The VM itself was developed independently of any other implementation, including Sun Microsystem's RI.
The same is true of most of the class libraries, but in this case some code is drawn from the GNU Classpath project.
The Wonka VM was developed by telematics company Acunia to run on its ARM-based hardware.
In October 2001 Wonka was released as open source software under a "revised" BSD license.
Nonetheless, there are still many instances of Wonka in daily use, for example in Punch Telematix' CarCube or Kronos' HirePort recruitment terminal.