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True but there are also a dozen client implementations in other languages so this can benefit any client side game development platform.

Define rational. Is money your primary or only measure? Only in the short term? The next quarter, maybe the next year?

A project like this, if it took off, could be quite good for expanding the usage of the Java language. It might not be a success or a big success, but calling it a blue-sky project seems a bit unfair. Unless of course value is only defined by the next quarter.

Except that it's forcing a restriction that isn't going to work for real-world game development.

On the server side, Project Darkstar applications must be delivered as Java Byte Code. (source)

The issue is that practically all real-time 3D PC or console games are written in C++. The server is not usually a totally isolated module, because it shares a lot of common code with the client. It would have the same network communication stack, it has to load the same resources, it has to do much of the same 3D maths, apply AI and game logic, etc... All of that is often shared with the client code base. It's not unusual for 50% or more shared code between the two. If the client is written in C++, and the server is in Java, expect that to drop to 5% or less. At best, developers could embed the Java runtime into the client-side for some scripted logic, like WoW does with Lua.

I was looking into it for one of my little side projects. If you know Java and have the time to look at it, I recommend it. To call it a game server is really to limit it; it's actually a framework and server for persistent, low-latency agent-based computing. Seems to scale quite well and the API isn't too intimidating. On the website they have some showcased apps as well as case studies, but if you're really looking to find out a bit more, you should look at Project Snowman, a sample game of 3D snowmen wandering around a landscape hitting each other with snowballs.

All the same, I don't see much other use of it. Then again I think the gaming industry tends to keep its cards close to the chest (apart from rendering engines, I guess.)

I think it's a shame, but I'm not altogether surprised. At the same time, I'd be surprised if the community didn't rescue the project.

I was looking into it for one of my little side projects. If you know Java and have the time to look at it, I recommend it. To call it a game server is really to limit it; it's actually a framework and server for persistent, low-latency agent-based computing. Seems to scale quite well and the API isn't too intimidating. On the website they have some showcased apps as well as case studies, but if you're really looking to find out a bit more, you should look at Project Snowman, a sample game of 3D snowmen wandering around a landscape hitting each other with snowballs.

All the same, I don't see much other use of it. Then again I think the gaming industry tends to keep its cards close to the chest (apart from rendering engines, I guess.)

I think it's a shame, but I'm not altogether surprised. At the same time, I'd be surprised if the community didn't rescue the project.

...unfortunately centralized systems usually take either large centralized shared storage, RDBMS, schedulers, resource allocation management, etc; or the proper development of a distributed data server farm. This ends up costing a lot of money and a decent amount of development & operations manpower...in the MMO world your profits are not that high to begin with.

Check out http://projectdarkstar.com/. It's a FOSS, J2EE style application server, and nearing 1-point-oh.

The article is extremely technical in nature

Not really. It just discusses the general nature of the problem, not what they did about it. For that, there's the DarkStar documentation.

This is a new data storage back end, like the ones from Google and Amazon. This one is specialized for game usage. It's really a transaction engine which links to a transaction-oriented object store. Entire transactions are atomic; either all the objects being changed commit, or none of them do. In a real system, the application transactions (in Java) run on a farm of machines, while the data objects reside on a second farm of machines. Clients talk to the application farm; the application farm talks to the data farm.

It's not really game-oriented at all. It's more general than that. It would be a reasonable back end for a big social-networking site, or a big auction site. The general assumption is that transactions and data objects are small; big stuff like canned web pages, images, and such goes elsewhere.

Incidentally, it may not all be open source. The current single node version is open source. But that's just a toy. There's no point in using the DarkStar architecture unless you need to scale up. Sun is vague about what the deal for the scalable architecture will be.

There is also the open source virtual world wonderland built in java and based on the (also open source) darkstar

Sun has the Darkstar engine which is open source -
http://projectdarkstar.com/

I always thought that Wonderland is a kind of proof-of-concept type of application for Sun's Project Darkstar platform (formerly called the Sun Game Server)

from the FAQ:

Project Darkstar is software infrastructure created by Sun Microsystems to simplify the development and operation of massively scalable online games, virtual worlds, and social networking applications. It is freely available under open source license from the Project Darkstar Community.

There's Sun Microsystems Project Darkstar.
Instant MMOG just add game.

And then there's OpenNeL.

But this isn't the first time this has come up. For example, at GDC this year there was something called Project DarkStar from Sun that aims to level the play field by providing the infrastructure (software and hardware, I think) for people developing MMORPGs in return for a cut of the action -- if the game doesn't make money, then it's free; if the game makes money, then the game developer pays a cut. Intriguing model. They had some nice demos. If it pans out then I think there could be a lot of new, imaginative, risky games that start to appear.