This repository contains all sources that are needed to build OpenWebStart releases based on the IcedTea-Web core functionality that is developed at the AdoptOpenJDK community.

Java Web Start (JWS) was deprecated in Java 9, and starting with Java 11, Oracle removed JWS from their JDK distributions. This means that clients that have the latest version of Java installed can no longer use JWS-based applications. And since public support of Java 8 has ended in Q2/2019, companies no longer get any updates and security fixes for Java Web Start.

OpenWebStart offers a user-friendly installer to use Web Start / JNLP functionality with future Java versions without depending on a specific Java vendor or distribution. The first goal of the project is to target Java 8 LTS versions while support for Java 11 LTS will come in near future.

While we (Karakun) develop user-friendly installers to use a Java vendor–independent approach for Web Start, we also help to integrate Web Start functionally in the Java 8 LTS releases of AdoptOpenJDK. Therefore all Web Start functionality is developed in the IcedTea-Web repository of the AdoptOpenJDK organization together with Red Hat and other members of the AdoptOpenJDK community. Therefore this repository only contains sources that are needed to create enterprise-ready and user-friendly native installers for OpenWebStart.

The project is released as open source under the GPLv2 with exceptions.