5 ms·

Amazon has good developers, but the JVM is quite complex and the pool of people who can work on it is pretty rare, I wonder how well they’ll be able to maintain

by zandl 8y ago

Amazon has good developers, but the JVM is quite complex and the pool of people who can work on it is pretty rare, I wonder how well they’ll be able to maintain it on their own.

guitarbill 8y ago
I imagine they use it heavily internally, and already have people working on it, so it was just a matter of making it externally available.
znep 8y ago
They don't have to fully maintain it on their own. Packaging their own openjdk distribution gives them control over timely targeted bug and security fixes even if they don't have "JVM experts" working on it. I'm not saying they don't have such folks working on it since, well, James Gosling does work there after all along with many other talented folks, but the move makes sense regardless. At this point it appears to largely be a vote of support for openjdk as the project evolves. From their announcement: Amazon has already made several contributions to OpenJDK 8 and we look forward to working closely with the OpenJDK community on future enhancements to OpenJDK 8 and 11. We downstream fixes made in OpenJDK, add enhancements based on our own experience and needs, and then produce Corretto builds. In case any upstreaming efforts for such patches is not successful, delayed, or not appropriate for OpenJDK project, we will provide them to our customers for as long as they add value. If an issue is solved a different way in OpenJDK, we will move to that solution as soon as it is safe to do so.
ForHackernews 8y ago
Amazon has loads of money. Presumably if they care about this, they'll pay whatever's necessary to hire the developers they need.
- kondro 8y ago
  And would still be cheaper than paying Oracle.
not_kurt_godel 8y ago
Probably pretty OK considering James Gosling (founder and lead designer of Java) now works for AWS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling
coldtea 8y ago
>Amazon has good developers, but the JVM is quite complex and the pool of people who can work on it is pretty rare, I wonder how well they’ll be able to maintain it on their own. Several old (e.g. SUN) Java devs have left Oracle in the last years, so there's that.
- bni 8y ago
  Many ex Sun engineers went to AWS much earlier than that.
illumin8 8y ago
I imagine having James Gosling on staff will help quite a bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling

by zandl 8y ago

Amazon has good developers, but the JVM is quite complex and the pool of people who can work on it is pretty rare, I wonder how well they’ll be able to maintain it on their own.

guitarbill 8y ago

I imagine they use it heavily internally, and already have people working on it, so it was just a matter of making it externally available.

znep 8y ago

They don't have to fully maintain it on their own. Packaging their own openjdk distribution gives them control over timely targeted bug and security fixes even if they don't have "JVM experts" working on it. I'm not saying they don't have such folks working on it since, well, James Gosling does work there after all along with many other talented folks, but the move makes sense regardless. At this point it appears to largely be a vote of support for openjdk as the project evolves. From their announcement: Amazon has already made several contributions to OpenJDK 8 and we look forward to working closely with the OpenJDK community on future enhancements to OpenJDK 8 and 11. We downstream fixes made in OpenJDK, add enhancements based on our own experience and needs, and then produce Corretto builds. In case any upstreaming efforts for such patches is not successful, delayed, or not appropriate for OpenJDK project, we will provide them to our customers for as long as they add value. If an issue is solved a different way in OpenJDK, we will move to that solution as soon as it is safe to do so.

ForHackernews 8y ago

Amazon has loads of money. Presumably if they care about this, they'll pay whatever's necessary to hire the developers they need.

kondro 8y ago
And would still be cheaper than paying Oracle.

not_kurt_godel 8y ago

Probably pretty OK considering James Gosling (founder and lead designer of Java) now works for AWS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling

coldtea 8y ago

>Amazon has good developers, but the JVM is quite complex and the pool of people who can work on it is pretty rare, I wonder how well they’ll be able to maintain it on their own. Several old (e.g. SUN) Java devs have left Oracle in the last years, so there's that.

bni 8y ago
Many ex Sun engineers went to AWS much earlier than that.

illumin8 8y ago

I imagine having James Gosling on staff will help quite a bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling