Sun Opens Its 3-D 'Looking Glass' Linux Desktop

Sun's "Project Looking Glass" obviously has the eye candy, but more important are Suns plans on turning over "Project Looking Glass" to the open-source community. Besides the eye candy "Project Looking Glass" doesn't look all that usable in my opinion. No doubt Sun has been feeling the pressure from Apple's Quartz Extreme and the technology being develop for Longhorn to get this out as quickly as possible. Still I can't help but wonder what the open-source community will do with it.

By open-sourcing its next-generation Linux desktop technology, Sun Microsystems Inc. is turning over some of its most innovative work to date to the open-source community, sources said. Officials at the Santa Clara, Calif., systems maker said at JavaOne here that Sun plans to turn its next-generation Linux desktop, Project Looking Glass, over to the open-source community. The open sourcing of its Looking Glass technology represents a significant move by Sun, which has been under pressure by the open-source community to "open" some of its technology, specifically Java itself.

However, Project Looking Glass has won Sun rave reviews as well as accolades within and outside the company for its creator, Hideya Kawahara, a senior staff engineer at the company. Hideya KawaharaKawahara, a humble developer who in an interview with eWEEK simply referred to himself as "a geek," turned heads with his three-dimensional Linux desktop system with features that rival, and some even say surpass, those of next-generation desktops from Apple Computer Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

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