indy and tailc

[John Rose]

On Jan 26, 2010, at 2:12 PM, Mohamed Bana wrote:

> Perhaps Sun

Well, it's probably "perhaps Oracle" any time now; we'll see how things shake out.

In any case, "Sun" doesn't do such side-projects, so much as they are created by individual overworked but entrepreneurial engineers and engineering managers working within Sun.  And when "Sun" gets quiet, it's because the one or two engineers working on some public project have time-sliced to some other part of their job.

As far as more Linz-type collaborations are concerned, you are right, Mohamed.  I think one or two more would be good.  For example, there are good JVM hackers at Rice.  More than that would require someone like me or my manager to work full-time on collaboration instead of engineering or managing.

Of the three mlvm successes I cited, two came from Linz, but one (Rémi Forax) was a volunteer who didn't require a formal connection with Sun; he just jumped in.  (Thanks, Rémi!)  In fact, even the Linz-based projects were based on the inspiration of individual students to work on Hotspot for their research projects.

I guess both models have their place.  Note that the Linz relationship, which is very powerful, took years to build, since it requires faculty investment in learning Hotspot and teaching it to students.  The mlvm project can be viewed as a complement to such high-momentum relationships, since it is public and allows anyone access to the code and a suggested project list, and start experimenting right away.  (The learning curve is steep, of course.  Our wiki is supposed to help with that.)  So if you are into JVM futures, mlvm is a good place to volunteer.

-- John