diff --git a/CONTRIBUTORS b/CONTRIBUTORS
index 5a4b73cba..a831e8fe9 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTORS
+++ b/CONTRIBUTORS
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@ Adrian Nistor
 Adrien Grand
 Aleksandr Ishutin
 Alex Rosen
+Alexander Grund
 Alexei Yudichev
 Alexey Panchenko
 Alexey Solofnenko
diff --git a/WHATSNEW b/WHATSNEW
index 0af7f1d2f..68dc51fed 100644
--- a/WHATSNEW
+++ b/WHATSNEW
@@ -22,6 +22,11 @@ Fixed bugs:
    exceptions that happen in @BeforeAll method of a test. This is now fixed.
    Bugzilla Report 63850
 
+ * Building Ant from source could result in the javadocs target failing if the
+   optional dependencies were missing. This has now been fixed.
+   Bugzilla Report 63438
+
+
 Other changes:
 --------------
 
diff --git a/build.xml b/build.xml
index 6071a949e..047d459f9 100644
--- a/build.xml
+++ b/build.xml
@@ -574,6 +574,17 @@
         <parsersupports feature="http://java.sun.com/xml/jaxp/properties/schemaSource"/>
       </or>
     </condition>
+
+    <!--
+    Java8 introduced a HTML checker 'doclint' which is very strict and breaks
+    the build if there is a HTML error in the JavaDoc.
+    -->
+    <condition
+            property="javadoc.doclint.none"
+            value="-Xdoclint:none"
+            else="">
+      <not><isset property="withDoclint"/></not>
+    </condition>
   </target>
 
   <!--
@@ -1541,7 +1552,8 @@
              windowtitle="${Name} API"
              doctitle="${Name}"
              maxmemory="1000M"
-             verbose="${javadoc.verbose}">
+             verbose="${javadoc.verbose}"
+             additionalparam="${javadoc.doclint.none}">
 
       <packageset dir="${java.dir}"/>
 
@@ -1572,7 +1584,8 @@
              version="true"
              locale="en"
              windowtitle="${Name} Test Utilities"
-             doctitle="${Name}">
+             doctitle="${Name}"
+             additionalparam="${javadoc.doclint.none}">
 
       <!-- hide some meta information for javadoc -->
       <tag name="pre" description="Precondition:" scope="all"/>
diff --git a/contributors.xml b/contributors.xml
index 55941aa9d..4e88f276c 100644
--- a/contributors.xml
+++ b/contributors.xml
@@ -66,6 +66,10 @@
     <first>Alex</first>
     <last>Rosen</last>
   </name>
+  <name>
+    <first>Alexander</first>
+    <last>Grund</last>
+  </name>
   <name>
     <first>Alexei</first>
     <last>Yudichev</last>