I’m not talking about the methodology in particular, I’m just saying compared to traditional software engineering practices with customer advisory boards vetting major features, rounds of marketing approvals of features, etc.

For instance, I submitted a Jira case to the Pentaho development staff for including a jar in our demo application need to run certain Pentaho Data Integration mappings.  In 20 hrs the jar had been included (already vetted for license since it’s part of another project) and is now part of the daily builds.  This is the oil that makes the open source machine great; ability for software (Pentaho as a project) to respond to real customer needs (from me).  It’s awesome!

Now that reminds me, I hadn’t highlighted some of the cool new “open source — eee” things at Pentaho yet:

• Public Issue/Feature Roadmap:
  We have launched Jira as a place to track new feature requests, bug submissions, etc.  I greatly encourage you to register and begin using it to submit bugs / suggestions.  Can’t always say they’ll get fixed in 20 hours but they have a MUCH GREATER chance of being fixed if they’re in Jira in addition to the forums.
• Public Source Control:
  While we’ve always published our source with every release that source repository wasn’t available to anyone on an anonymous basis.  We’re hosting a subversion now that allows easier access and contribution from our always valued community.  Consider this an open invitation to dig in, build a cool plugin, etc.

I’m glad these two things have happened; I think it just makes communication easier, effective, and more transparent.  What do you think?