There is also an issue on windows of a classpath size. I know i have been burnt by this before.
I think most projects of any size, commercial or open source, have moved away from using raw CLASSPATH and use custom classloading.
For example, a common technique is to have a "lib" directory where all files get added into a single classloader - not perfect especially when you may need multiple versions of a library but it works for many applications.
There are also things like the uberjar project at Codehaus for bundling things together.
-- Jeremy
