They may be changing this, slowly. Their compiler, Jikes, is now
available as source code (though the license is somewhat problematic,
and the parser generator they use is still closed-source at the
moment).
> yeah... but that doesn't mean it actually works. I am
> yet to get any interesting apps to build and run.
> (Actually, I cheated: I haven't installed the blackdown
> JDK. I installed Kaffe, cuz the download time wasn't
> as scary. I'd like to hear a 1st-hand success story
> before I spend the time/disk space to deal with the
> blackdown JDK)
I've developed commercial software using the Blackdown JVMs, though
that stuff was deployed on other platforms. They are *much* more
stable than Kaffe, which is still finding its legs.
> In fact, I didn't see much Open Source Java anywhere.
> (are there *any* Open Source Java projects besides
> http://www.w3.org/Jigsaw/?)
Off the top of my head, I can list the Kaffe and Japhar JVMs, the
Pizza and Jikes compilers, the GNU CLASSPATH project (which is doing
the cleanroom thing on the class libraries), and numerous pieces of
other software which I see announced from time to time on freshmeat,
but haven't had the chance to try (the jedit editor, AOL buddy-list
and ICQ clients, etc., etc., etc.), and that's literally without
looking.
(I'm not counting the Sun stuff itself, even though the Sun Community
Source License may be "open" enough for at least some purposes).
rst