That's correct. The script used to generate the compiled binary is open and you can play around with that per the terms of the OTN license, but the SVM itself is closed source. There aren't currently any plans to change that.
Just to be clear: when you refer to the 'compiled binary', what binary are you referring to exactly? Is this the 'aot-image' tool inside the Graal OTN builds I was looking at? It was not clear to me if that was actually the Substrate tool or not, because the documentation is very vague[1] -- can any Graal-based language use that tool to test better startup times, etc?
Clearly if SVM is going to remain closed source, I'll have to continue to mostly ignore it (as I've done since I followed Graal), but it would be at least nice to see it "In Action" and what it does to the warm-up time, with my own eyes...
[1] http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oracle-labs/program-langua...
Out of the box, the aot-image script has support for building Graal.js and TruffleRuby images/binaries, but you could modify the script to build whatever Truffle language you'd like. This is just our first release of the SVM and those are the two languages we've tested. As the SVM is fairly young and under active development, it's possible you'll encounter missing functionality. But we do have at least one community member on the graal-dev [1] mailing list trying it out.
I can't say whether the SVM will remain closed or not. I really don't know. There just currently aren't any plans to open it.
> I can't say whether the SVM will remain closed or not. I really don't know. There just currently aren't any plans to open it.
I'll keep my fingers crossed, then! SVM is honestly one of the most exciting components. So if I try it and I have any problems, I'll definitely let graal-dev know.
Then there are no reasons to expect it to be open, as long as it's commercially viable to sell it. This is Oracle we're talking about. Not a company known for its love for F/OSS.
It'd be a real shame if Oracle couldn't see the benefits of open-sourcing SVM. New companies are far less likely to base their tech stack on closed source components when more mature open-source competitors exist, there's too much risk involved.