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Java3D Source Code Released
mrp101 writes "Over the past few months (aka year) the future of Java3D has been in question. Not too long ago Apple announced a port to Mac OS X, but still no official update from Sun. A few weeks ago Sun announced that they were going to release the source code and begin collecting comments for version 1.4/2.0. And today they delivered, right before the JavaOne conference. The announcement can be found here(1) and
the CVS here(2). The code includes the core scenegraph, the vector math library, and Sun's own add-on utility libraries."
In fact, OpenOffice uses a dual licensing scheme that includes the GPL right ?
Bottomline: come on Sun, opensourcing Java will be the final step to make it a Standard (it is almost there, how many IT Jobs requre Java these days ?)
I can see medicine and CAD using it, but a employee, aunt or kid?
Sun doesn't give a rat's ass about aunts and kids - they shouldn't, either; aunts are cheap and kids have no money. "Knowledge workers" might not have any use for it right now. But medicine and CAD might be lucrative fields...
Probably also a few other small but expensive markets for it. At least that's what I'd guess would be the hope.
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
I'm currently working on what will be a large number of tutorials that go through the process of building a graphics API with pure software rendering. Starting with JavaScript and eventually will get into C and ASM.
JavaScript 3D
The most recent lesson (written Friday) demonstrates how to do texture mapping. With a color key to boot.
With OpenGL and DirectX already being used with pretty much everything I don't think Java3D is going to go very far. It has no real advantage on the desktop. The problem is that most devices that rely on Java like Cellphones don't have a large enough screen to make 3D really useable. And they certainly don't have the hardware acceleration.
Where Java3D might have a chance, developers are probably better off sticking to software rendering and 2D games with some 3D effects like lighting, alpha blending and whatnot.
I'd imagine they're making it open source because they realize that without a community to call it their own there's probably not going to be much of a fan base to get anything practical (read: that can make money) done with it. If anything goes wrong, Sun isn't really out anything.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
> opensourcing Java will be the final step to
> make it a Standard...
Ugh!!! Why is it that people in the open-source
community can't seem to grasp the concept that
open-source is not necessarily equivalent to
open-standard. One has nothing to do with the
other. Closed source can ahdere to standards
just as well as open-source. This *isn't* a
tirade against open source; it's just that I'm
amazed at how often I seen this fallacy crop up
in open-source circles.
I'd like to think that under the hood Java3D uses whatever hardware accelerated 3D technology is available on the current system.
So whether Java is "just another 3D library" or an abstraction layer to truly make cross-platform development easier depends on the quality of the VM.
If you want to see an example of a successful open standard created with BSD code, look at TCP/IP. Perhaps you've heard of it?
Is InodoroPereyra another alias for RMS? Honestly, I cannot fathom how so many people don't know that GPL != Open Source as it is one of many open source licenses.
Take a look at Apache and many other Open Source projects which are not GPL'd.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Java FP may run well on Sparc, but do you know anybody who owns a Sparc machine? I presume my university's got a few of them, but absolutely nobody I know uses them for their own machines. And that's the crux of the issue. It's fine to say that x86 is the inferior platform and all, but the fact of the matter is that it's the platform that the vast majority of end-users use.
You're downright stupid if you think that happens when you use the GPL.
Time makes more converts than reason
Sun are not "testing the waters". Instead they are continuing to follow their extremely successful strategy of the last few years. What Sun really don't want is a viable open source clone of Java, whether it is gcj or IKVM. So, every so often they make noises about open-sourcing things. This means that people think working on the open source Java clones is a waste of time. People also carry on working on open source Java applications, providing Sun with help that Microsoft can only dream of.
.NET. The .NET system is probably better than Java, and we knew that if we wanted a free version we would have to write it ourselves.
.NET and c# are very nice to develop with, there is a high quality open source version, and the platform has Microsoft's marketing clout behind it. Oops...
Why do you think Mono is now days away from a 1.0 release, while gcj and classpath are still lagging the current Java? Because everyone knew that Microsoft would never open-source
This is the reason why Sun's strategy is, ultimately, misguided.
So what you are saying is that the BSD licence is idealistic and the GPL is pragmatic but both tend towards the same goal?
By using those words you are already showing bias. You have decided that the GPL is necessary to get contributions and that's why you call it pragmatic. If you believe that you get plenty, if not more, useful contributions with the BSD license, you could call the BSD license pragmatic and the GPL idealistic.
If that's the only important difference then can we stop arguing over which one is better?
No, another important difference is that you can't use GPLed code without GPLing your entire app (you can't have one part BSD and another part GPL). That means that in some cases, the GPL will actually prevent people from doing the right thing (using open source code and giving back code). Those practical considerations make it so that non-GPL open source developers have a big reason to lobby against using the GPL. I think that the arguments would be much less if the GPL-advocates would ask for the LGPL instead of the GPL.