Dear all

As I'm sure you're all aware, Apple recently announced that it is "deprecating" 
its own version of Java for OS X.  This probably means that they will 
discontinue further development and no longer ship Java with the next version 
of the OS X (10.7 codenamed "Lion").

As you can imagine, this news has caused great consternation in Mac Java 
community and huge amount of discussion about what will replace it.  Obviously 
OpenJDK is a top contender for the role.  At this point, I admit that I don't 
know the status of OpenJDK for Macs but I believe that it does not have a Java 
Sound implementation.

The version of Java Sound produced by Apple was pretty pathetic and for a long 
time it lacked Midi I/O.  For these reasons, some years ago we set up a small 
company to develop an implementation of Java Sound MIDI for OS X, and also an 
improved and very low latency audio output Mixer for OS X.  These were 
reasonably successful and we had a steady number of sales, plus many customers 
who wrote to us to say how useful they'd found it.  For personal reasons, the 
company is now in the process of liquidation and it seems a shame to deprive 
the community of the code we developed if it can be of use.

If it would help, then we're prepared to donate all our source code on a free 
licence open source basis to the Mac port of the OpenJDK project.  For the 
record, we have a working implementation of MIDI I/O and a working audio output 
mixer.  We also have an experimental synthesizer.  We don't have an audio input 
mixer (because there wasn't any demand), we haven't implemented ports, and we 
haven't implemented our own sequencer.  All of our software interfaces to Mac's 
Core Audio system via JNI. 

Of course, the project may already have a working version of Java Sound for OS 
X, in which case we'll consign our stuff to the great software library in the 
sky!  

Best wishes

Mandolane

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