent the contract in await of a reaction by the leaser. Malicious activities always lead to termination without refund and sometimes to legal charges.

Swondo regions cannot be used for real financial transactions of any kind. For example A shop which involves the selling for real money or having a meeting in which deals are made about RL transactions are not allowed in Swondo's regions in OSgrid.

Swondo regions cannot be used for controversy or illegal things like extreme political outings, child pornography etc. etc. Gambling is not allowed as it is forbidden in some countries, attracts groups of people and involves financial transactions.

In general Swondo regions are meant to use like people in general use their real Life homes. This including people who work from home in small practices like architects, music writers, cloths designers, programmers. etc etc.

It is not allowed to copy and handout or sell the Swondo landscapes, Swondo Buildings and other Swondo creations. When you receive an OAR of your region, the landscape is included and you are allowed to use your OAR elsewhere. But you are not allowed to sell or give away the obtained landscape otherwise than as a part of a completely created region containing lots of buildings by yourself on it. In other words, the landscape cannot have a value on itself when your sell your oar.

It is allowed to sell your complete build region as long as the new owner agrees to the Swondo covenant and understand the monthly lease costs to be paid. This has to be mentioned in the selling advertisement.

It is not allowed to advertise anything on your land by big signs or worldmap sky advertisements. Keep signs indoors. It is allowed to place a salesign on your land when you like to sell your region but keep it within reason.

It is possible to ask initial free floating regions to be parked next to a friends region only if that other region is also hosted by Swondo. In all other cases Swondo will move the region if a not Swondo hosted region is put in connection (8 places around) with your region. Connected regions can use up a lot of server power from the neighbouring region and third party regions are harder to measure.

It is not allowed to set your land so everybody can rezz objects unless you are present at that time yourself. If you want others to be able to rezz and create, make them manager or add them to the landgroup. Ask Swondo staff for help.

The leaser has to be able to communicate in English, Dutch or German very well. This to prevent misunderstandings with Swondo regarding the usage of regions. The covenant is currently only presented in English. It is the (potential) leaser its own responsibility to understand the covenant.

Swondo is allowed to put more rules in the covenant when needed to protect Swondo or leasers interests. Swondo will notify leasers every time the covenant changes.

Breaking the covenant rules constitutes a breach of contract. This might lead to the termination of the contract.

We never declare a termination of contract lightly. In most cases we will issue a warning or a polite reminder first or we might reclaim the land temporarily to remedy the source of the violation (usually that is the case with ban lines, agressive security scripts, destructive terraforming and buildings in violation of the Covenant). Some violations will result in termination of contract withot warning, though. This is the case with violent attacks (and ... No, we will not discuss who attacked whom first!) and anything that is clearly against the law in The Netherlands. Don't worry, Most Dutch laws are less intrusive when compared to other countries. Gambling and child pornography is more strict than in other countries we think. Termination of contract because of a violation of the Covenant becomes effective immediately. There are no refunds in this case.

The fineprint (legal) part of the covenant:
Swondo, Swondo World and Swondo Estate are trademarks of Drietraps Entertainment. Drietraps Entertainment is registered at the Dutch chamber of commerce with number: 60153105, Netherlands.
Should you decide to become a Swondo resident by making your first monthly payment for a parcel Swondo Estate owns, you are entering a contract between you and Swondo. This contract is defined by the covenant on this page and this “fine print”.

1. All deals are final. When you make the monthly payment for your parcel, you are entering a contract that runs for at least 30 days. This contract ends when this time period ends and no new monthly payment is made, or, when you decide to cancel the contract.
2. The contract terminates automatically (with no entitlement for a refund) if you violate the rules in this document, Swondo Estate covenant or fineprint or the T.o.S. of OSgrid, metropolis or Swondo World.
   
