First, VRML is $$ now, and there is high motivation to keep the
next big thing under the hood. Even the "Who did VRML 1.0" question
is like "Is O.J. Guilty?". Depends on what reality you live in.
And like O.J., the commercialization (self-promotion and commercial)
is in high gear.
I know that there are some who contributed to VRML 1.0 that now
view the VRML list as a purely technical forum (as it always was?)
and not the forum for establishing industry standards. What is
that forum and who drives/guides it? That is for us to participate
in, and motivate. Even VRML was OOGL, Labrynth, CDK, and OI until
SGI gained Netscape, Spayglass, DEC, Intergraph, SDSC, CERN, NCSA,
TGS, 3Dlabs, Viewpoint (and a few others) to agree that the
"Open Inventor flavor" of VRML was "VRML 1.0". Until that point
VRML wasn't VRML 1.0. Java will probably be the same.
I've recently seen articles marginalizing SGI's role in VRML 1.0,
versus VRML the email list. I'm not speaking for SGI, but as someone
very close to VRML I find it bad for future efforts when SGI's
contribution to writing the spec is called "geunt-work" (WebReview),
and VRML 1.0's Open Inventor basis is denied/claimed depending
upon the context.
So should VRML and Java marry? I'm sure they will a few times,
perhaps in private, perhaps in public.
Robert