Aside from being faster, more mature and with better observability, why is bringing "the JVM along for the ride" different from bringing Racket's runtime along? Also, you do know that Oracle is behind OpenJDK, has been for ten years, and has recently made the JDK completely open-source and free of field-of-use restrictions for the first time in Java's history?
Off topic; But since you work at Oracle, what is the Oracle copyright terms on alternative implementations of Java? (in the light of Android lawsuits). Eg: some research or commercial implementation for a subset of java etc?
What do you mean by "alternative implementations"? OpenJDK is 100% open source, and is entirely governed by its open-source license. You can do whatever you want with -- including take just big or small pieces from it and change them -- it as long as you comply with the license. If you want to use the name "Java", your software must pass the TCK.
No. By alternative implementation I meant eg: some experimental java compiler to a different target eg: say JS / wasm, or a memory efficient class library implementation etc..
The Java spec is not open source. You could either extract as much or as little from OpenJDK and comply with its open-source license or obtain a spec license if you don't wish to open-source your implementation. In other words, you have the open-source route or the closed source route, but the closed-source route isn't free. (BTW, I am not authorized to speak on behalf of anyone other than myself, so this is just my opinion).
I haven’t figured out a way with the JVM / Clojure to compile and distribute a small self-contained bundle nearly as easily as I can with Racket.
And Graal (the option I’m aware of for compiling JVM-based code into a redistributable binary) is definitely Oracle. If I wrote more long-running code, or I could redistribute a stripped down JVM as easily as with Racket’s build tool “raco” I might have a different view, and I’d definitely prefer OpenJDK to Oracle’s.
OpenJDK is also made (primarily) by Oracle [1]; in fact, OpenJDK is the name of Oracle's one and only Java implementation project, although Oracle builds both free and support subscription binaries from it. Both OpenJDK and Graal are open source, though. OpenJDK now includes a tool called jlink [2] that allows you to create a small, self-contained bundle that includes a custom runtime as well as your app.
