javac and jikes
 

how are javac and jikes different, do they create a different class file is one faster or what is teh difference?

jikes runs a lot faster in my experience. I'm not sure how the generated bytecode compares. jikes is open source.

They generally accomplish the same task, though.

jikes and javac produce identicals, or almost identicals class files.
jikes is a native C++ program, so it must be compiled for each target architecture and then is likely to run faster.
jikes doesn't currently support the java 1.5 new language features like generics.

As of its 1.5 version, Sun JDK is, to a certain extent, open source too:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/source_license.html

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