Caleb Booker

Those who have been following the extremely promising Project Wonderland, a Sun Microsystems 100% Java open source toolkit for virtual environments, just got a bit of a shock:

I know everyone likes to get the bad news over with first, so I’ll start with that. We found out on Friday that development resources are no longer being applied to Project Wonderland.

Oh look, Sun just ditched its reputation as a leading edge technology provider… meh, who needs it, right?

Nicole Yankelovich continued to say that a core group of them are continuing the project and are working on making it self-sustaining. Currently they’re actively pursuing partnerships with various other companies. Hopefully a leader will step forward here.

While public perception has been that the project was stagnating, that’s purely a function of an inattentive press:

There is so much great momentum behind Wonderland. To our knowledge, there are currently three companies offering Wonderland-related products, and eight companies offering Wonderland world-building services. There are countless exciting university projects and a number of corporations that have seen the advantages of Wonderland over other platforms. We are seeing new people posting on the forums almost every day.

Of all the virtual environment products out there, Project Wonderland has the capacity to truly fill a void in servicing enterprise clients. Considering what it can do, I’m blown away at Sun’s decision here. Lets hope support continues to grow without the brand backing.

Posted on February 1st, 2010 under platforms, virtual environments, virtual worlds. Tags: platforms, virtual envronments, virtual worlds. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.