Except that Java isn't obscure and experiments like Featherweight Java contributed to Java generics final design, introduced in November 2009, 3 years before Go 1.0 was released.
My comment was not meant as criticism, I just thought it was nicely ironic.
But I guess you're actually consistent: you often lament about people ignoring or reinventing approaches that proved themselves in older languages. Here are people that actually take clues from one such language, and you lament that they didn't do it earlier. I see now that it's not really ironic. Rather, you're seeing the glass half empty while I was seeing it half full.
I would be happy if this was their first attempt, sadly I have lost count how many times the team has published such studies with zero outcomes.
While I am sure Java will get value types, it already has had several experimental releases and the features have been incrementally integrated, after the switch to 6 months release cadence, I am not so sure in regards to Go.
All we get is a source code repository full of comments showing how much is left to be done, if ever. Untouched since last August.
What about that then?