Re: More Java Extensions

Andrew John Hughes wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-07-02 at 12:41, Dalibor Topic wrote:
> 
>>Arnaud Vandyck wrote:
>>
>>>Andrew John Hughes <[email protected]> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Hi all,
>>>>	I don't know if anyone here has heard about the recent release of Sun's
>>>>Project Looking Glass under the GPL.  Its no doubt a good sign to see
>>>>Sun releasing this interesting project under a true Free Software
>>>>license.  However, the Java code still depends on a couple of Java
>>>>extensions, namely Java 3D and Java Advanced Imaging.  I was wondering
>>>>if anyone knew about the possibility or the existence of an effort to
>>>>create Free Software implementations of these libraries?  Having these
>>>>would mean that Project Looking Glass would be more likely to run on a
>>>>Free platform.  At present, it is tied to proprietary Sun licenses, even
>>>>if the main code is under the GPL.
>>>
>>>
>>>I'm not sure but maybe some developpers on classpath project already
>>>work on this.
>>>
>>
>>There is a free vecmath implementation, Bryan posted a link to it a few 
>>days ago, when the Java3d subject came up for the first time. There is 
>>no free software implementation of the Java3d apis, afaik. I doint't 
>>think there is a free implementation of JAI, yet, either. If you're 
>>looking for a nice project ... go for it :)
>>
>>cheers,
>>dalibor topic
> 
> 
> I've only just subscribed to classpathx, so I missed that thread -- I'll
> browse the archives for it.  I'll give this until after next week (for
> which I'm away for most of) to circulate, and then hopefully crack on
> with doing this if its still viable.  I'm particularly concerned as to
> any legal issues anyone knows about concerning this -- is there any
> reason why this couldn't be attempted on these grounds?  On a lighter
> note, any suggestions for running such a project? :-)

Vecmath is available from

http://www.objectclub.jp/download/vecmath_e

under this license:
/*
    Copyright (C) 1997,1998,1999
    Kenji Hiranabe, Eiwa System Management, Inc.

    This program is free software.
    Implemented by Kenji Hiranabe([email protected]),
    conforming to the Java(TM) 3D API specification by Sun Microsystems.

    Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell this software
    and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee,
    provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and
    that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear
    in supporting documentation. Kenji Hiranabe and Eiwa System 
Management,Inc.
    makes no representations about the suitability of this software for any
    purpose.  It is provided "AS IS" with NO WARRANTY.
*/

According to the page above, there was once a free implementation of 
java3d available at http://members.linuxstart.com/~jfreed/ but it 
doesn't seem toexist any more. Fortunately, archive.org has saved a copy 
of the page on 
http://web.archive.org/web/20001012122624/http://members.linuxstart.com/~jfreed/

Jean-Christophe Taveau has been last seen on the newsgroups here 
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=jc.taveau&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=3DF9A91A.8070907%40pobox.com&rnum=1

Regarding legal things, java3d seems to be covered by some patents. See 
http://www.3dcompression.com/patents.phtml for details. I have no idea 
how important 3d compression is for Java3d, but since you asked ;)

I still haven't found any free implemenmtaiton of JAI, though.

cheers,
dalibor topic