[Xorg] [Fwd: Project Looking Glass Open Source Announcement]

[Alan Coopersmith]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Project Looking Glass Open Source Announcement
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 10:46:06 -0700
From: Lauren Zuravleff <Lauren.Zuravleff at Sun.COM>
Reply-To: Lauren.Zuravleff at Sun.COM
To: looking-glass-interest at Sun.COM

Project Looking Glass Open Source
---------------------------------
Sun Microsystems is contributing Project Looking Glass, based on
Java(tm) technology, to the open source community. Project Looking Glass
is an exploration project to bring innovative 3D features to the desktop
environment. The desktop interface will offer an intuitive, new 3D
environment to interact with desktop applications featuring window
transparency, rotation, zoom, multiple desktop workspaces and
miniaturization.Project Looking Glass offers a platform to realize far
richer and more entertaining user experience for existing and new
applications in 2D or 3D. The technology enables developers to build
highly visual 3D desktops and applications that will run on Linux
systems such as Sun's Java Desktop System. The Solaris(tm) environment
will be supported in near future.


What does this mean to you?
---------------------------
If you're a software developer, please go to
http://lg3d-core.dev.java.net and download this early version of the
code and join the community in developing the 3D desktop.

Interested in using the Project Looking Glass? The project is in very
early stages and a commercial version is not available yet. Please go to
http://www.sun.com/software/project-looking-glass to keep up to date on
our progress.


Why Open Source?
----------------
Project Looking Glass is in its infancy, and we'd like to explore lots
of ideas and possibilities.  We're releasing the Project Looking Glass
code to the whole community to explore every aspect of the technology
rather than restricting access to a privileged few. We believe this open
development is an excellent model to pursue this exciting and vast
opportunity.  So, your involvement is eagerly anticipated. We believe
new dimension of developer innovation by making Sun's cutting edge
technology available at Sun's 3D Desktop Technology Open Source Project
on java.net.

We have been working for several months on cleaning the software up,
providing basic features and functionality key to 3D window management.
A key focus was looking at the existing 2D desktop applications,
ensuring minimal compatibility and performance problems. The next step
is to look what else we can do to foster real world 3D interactivity. We
decided to open source this at a very early stage to ensure that we got
good feedback from the community.


What's in the Open Source Project?
----------------------------------
The following features are now available in the Project Looking Glass
open source release:

3D Window Manager Platform - Java 3D based highly scalable 3D platform
with client-server model support.

3D Window Manager and Application Development API - Java API to develop
new 3D desktop applications and 3D desktop Window Manager features.

Native Application Integration Module - Allows developers to run
conventional X11 applications in the 3D environment.

Sample 3D Window Manager - provides a simple sample implementation for
testing and demonstration purposes

3D Environment Lite - Enables developers to run a simplified 3D
environment as an application on a Java 3D enabled platform including
Linux and Solaris environments. This serves as a development tool to
test implementations.

This is all available at: http://lg3d-core.dev.java.net


What's the licensing model?
---------------------------
There are three license choices for developers interested in creating
applications using Project Looking Glass.

For developers who are interested in reviewing, revising, and
redistributing the source code as part of their own application, Project
Looking Glass has been submitted as an Open Source project on java.net
under the GNU Public License, or GPL.

For developers who are interested in developing an application on top of
the existing Project Looking Glass platform without reviewing and/or
altering the code base, there is a binary version of the current state
of the project available for download under a traditional Binary Code
License. This is also available on java.net.

Finally, for developers or organizations interested in other uses or
revising the source code but wish to keep their implementation and
related application proprietary, please contact Sun at
lg3d_license at dev.java.net.


Project Looking Glass Community Meeting
---------------------------------------
Wednesday June 30, 2004
4:30pm to 6:00pm
The Argent Hotel, City Room
San Francisco, California, USA
http://www.argenthotel.com/location.htm

4:00-4:30 Registration
4:30-4:45 Welcome, Introductions, and 3D Desktop Project Demo
4:45-5:30 Technology Overview, Possible Sub Projects, How to Get Started
5:30-6:00 Q&A and Networking

Please join the conversation with the Project Looking Glass developers
from Sun Microsystems. This meeting will be technically focused
introducing developers to the project and letting them know how to get
involved.

You can meet the team from "Project Looking Glass" and other developers
while enjoying food and refreshments. There is open admission. You do
not need a JavaOne Conference Pass to attend.

There will be no webcast available, but we will post the information
available at the meeting on the website. We'll also have several
presentations and Project Looking Glass at JavaOne, and we'll post as
many as we can on the web.



You can see Hideya Kawahara on stage with Jonathan Schwartz and Scott
McNealy of Sun Microsystems demonstrating the Project Looking Glass
technology and announcing the open source project at
http://java.sun.com/javaone/ (select View Webcast).

If you have any questions, please send them to:
project-looking-glass at sun.com

Sun's Project Looking Glass Team