diff --git a/CONTRIBUTORS b/CONTRIBUTORS
index 3b551c7e0..9fcfecf51 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTORS
+++ b/CONTRIBUTORS
@@ -30,6 +30,7 @@ Curtis White
 Cyrille Morvan
 Dale Anson
 Dan Armbrust
+Daniel Spilker
 Danno Ferrin
 Davanum Srinivas
 David A. Herman
diff --git a/WHATSNEW b/WHATSNEW
index 6856f435b..d621d3921 100644
--- a/WHATSNEW
+++ b/WHATSNEW
@@ -23,6 +23,9 @@ Fixed bugs:
 
 * <junit> and <assertions> are working together. Bugzilla report 27218
 
+* I/O-intensive processes hung when executed via <exec spawn="true">.
+  Bugzilla reports 23893/26852.
+
 
 Other changes:
 --------------
diff --git a/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/Execute.java b/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/Execute.java
index da2dd31f0..84556777c 100644
--- a/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/Execute.java
+++ b/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/Execute.java
@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@
 
 package org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs;
 
+import java.io.OutputStream;
 import java.io.BufferedReader;
 import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
 import java.io.File;
@@ -509,6 +510,18 @@ public class Execute {
                     Project.MSG_VERBOSE);
             }
         }
+
+        OutputStream dummyOut = new OutputStream() {
+            public void write(int b) throws IOException {
+            }
+        };
+
+        ExecuteStreamHandler streamHandler = new PumpStreamHandler(dummyOut);
+        streamHandler.setProcessErrorStream(process.getErrorStream());
+        streamHandler.setProcessOutputStream(process.getInputStream());
+        streamHandler.start();
+        process.getOutputStream().close();
+
         project.log("spawned process " + process.toString(), Project.MSG_VERBOSE);
     }