RFR: Hole for alternative plugin implementation

[Omair Majid]

Hi,

Over in the IcedTea project, we have an alternative (and Open Source)
implementation of javaws/plugin called IcedTea-Web [1]. IcedTea-Web has
always been built and run against IcedTea. However, that has required
IcedTea to carry patches that are not part of OpenJDK.

It would be much better if these patches were part of OpenJDK, I think.
It would mean OpenJDK could work with an Open Source/Free Software
plugin, IcedTea-Web wouldn't need a patched IcedTea and IcedTea wouldn't
have to carry this patch locally.

The webrev is at:
http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~omajid/webrevs/applet-hole/00/

This is a very small patch and it only relaxes visibility for methods
and members declared in two sun.applet.* classes. I think it's a very
safe change.

The change has been quite stable, we have been using this patch in
IcedTea 7 (without any modifications) since 2010.  The history of the
patch before that was slightly more complex. Andrew Hughes added it to
IcedTea 7 but it was taken from IcedTea6. The log for
icedtea6/patches/applet_hole.patch shows the following people have
contributed to it:

Andrew John Hughes
Deepak Bhole
Omair Majid
Thomas Fitzsimmons

Since all are/were Red Hat employees, the patch is covered by the CLA.

So, what do you all think about this? Are there any concerns or
suggestions? I will be happy to rework the patch as needed.

Thanks,
Omair

[1] http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/IcedTea-Web

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