Justin, thank you for this honest update on the state of Java3D. I have been an advocate of Java3D for years, but problems, including what you describe, have forced me to look for alternatives. e.g. I'm currently using gl4java for my personal projects, due to the continued non-existance of Java3D on Mac OS X. This is a criminal shame, since I think the Java3D spec was excellent.
I hope Sun decide to release the Java3D source code for the reasons you describe, and soon. Best wishes, Jeroen Digital Artist ILM Justin Couch wrote: > > Theron Crissey wrote: > > > Does anyone have any news on Sun's decision to stop supporting Java3D? > > Other than a statement on j3d.org, I can't find news about the subject. > > Unfortunately there is very little because Sun's marketing and > management teams feel that it is the best thing to say absolutely nothing. > > What I can try to impart is some of the things we've been learning > recently in our conversations with the various people at Sun, up to and > including their CTO. > > Unless you've been paying realy close attention to the graphics market, > you probably won't have noticed the consolidation that is happening. > It's come down to a 3 horse race - nVidia, ATI and 3DLabs. SGI does not > even design their own graphics hardware anymore - the new IR4 is using 4 > ATI chips/boards as the core of their graphics capability. That, to > those of us that have been doing realtime 3D since the beginning of > time, is a very sad state indeed. Sun is the last of the workstation > vendors selling their own custom-designed chips, and they won't be for > much longer. They simply cannot compete with the teams of the other 3 in > the design. > > What is happening internally within Sun is a lot of reorganisation of > resources. They have to keep some graphics competency, but at the same > time work out where they are going to get more bang for thier buck. > Obviously custom-designed hardware is not it. However, in order to not > be completely irrelevant in the workstation arena, they need to keep > some staff on - even just to do stuff like write drivers for their OS. > > On another front, there is a directive to do "stuff" that enhances Sun's > values to customers. This, of course, goes without saying - it's > something all companies need to do. For Sun, Java is a huge boost in the > marketing stakes. If they can promote something within the Java space > that gets them market recognition, they'll do it. If switching horses to > something better is the way to go, then so be it. However, one thing > that is part of their corporate culture is to never admit to a failure > when something doesn't work out. That is exactly what you are seeing now. > > The main problem is that Sun is loosing market share and they need to do > the "most efficient" thing to try to prop that up. Java3D was very much > an anomoly within Sun. It was the only Java project that was not run as > part of Javasoft. Instead it was run under their workstation/3D graphics > group. For a long time, this caused all sorts of interesting issues of a > political nature. There's some really interesting tales, but the one of > importance here is the support for OpenGL and Java. For the longest > time, there was quite fierce resistance within Sun and the 3D graphics > group, although the non-3D people were pushing for it. Why this > happened, I have no idea, but there are various theories one could throw > at it: mainly job protection and control issues. > > Java3D didn't take off in the way intended. 3D graphics was being > marginallised at Sun, PC and console platforms were taking off, and many > people wanted to use Java for game programming, and couldn't. Java3D has > many serious issues, particularly for the game community. With the > decline internally of the number of people devoted to 3D, some people > saw the writing on the wall and changed posture to accept the OpenGL > work that others had been pushing for for years. There were some large > reorganisations internally, the javagaming project started up, SGI and > Sun became friends and we end up with the JSR process starting. > > This has lead to some interesting structures within Sun as there are > various different tied-up management chains. One of the "interesting" > tasks we've been dealing with recently is trying to untangle those > chains to find out who, really, is in charge of Java3D. Various parties > are all claiming ownership of the codebase and being the one "in control > of its destiny". There are at least 4 different management chains that I > know of personally, that are claiming this as of today. As far as we can > determine, none of those parties actually do have control, despite > wanting to claim it. I suspect most of these are claiming it for > political reasons, but I can't be 100% sure on that. > > What I do know, right now, is that we've decide to work from the top > down and see if we can straighten it out. We've had some extensive > discussions with those at the top of the Sun technology chain, brought > about by our work with some of the managers lower down in the food > chain. A lot has happened because of our work across the various open > standards and open source areas, thus we have been seen as someone that > knows the field and where the traps are. In addition, we're fairly > brutally honest with them about a subject, particularly when they ask > for "community response". They are very aware right now about how little > time they have to come up with a response to the j3d community, either > positive or negative on the release of the open source. > > One of the things that is waffling in their mind right now is whether it > is worth releasing Java3d. In all the discussion we've had with them the > only issue has been whether it is useful for them to release the code > and how it would help their business. At no time have they ever > mentioned whether it would be possible. The core assumption is that they > can release all fully, it's just whether it would be beneficial to them > to do so. That's the main reason behind my request for feedback last > week. We have to put together pretty much a set of reasons why it is in > Sun's interest to release the code that can be presented up and down the > management chain. It has to be more than just an open source cheer squad > too. It has to be a valid set of community expectations that things will > continue to go forward in some form, as just dumping the code to the > world and then have no-one continue to use or develop that codebase > would not be in Sun's interest either. > > Of course, this is where, we've told Sun, that they're going to have a > lot of problems. They don't want to announce anything unless they know > they have solid community support, yet the general feeling of the > community is that they're not willing to give the level of support Sun > desires without seeing the code first. A case of having been burnt too > many times by complete silence or saying one thing and doing another. In > this, I needed to express some detail of how urgent the situation to be. > To do this, I was asked to give some set of absolute requirements: meet > this, or it's not going to happen. In my most recent communications, I > had to pick a number, and what I come up with was based on a gut > feeling. There's no rational reason behind it, just what I've felt, > based on all the correspondence myself and Alan have had all over the > place with various users. In the end, the position I've put to them is > that, if Java3D is to remain relevant, the source will need to be > released within 2 months otherwise it is not worth it - almost anyone > who is really of importance from a community perspective that could take > and run with it will have moved on to something else. I also quite > explicitly stated that the _source_ has to be released by then, not just > a public promise to release. I've tried to make it abundantly clear that > in order to regain the confidence of the community actions are needed > right now, not words. > > So that's the state of play right now from our perspective. There's > actually a heap more detail to fill out, but that's the "short" version. > Hope it helps to see some of what is going on behind the scenes right now. > > -- > Justin Couch http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/ > Java Architect & Bit Twiddler http://www.yumetech.com/ > Author, Java 3D FAQ Maintainer http://www.j3d.org/ > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > "Humanism is dead. Animals think, feel; so do machines now. > Neither man nor woman is the measure of all things. Every organism > processes data according to its domain, its environment; you, with > all your brains, would be useless in a mouse's universe..." > - Greg Bear, Slant > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > > =========================================================================== > To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body > of the message "signoff JAVA3D-INTEREST". For general help, send email to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "help". =========================================================================== To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "signoff JAVA3D-INTEREST". For general help, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "help".
