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I think it is a well-established fact by now that IBM isn't great when
it comes to naming things.
The Wikipedia article provides stunning insight into the story of this
particular name:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenJ9#History
In case the article gets edited, I'll reproduce the relevant passage here:
<blockquote>
OpenJ9 can trace its roots back to the ENVY/Smalltalk product
developed by Object Technology International (OTI). IBM purchased OTI
in 1996 for their Smalltalk expertise and products. However, when the
Java language emerged as a leading language for the Enterprise market,
the existing Smalltalk VM was adapted to process Java bytecodes
instead. The name J9 evolved from the naming convention for the
Smalltalk source code, K8. K->J (a backward step) because the
developers believed that Smalltalk was better than Java, but 8->9 (a
forward step) because the new VM would be better than before.
</blockquote>
The citation for that passage is
Ronald Servant (18 September 2017). "How did the J9 in OpenJ9 get its
name". medium.
https://medium.com/@rservant/how-did-the-j9-in-openj9-get-its-name-95a6416b4cb9
The full story involves an obscure bug, which makes the naming even
more inscrutable.
John Y.
midrange.com
