In fact, I received an e-mail message from Steve Byrne stating that the source code is not hard to understand and many areas besides debugging need volunteers. He also said many areas of specialization exist in the source code, so if you are good at one thing but not another, please don't let that stop you from volunteering. I will review the high points of three different JDK files, drawing on personal experience. The main source of information is the Java Linux FAQ at the Blackdown site. Applets are simply small Java programs that run within the context of a web browser.
Applications are stand-alone programs.
Both applications and applets start as Java source code files. When a Java program is compiled, the source code is turned into Java byte code. Unless you have a machine that implements Java byte code in hardware, the JVM is a program run by the operating system you are using. This is the case under Linux. As I stated before, the difference between applications and applets is revealed by the way each is started.