A Freakonomic Take on Open Standards and Jakarta EE Reza Rahman Jakarta EE Ambassador, Author, Blogger, Speaker reza_rahman@lycos.com @reza_rahman

Freakonomics!?

Standards are Everywhere! Linux Standard Base (LSB) ANSI C SSL CSS USB SCSI UML UDP HTML5 SSH Jakarta EE TLS SMTP OMG SQL DOM X.905 JWT SIP XML MPEG Ada POSIX LDAP RFID SNMP Java SE ICMP PNG W3C IGMP Prolog WebSocket TCP/IP IMAP OAuth ISBN AMQP JCP SVG Fortran TIFF CGI MicroProfile Ruby XA SATA C++ ISO C# DNS OSGi Telnet MIME Basic HTTP/2 HDMI ASCII COBOL JavaScript ECMAScript OASIS UNICODE JSON JPEG Pascal SOAP OpenID Connect FTP PDF DHCP POP3 MAC IETF MQTT WSDL

Why Standards? • Interoperability • Compatibility/portability • Reliable baseline quality of service • Stable core for broad ecosystems • Maximize vendor and implementation neutrality, minimize lock-in risks • Reducing unnecessary fragmentation • Maintain healthy competitive ecosystems

Economists Care About Open Standards? What are Standards? Why are They Important? https://beyondstandards.ieee.org/what-are-standards-why-are-they-important An Economic Basis for Open Standards https://www.iso.org/sites/materials/benefits-of-standards/benefits-detail8d6d.html Studies on Benefits of Standards https://www.iso.org/sites/materials/benefits-of-standards/benefits_repositoryb2f3.html

The Network Effect

The End Result Network Effect Open Standard De-Facto Standard

Polar Opposites

Real Life “De-Facto Standards”

Perils of “Monopoly Power” • Higher long-term pricing, predatory pricing • Low levels of long-term innovation and quality of service • Fewer market choices, high entry barriers, anti-competitive behaviors • High risk monoculture ecosystem

How Open Standards Work

It’s All in the Process, Baby https://jakarta.ee/committees/specification/guide

The Specification Triad(s) Implementation Implementation Implementation Specification Documents Compatible Implementations Compatibility Test Kit Reference Implementation Partial Implementations Governance Stakeholders Community

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Open Standards + Open Source • Linux • POSIX • Single UNIX Specification (SUS) • Linux Standard Base (LSB) • Apache httpd • HTTP, URI, TLS • http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/misc/relevant_standards.html • MySQL, PostgreSQL • SQL • https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/compatibility.html • Java SE, Jakarta EE, MicroProfile, JavaScript/ECMAScript…

Usual Complaints Against Standards • Standards are slow • Design by committee • Standards don’t guarantee portability • Standards don’t have feature XYZ • Standards don’t innovate • It’s just a bunch of vendor experts

Nothing in Real Life is Perfect “Perfect” Real Life

The Truth About Open Standards • Standards are slow • Broad consensus and getting things right takes time • Design by committee • Do we want consensus building or benevolent dictatorships? • Standards don’t guarantee portability • Still better than lock-in and very high switching costs • Standards don’t have feature XYZ • The core of an ecosystem should be simple, lean and avoid feature bloat • Standards don’t innovate • In fact, they do and over-standardizing the unproven or niche case is a bad idea • It’s just a bunch of vendor experts • This hasn’t been true of Java open standards for a long time!

Help Make Perfect

Jakarta EE https://jakarta.ee

Jakarta EE Ambassadors https://jakartaee-ambassadors.io

There are no Silver Bullets

Beyond Open Standards • Not everything should be standardized • Extensions should always expand frontiers • Standards should adopt common, mature, proven ideas from the ecosystem • Proving ground for alternate approaches and innovation • Standards can safeguard against monopolies but do not guarantee a healthy competitive ecosystem • Not reinvesting in the standard in established markets • Complacency, collusion (innocent or otherwise) • There should be peaceful co-existence with answers beyond the standard • Should be treated as integral part of the broader standards ecosystem • Should be regarded as valued and cordial counterweights • A healthy set of choices is beneficial to all Ultimately, it’s all up to you, the empowered user!

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