First, OpenNI was always dominated by a single company, PrimeSense. And rightfully so: PrimeSense developed the core technologies in the first Kinect camera, and had the talent who knew how to use it. But that in turn meant that OpenNI was heavily skewed toward that one vendor.

Second, “open” was used to describe the whole project, when the whole project wasn’t open.

And now the entire project is about to shutter. PrimeSense was bought by Apple, and the direct result of that acquisition (as I and many others predicted) as the demise of OpenNI.

In fact, with Apple splashing just this kind of creative technology all over their Website on the anniversary of the Mac, it’s deeply disappointing that Apple leadership isn’t intervening here. The closing of OpenNI is unceremonious and absent any kind of useful information. Visitors only get this:

“Software downloads will continue to be available until April 23rd, 2014 at which time the OpenNI website will be closed.”