Scilab 5.5.2 cannot create Java Main Class on Ubuntu 14.04.

On March 5, after months of working regularly, Scilab 5.5.2 stopped working altogether if launched from GUI.

Trying to launch from terminal, it still did not work but at least informed me that it could not create a Java Main Class, and some more details:

    Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
 at org.scilab.modules.gui.utils.ConfigManager.checkVersion(Unknown Source)
 at org.scilab.modules.gui.utils.ConfigManager.createUserCopy(Unknown Source)
 at org.scilab.modules.core.Scilab.<init>(Unknown Source)

Packages:
   OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 10.1.3
   Scilab; 5.5.0-2
   libjogl2-ini; 2.1.5-1ubuntu3
   libjogl1-java; 2.1.5-1ubuntu3

Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS Release: 14.04

A related bug is: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mesa/+bug/1742894, which has been resolved for Ubuntu Xenial with a new version of libjogl2-java. No such fix seems to be available for Trusty, however.