actually attempting to make any progress here. Since Sun have gone into their usual "saying nothing is better than saying something" approach to a situation, I'm at least attempting to fill the void with some information about what we've been doing and hearing.
We won't say anything until plans are concrete. We are not witholding bad news. There is no news to give right now.
Should you take what I say all at face value? Probably not; keep a reasonable amount of salt handy with you, but I certainly try to present as much useful information as I currently know. For example, Doug saying that they are continuing to support Java3D directly contradicts what I have been told by at least 4 different high-ranking managers inside Sun - one of those happening to be Greg Popodopoulus, their CTO. Those sort
The product group which is responsible for Java 3D continues to support it. Don't confuse adding new features with supporting existing products. We will support existing products, we are looking how to add new features.
of statements to me, are pretty concrete. Yet things like other statements from managers like we'll open source all of Java3D and give it to you by next Wednesday are not concrete at all. In all honesty, everyone that we talk to within Sun has a different idea about what to do. Not everyone is in favour of going OS with Java3D - and there are different reasons why too: business stuff (it will help Microsoft), political (I hate manager X , so I'm going kill anything he does) or philosophical (I don't believe OS is the way to do anything, it'll ruin it). There are others on the other side of the fence within Sun too - religously believing it should be OSS no matter what - they have just as little justification for their perspective as the anti-OSS people and frankly, even I disagree with some of their "arguments" for it. The work we are doing right now is to help their be an alignment between many of the managers about what the "right thing" to do is. We, and they, are not even sure what the correct thing to do is right now, it could well be to drop it completely, it could be to open source it - nobody yet knows. All we're working on is trying to get everyone there to start at least walking in the same direction, and hopefully one day marching to the same tune.
We've got pages and pages of notes (and business cards!) about our recent conversations with everyone there. If I wrote everything down as an email here I'd be typing for the next couple of weeks! We're spending probably 60 to 90 minutes a day on the phone right now working with people inside Sun. If it is not obvious by now, then it should be stated that at no time are we, or have we, been working with whatever Doug is proposing. As far as I'm aware, nobody in Sun's management that we've spoken to is aware of the proposal that he's working on right now. I'm just as intrigued as the rest of you are.
I work in the software chief technology office, so I am involved in all these discussions. Some form of open source is on the table, but we need to work through all the issues. Again, when we have a concrete plan for going forward, we will make that public.
Doug.
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