Why did IBM Research make the source available?
We do many things here at IBM Research, the most important of which is — you guessed it — research. Work on what is now known as Jikes began in January 1996 when one of us (Philippe) decided to study the problem of compiling Java. The other (Dave) joined the project in April 1996, and started out by writing the bytecode generator. We have worked full-time on the compiler ever since. We released Jikes in binary form in April 1997. During the spring of 1998 we received many requests for a Linux version. Jikes for Linux was released on 15 July 1998 — the response was overwhelming. Jikes had more downloads in the three months after the announcement than in the fifteen months before the announcement. The increase in downloads was not just for the Linux version: there was a corresponding surge for the Win95/NT version. We also got many bug reports — our main goal in putting out this version. We knew that putting out a version for Linux would inevitably raise the question, “Where’s the so
