The Jikes Research Virtual Machine project: Building an open-source research community

Abstract

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