The Jikes Research Virtual Machine Project: Building an Open-Source Research Community

Overview

This paper describes the evolution of the Jikese Research Virtual Machine project from an IBM internal research project, called Jalapeno, into an open-source project. After summarizing the original goals of the project, the paper discusses the motivation for releasing it as an open-source project and the activities performed to ensure the success of the project. Throughout, the authors highlight the unique challenges of developing and maintaining an open-source project designed specifically to support a research community.