   
3. When you enter the contract with Swondo Estate, you agree to make certain periodic payments. The height of these payments is determined at the time you enter the contract and is fixed for the duration of the contract. Swondo Estate reserves the right to change the height of the necessary payments at any time (becoming effective when the next payment is due). We will only do this when circumstances outside of our control will force us to do so (changes in the payments we have to make to our internet connection provider, for example or exchange rate changes), but this might happen. You have the right to terminate your contract with in this case.
4. The current payment plans can always be checked on the website of Swondo Estate at http://www.swondo.com/osgrid
5. The duration of a contract is 30 days. It is automatically prolonged if not cancelled before the next payment is due.
6. The contract enters a state of probation, if you default on a monthly payment. It does not matter how much you pay as long as it is not enough to cover the full sum that is due for the next period.
7. After entering the state of probation, you have five days to make the payment. If full payment is not received after this time, the contract terminates automatically and the land is reclaimed by Swondo Estate
8. The termination of the contract, either automatically or willfully before the next payment is due, does not entitle the customer to any kind of a refund.
   Only in the following cases, there will be a refund paid:
   
   (a) If the contract is cancelled by Swondo Estate (but not when this cancellation was caused by a violation of this fine print, the covenant or the OSgrid, Metroplis or Swondo World T.o.S.), the customer will receive a full refund and the land falls back into the ownership of Swondo Estate
   
   (b) If this fine print, the covenant or the OSgrid, Metroplis or Swondo World T.o.S. is changed or the fees, which are due monthly, are raised, the customer has the right to cancel the contract. If this option is chosen, the customer will receive a full refund and the land falls back into the ownership of Swondo Estate.
9. You cannot sell the land that you bought on Swondo Estate to another resident of OSgrid, Metroplis or Swondo World as you did not buy the land. You can however sell the landscpae including all buildings and handover the lease to another person who is "in good standing" with Swondo Estate and OSgrid, Metroplis or Swondo World (i.e. has a clean rep sheet). We will assist you in the transfer of your rights as an Swondo Estate resident to this other resident.
10. All negotiations with other residents regarding price and other proceedings are of no relevance to Swondo Estate, though. We will transfer the rights (especially: deed a specified parcel to the land holding group of another resident) no sooner than we have received your agreement and the receipt from PayPal, confirming that the new owner has entered an appropriate payment method for this parcel.
    
11. Swondo Estate reserves the right to decline to enter a contract with any resident without stating a reason for this decision. Don't worry, this does not mean you. We usually only do this with avatars who are known troublemakers, have defaulted their payments in the past etc.
    
12. Swondo Estate does not make any guarantees regarding the state of the land offered to you or its usefulness for any intended purpose. We provide this land “as is”, as it is.
13. Should some officially announced, unannounced or unforeseeable event lead to a state where the region(s) which contain the parcels that you have paid for, are inaccessible to you, we will see that access is restored as fast as possible. We can not accept any responsibility for times of inaccessibility caused by third parties (i.e. other residents or OSgrid, Metroplis or Swondo World ).
14. We will proceed with all due speed (and caution) to remove the causes for the state of inaccessibility, should it be in our power to do so. There will be no refunds for times of inaccessibility.

DISCLAIMER: Leasing or renting virtual land in OSgrid, Metroplis or Swondo World will not make you the owner or tenant of "real" land in physical reality, of course.

What you will receive from us, when you enter a contract with Swondo Estate is the right to use a certain part of the Virtual World of OSgrid , Metroplis or Swondo World with some additional access rights (the right to name this piece of land, the right to change this land within certain limits, the right to create permanent objects there, etc.), which are not available to someone who is not the owner of this parcel of virtual land. From a technical point of view this is more alike to leasing or renting a webserver in a data center than owning physical land.

Please read the Swondo Covenant on this page at least once. This can prevent misunderstandings.



The covenant is a mutual agreement between Swondo and the leaser of a region, regions or part of a region. The covenant is meant to keep the use of the Swondo servers within the intentions of Swondo Estate. A part of the covenant is the fineprint. In the fineprint Swondo makes sure all legal parts are covered. There are no hidden tricks in the text, just legal covering.


Every leaser agrees to the covenant at the moment the land is handed over to him or her.
The person who pays for the land is the real user ('land owner') of the land for Swondo. The person who pays the lease always determines which avatar(s) 'own' the land inworld and what should happen to the land within the rules set by Swondo.


Attention:
Unfortunately disputes between 'friends' building on land owned by one, lead to ugly situations often. Swondo cannot be part of a dispute. For this reason it is also not possible to share the lease payments among multiple persons. The one who pays the monthly fee has all say on the region. So also incase of a dispute. The amount of time (or prims) put in into the region by a different avatar can also not be taken in account by Swondo.
Please be careful putting a lot of time in building on land you do not lease(pay for) yourself.

4328 visits About us / Imprint