I think what people keep forgetting, with World Wind at least, is that we are seconday users. The need for security is a requirement of the powers that are funding it.

If people are not comfortable with that, you can always branch off and create your own version of World Wind Java. Or just use the .Net version and help out with porting it to Mono (it 90% works, just the DX is all that is left to deal with I think).

Closed development can produce good software, just as open development can produce crap. It all depends on the management of the project. Still, you can’t deny that closed development can have a chilling effect on the software community. The Zotero project (new Endnote-killer in the Digital Humanities world) is experiencing exactly this kind of unrest.

You have spoken like someone that has no clue what is going on. Become informed FIRST then post.

Closed will only be for a short while to trackdown and hammer out the most bugs we can. The more specialized the bug hunters, the better the bug reports, the faster they get fixed.

Before JavaONE the public betas will come out, and most likely at the time the source code will be copied to the sourceforge NASA SVN at that time.

There, I have saved you some troble with having to use you brain and read and think at the same time.

Closed testing cycle? Are you kidding? I am really disappointed by NASA. Does opensource philosophy tells anything to you? You should read The Cathedral and the Bazaar (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/) by Eric S. Raymond. There are no excuses for such a stupid closed development model. I am going back to WW2D, shame on NASA.

Even if NASA have some contracts with sponsors of WWJ, this doesn’t mean that they can’t open Subversion repository only for reading, so _everyone_ can get latest sources. This behaviour what has NASA shown is highly unfriendly to opensource community.