This is a bug in the Motif AWT implementation.

Some AWT event objects are being thrown away without any processing from
MComponentPeer.handleEvent(). This routine dispatches the event and then
frees the underlying X event object.

However, in java.awt.EventQueue.postEvent(), it is possible that the Java
event object can be overwritten with another Java event object without
ever calling MComponentPeer.handleEvent(). The Java object is garbage
collected but the X event object is never freed.

The code that is causing the problem is in java.awt.EventQueue.postEvent()

                    switch (q.id) {
                      case Event.MOUSE_MOVE:
                      case Event.MOUSE_DRAG:
                          // New-style event id's never collide with
                          // old-style id's, so if the id's are equal,
                          // we can safely cast the queued event to be
                          // an old-style one.
                          MouseEvent e = (MouseEvent)q.event;
                          if (e.getSource() ==
((MouseEvent)theEvent).getSource() &&
                              e.getModifiers() ==
((MouseEvent)theEvent).getModifiers()) {
                              q.event = eqi.event;// just replace old event
                              return;
                          }
                          break;


The "just replace old event" is the code that looses the events ...
MComponentPeer.handleEvent() is never called on the original event - so
the underlying X event object is not freed.

Just click on a button and drag as you go, you'll probably create a
half dozen or more "replaced" events and loose yourself a big chunk of memory
in the process.


AWTEvent.consume() may also have the same problem.