Blackdown Java

Blackdown was a project to port the Java programming language to the Linux operating system . Java is used to create and run computer programs . The Blackdown developers used the source texts of the JDK and JRE from Sun Microsystems , which are released under a corresponding license . They added patches that made Blackdown work on Linux. Not only the PC platform was supported, but also other platforms used by Linux.

Sun later took over the blackdown patches in order to release a Linux variant of Java, but this variant only supports the PC platform.

Contrary to popular belief, Blackdown software is not open source software as defined by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Since the source texts are used by Sun, the restrictions made there apply. These are not compatible with the definition of the OSI. This creates the paradoxical situation that the source texts are available, but the software is not referred to as open source by many.

As an open source alternative, there is the Kaffe project for the Java Virtual Machine and GNU Classpath for the class libraries (Blackdown provided both).

In August 2007, the Blackdown project ended after it had become obsolete with the early 2007 release of OpenJDK .