Transparency is good

Interesting, our friends at QNX have gone open, announcing that they would be making the source code for Neutrino available and moving to a transparent development model for the technology at foundry27.com.

This is similar (but not identical) to the models being used by IBM in Project Zero and Jazz, where commercial products are being developed via an "open transparent collaborative community development process". Of course, each project has named their "unique" process something different (Transparent Development Process, Open Commercial Development or Community-Driven Commercial Development) but they all have one goal in common - they are are trying to enable a conversation with their customers (notice I said customers ... paying customers), who may be that much more interested paying for the next version if they have a say in it's evolution. This is not entirely new, many commercial products have early access programs, alpha, beta and partner programs where this feedback could take place but on a much smaller scale. This is a wide open conversation where anybody can participate and it's one area that's weak in proprietary software development. Clearly companies like QNX (who lead the CDT project) are applying lessons learn from the Eclipse open source development process to their own development process. and by creating an open dialog with their customers (existing and potential ones), earlier in the development cycle, hope improve their products and translate into more sales.

So, I'll admit my bias, I have friends at QNX, we support their RTOS in our products, they are a business partner so now that my credibility is shot, all I can say is, cool move guys (and best of luck too).