| Re: [jakarta.ee-spec] [External] : Re: Ratified Implementations and special designation in the eyes of users |
Do you think being at the top of the list is sufficient or do you think we need to do more/something else? All your points are completely valid. The sensitivity is around how the public perceive it. I've heard many times over the years people tell me GlassFish is the "official" implementation. When people are new to the ecosystem they see many options and tend to chose the most official looking one. Also organizations who do migrations from one app server to another are generally fearful about the success they'll have and if one looks more official than the others it does influence their decision. There's a balance we need to strike. Speaking for myself, I personally will feel significantly better about handing out more rewards to the fastest/strongest implementation that does all the wonderful things mentioned when our playing field is a bit more level. We have acknowledged that currently they are not due the "one product must implement all optional requirements" rule. We've also inherited EE in a state where many APIs/TCKs and Impls are stuck together and we've also intentionally not invested in decoupling them so we could focus on getting releases out the door. If we can do the work to ensure that anyone can be on the ballot not just in rule, but in practice, I'll personally feel much better about being bolder with the recognition we hand out. I very much do understand the value of rewarding the winner of the race, as long as the race is a little bit more fair. Even with our current state, I'm very happy to see the winner get some boost and special thank yous in our release splashes: i.e. JakartaOne livestream, tweets, articles written. None of that creates any lasting perception that one implementation is more official than the other. New developers who come later aren't influenced by because they likely weren't in the ecosystem at the time. Large companies doing evalutations one year after the release would likely not let that influence their decision. It's a very safe way for us to thank the hard work in away that doesn't create a permanent disadvantage for others and I'm completely on board with it. It's when we start giving permanent designation to the winner that I get less comfortable. Many of these specs will never be released again, so once we've said this is the special one on the page the describes the spec itself, that lasts forever. I hope people understand the pragmatism intended. There absolutely is room to praise the hard work of the implementations on the ballot and we absolutely should do that. We just need to be careful how. -David |