[needusername]

> Just the opposite, faster startup time and lower memory footprint for the JVM via modules would be great.

Why would modules lead to faster startup time and lower memory footprint? Java class loading has always been lazy, if you do not need a class it will not be loaded. If anything modules should increase startup time because additional runtime checks needs to be performed and increase memory footprint since additional metadata needs to be referenced. Modules do not affect memory layout of Java objects.