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"It's not an easy problem taking the best of each, figuring out what the long-term convergence plan is." That's an understatement. The complexity of merging tw

"It's not an easy problem taking the best of each, figuring out what the long-term convergence plan is." That's an understatement. The complexity of merging two fairly distinct VMs while trying to maintain feature parity with both separate previous versions, and taking the best features of both? Eighteen months seems optimistic. I also hope they have some incredibly good way of producing a combined test suite, because this seems like the most promising way of introducing myriad subtle bugs I can imagine.

wheaties 16y ago
I doubt it was the developers who are responsible for the merging who came up with an 18 month estimate. Invariably it's not going to happen on time or if the 18 month milestone is hit, it'll stay alpha for quite some time. JDK7 + merging of 2 distinct VMs? Sheesh...
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Oracle certainly has money to throw at the problem. The question whether the problem is one that can be solved by throwing lots of money at it will be answered in 18 months.
  - joubert 16y ago
    Throwing money at it probably won't solve it.
    - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
      ... especially considering that quite a few of Sun's star engineers have already left.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      That's my bet too. And I am quite happy with it. If Oracle completely botches their proprietary, poisonous implementation, OpenJDK may gain some popularity. The biggest risk is giving .NET a more easy market.
radu_floricica 16y ago
Not if they chose one of them as base and incrementally improve it with code taken from the other. Easier to test and stable at every point.
- Tautologistics 16y ago
  It is likely that some of each VMs design decisions are so fundamental that it precludes an incremental migration of pieces from one to the other.
  - 10ren 16y ago
    Oracle is a pragmatic company. It's likely they'll just merge the easy stuff. If there is insanely great stuff in the intersection you mention, it probably constitutes a research project, which it would make sense to undertake in the background (if at all). For Oracle, the only "insanely great" that counts is that which yields benefits that customers will pay for now/soon - not what's technically impressive. They're a sort of microsoft-research anti-particle. disclaimer I actually have no idea.

wheaties 16y ago

I doubt it was the developers who are responsible for the merging who came up with an 18 month estimate. Invariably it's not going to happen on time or if the 18 month milestone is hit, it'll stay alpha for quite some time. JDK7 + merging of 2 distinct VMs? Sheesh...

rbanffy 16y ago
Oracle certainly has money to throw at the problem. The question whether the problem is one that can be solved by throwing lots of money at it will be answered in 18 months.
- joubert 16y ago
  Throwing money at it probably won't solve it.
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    ... especially considering that quite a few of Sun's star engineers have already left.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    That's my bet too. And I am quite happy with it. If Oracle completely botches their proprietary, poisonous implementation, OpenJDK may gain some popularity. The biggest risk is giving .NET a more easy market.

radu_floricica 16y ago

Not if they chose one of them as base and incrementally improve it with code taken from the other. Easier to test and stable at every point.

Tautologistics 16y ago
It is likely that some of each VMs design decisions are so fundamental that it precludes an incremental migration of pieces from one to the other.
- 10ren 16y ago
  Oracle is a pragmatic company. It's likely they'll just merge the easy stuff. If there is insanely great stuff in the intersection you mention, it probably constitutes a research project, which it would make sense to undertake in the background (if at all). For Oracle, the only "insanely great" that counts is that which yields benefits that customers will pay for now/soon - not what's technically impressive. They're a sort of microsoft-research anti-particle. disclaimer I actually have no idea.