Sean Sheedy's Blog

Voting is Good but Making Your Voice Heard is Better

After spending several years in the Java ME standards circuit for a major operator, I'm now on my own as a consultant, and running for one of the open Executive Committee seats as an Individual. I'd really like to know what burning topics Java ME developers would like to see the winning candidates bring to the EC.

Java ME has been fabulously successful with well over 2 Billion devices shipped. A lot is being done right, but it does not mean that the platform is without issues. Some are longstanding, and current EC members tell me that the desire for correcting them is universal. However, the nature of corporate life makes initiating these discussions difficult. How do you tell your boss that you need travel budget to discuss fragmentation with your biggest competitors? "You're going to discuss what with who?"

An Individual can facilitate discussions on these issues. They have the advantage of not having corporate encumbrances. They are freer to start conversations among competitors to bring those to the table who need to be there for change to happen. They can highlight other Members' public actions that demonstrate their commitment to the Community Process, without being accused of "aiding the enemy." They are freer to question private actions within the EC that undermine those public actions, without burning vendor/customer relationships.

In my position statement, I listed many potential objectives, but with only 15 people in the EC, you have to focus in order to get anything done. So I am interested in hearing what people consider to be the first issue for a new EC member to raise after they are elected to the Executive Committee.

In the JCP, a Community with over 700 members, about 2/3 are Individual Members and of the remaining 1/3, a significant number are smaller companies. However, between the EC and MSA - the two bodies that drive ME - all but one member is a large corporation. This is not to say that these companies do not represent developers. From personal experience I know they do, but developer interests are represented through a corporate lens.

What do individual developers want to accomplish when that lens is removed?

Comments

• Jon,

  Thanks for bringing this up. I appreciate you commenting especially from your position as an EC member and hope we can talk about this at greater length in person.

  A few other EC members have told me that the EC doesn't do much more than vote on JSRs and make recommendations to the PMO which the PMO is not required to implement, and that I should set my expectations accordingly.

  So perhaps the question is, should the EC increase its role or at least press for the creation of new roles in the JCP beyond simply creating standards?

  The ME EC covers a lot more than handsets, but for the moment let's look at the mobile space (MIDP/CLDC), and fragmentation in particular. The name "fragmentation" has been given to a laundry list of issues ranging from differences between implementations to having to go through different certification, approval, and distribution processes for each operator.

  There is only so much that JSRs can do to address these issues. The JSRs live in the "design" phase of the standards lifecycle, while these issues are being found in the deployment phase. We've had several iterations of standards since some of these issues have surfaced and it seems that we need more in the toolbox than just standards to address them.

  Why should the JCP or the EC address these lifecycle issues? These are industry issues, but I am having difficulty identifying an agent within the industry that is addressing much less is tasked with addressing these issues. Yet addressing them is vital for the health of the investment everyone has made in this platform. From my perspective, the organization in the best position of addressing these issues is the JCP, for several reasons - all the players are already at the table, all have a vested interest in making the "product" successful in the marketplace.

  If fragmentation is in the back end of the standards lifecycle, then bringing new technologies into the fold of the JCP is the front end. For the same reasons it is important to protect one's investment by taking care of the back end, one must also make sure the pipeline in the front end reflects that which is going to be the predominant technology in the future.

  Some may say, it's a "Java" community process. I think it goes beyond this. One reason I think the JCP should play in the "front end" is because once again, you have many of the key players at the table already. This industry is defined by change and therefore it makes sense for those players to anticipate what is coming and promote the creation of standards that will make it happen. This also would be a new role for the JCP/EC.

  Why? Because if the EC does not do this, someone else will do it for them. Today we have seen the practically instantaneous formation of the "Open Handset Alliance" (instantaneous for those of us who have been on the outside of the NDA that has kept this development so secret for the past n months.) Will the appearance of the OHA increase or diminish the role of the ME EC in driving standards for the mobile handset application environment? Since few details have been released publically about the Android platform, and since those who know about it have been amazingly quiet under what appears to be a very strict NDA, only time will answer this question. As will the EC itself, when it meets this December. The New York Times reported that it is a "Linux and Java" platform. Where does the ME EC fit into this?

  As an individual, I am biased towards seeing the ME EC play a large part in mobile standards development, and addressing mobile deployment issues, because it is pretty much the only organization where I as an individual - and other individuals - actually can have a meaningful voice.

  But I also think that corporations in the EC should also see a reason to move the EC and the JCP towards an increase in scope to areas that precede and follow the creation of standards in the standards lifecycle, to protect and grow their investment. I'd like to use my voice as an individual on the EC to help the industry learn how to address these issues which not only benefits individual developers, but everyone in the ecosystem.

  Posted by: sean_sheedy on November 05, 2007 at 01:16 PM

• While your objectives are hard to argue with, I think you may be over-estimating the power of the ECs.
  The EC has never had any kind of technical co-ordination role across JSRs or the JSRs in particular markets. Votes against JSRs for reasons other than licensing are rare. There's no real way for the ECs to steer a JSR in a particular direction which is seen to meet the wider needs of the industry or community.
  Good luck in the election.

  Posted by: jon_piesing on November 05, 2007 at 05:16 AM

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.