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Commercial Interest In Open-Source 3D Environment

Posted by timothy on from the giant-shoulders-cleared-for-standing dept.

cellulama writes "Is virtual reality back? A commercial vendor has started developing for Croquet, which is an open-source tool for collaborating and sharing data, with an emphasis on 3D visualization. The system was developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for research and "co-creativity," but a company named 3Dsolve is looking for military applications. What's next -- open-source America's Army?"

2 of 24 comments (clear)

  1. It won't work by dshaw858 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I worked on Croquet with colleagues at the San Diego Supercomputer Center... it's some pretty gnarly code, written mainly in Smalltalk. I don't think that a commercial vendor would be able to deal with it; people who love code, yes... people who just want money from it... no.

    - dshaw

  2. OSS is neutral on use... by Spoing · · Score: 3, Insightful
    OK, more specifically free software is neutral on how the software is used and who can use the software. Open source software tends to follow that as well.

    This means that if a mailing list manager is created by an ardent advocate of choice...the mailing list licence does not have a clause that says 'can not be used by right to lifers'. Or bisa-versa. If it does, it's not OSS or free software.

    Drug pushers, dictators, mass murders, bunny skinners, and traffic violators are treated the same as military or private users -- no matter what you think of any of these groups.

    --
    A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.