Verification steps: Create a plugin with a MANIFEST.MF not placed according to the JAR spec: 1) Unzip some plugin jar, 2) put some file that sorts before MANIFEST.MF in the META-INF directory, 3) use ordinary zip to zip everything back up and change the extension to jar. 4) The plugin should still load ok.
assigning to myself for verification ...
verified JON 2.4.2 RC2 by following the verification steps in Comment #1
marking VERIFIED BZs to CLOSED/CURRENTRELEASE
changing status of VERIFIED BZs for JON 2.4.2 and JON 3.0 to CLOSED/CURRENTRELEASE