The Croquet project seeks to offer an open source networked 3D environment for collaborative work. The Squeak programming environment serves as a foundation. While its primary target is in the educational area it is conceived from the start as a series of shared worlds which can be created in other public and private domains where advanced Collaborative software is needed.
Alan Kay and several participants in the Squeak project are behind the Croquet project. The core Educational Partners are being organized by the University of Wisconsin and the University of Minnesota.
The environment of the Croquet project resembles somewhat that of Sun's Project Looking Glass since it allows projections of 2D windows, as if they were 3D objects floating in a three-dimensional world. It goes much further, given that the programming of the Croquet 3D world is virtually without limits. In this domain it reaches farther even than Microsoft Research's "Task Gallery" for it is not bound to any particular operating systems, and since, eventually, it could constitute an operating system of its own, by building more upon its Squeak foundations.
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