What's "Bossie"? It's InfoWorld's acronym for "Best of Open Source Software" — a prize it granted Jaspersoft last week. But "Bossie" is also a cow's name, and that's a clue to what's going on here.
InfoWorld added letters — "ie" to make "Bossie" — so I retraced by eliminating them. On a hunch, I first took out the "O" in "boss." That left the mysterious "bss." But all became clear when I threw out the redundant second "S" and got to the bottom of InfoWorld's PR stunt: BS.
As talented as Jaspersoft may be, you would never know it from InfoWorld's mealy-mouthed evaluation. The reviewer seems to have a hard time even deciding between Jaspersoft and Pentaho, concluding, "... you might find it beneficial to look at both for their respective specialties." Moo!
An expert I trust likes Jaspersoft. It's only InfoWorld's PR that stinks.
The real shame is that it looks like they didn't actually test anything since Feb 2008. Both "awards" point to an article comparing Pentaho 1.6, 3 releases old with a 4th in beta, to JasperServer 2.1, at least 3 releases old, maybe more.
The only useful part of the 2009 Bossie, is pointing out that with open source, you can try both and choose for yourself. Maybe 2010 will be better...
Doug Moran
Pentaho