Press release: Atlassian promises functional application
In an innovative and bold move, Atlassian software is proud to announce that it is changing its strategy going forward, and will from now focus on functionality.
Famous for its pretty but useless applications, Atlassian has captured the hearts and eyes of developers everywhere. The one corner of the market they have not been able to penetrate so far is the minds of these developers.
The new strategy will pose a challenge for the young company, shifting the emphasis from pretty pictures to usefulness is a move fraught with danger, and some analysis are not optimistic. Joel of FogzBugz fame proclaimed ‘Atlassian is doomed to failure, how can any company that doesn’t spend time writing an ASP to PHP compiler to achieve platform independence ever get anywhere? FogzBugz has always focussed on functionality, our 3 customers are more than happy’.
Jiramike, one of the founders of Atlassian, discussed the change in strategy. ‘We’re sick and tired of being the pretty dumb blonde in Java,’ he sighed dramatically.
‘It’s time we move past the cutesy rounded corner and cartoonish icons, we’re a serious company now and I think the joke’s up, customers are demanding a new kind of application. Whereas before all we had to do is slap on a pastel hue and a Verdana font, this market now requires that we develop functionality and serve a business purposes.’
Not all is well with this new strategy however. Some developers at Atlassian have rebelled against this move, and have resigned in protest. A member of this rogue group recently proclaimed ‘I just want to fuck around with ruby now and then and read ajaxian and put in all that stuff, why tf are we switching from our core strengths?’
Atlassian customers however are cautiously optimistic. The open source side is obviously elated, and the codehaus core team was rumoured to be dancing naked in the streets, rubbing genitalia with strangers, in an odd departure from the standard practice of doing ‘comfort grouprubs’ as a consolation prize for either another useless project joins, or a useful project graduating to relevance by moving elsewhere.
April 1st, 2007 at 10:15 pm
first.
php sucks.
April 1st, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Damn. If we start having to write useful software, where am I going to find the time to break Javablogs?
April 2nd, 2007 at 3:08 am
OMG, three biles on ONE DAY,
April 2nd, 2007 at 12:51 pm
I think the Trac wiki is better than Confluence.
April 2nd, 2007 at 1:31 pm
http://blogs.atlassian.com/news/2007/03/confluence_242.html
April 2nd, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Hey, this one was funny … and with no genital waggling and only a couple fucks.
April 3rd, 2007 at 3:16 am
Hani, I don’t know if you’ve ever gone mad billocose on Joel Splatsky for a full bile session, but we’d appreciate it if you’d flesh that sentence out a little more.
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:42 am
Hani, you sound almost as if you don’t like Web 2.0. What’s not to like about a standard color theme and font across all time-wasting sites?
April 3rd, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Doh, looks like they called me out on the Atlassian blog. Yet again!
April 6th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Interestingly, the workflow part of Atlassian JIRA (who sees what bugs when), is based on OSWorkflow, from OpenSymphony. A lot of the OSWorkflow code appears to have been written by a certain Mr. H. Suleiman. As a workflow framework its not half bad (although a few more comments would be nice). It basically does what it says on the tin, and we have had no trouble customizing it for the bits that weren’t on the tin.
As for JIRA, don’t underestimate the importance of prettiness. In situations where your management and internal client representatives/business experts are not very IT friendly, things like the road map, changelog and colours really do help. Plus, there is no reason that apps used by developers HAVE to look minging.
So, Hani more or less appears to walk the walk. When he talks the talk endless references to shit and arse are tiresome though. They would probably come out much better in a spoken conversation. Anyway, that’s why I only visit the BileBlog every 6 months.
April 9th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Haha, funny.
I support your description of Jira all the way. Hooray Bugzilla, long live PhpBug Tracker, and may the enternal peace of heaven forever keep the infamous FogBugz 4.0
April 13th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Hey you Java espousing twat! You’re using wordpress! PHP you old fucker! That’s like visiting Mistress Xandra and and requesting some EJB strap-on roleplay. Thats like speaking at JavaOne while concealing a butt plug!
So what’s the prize for winning the guess the password competition http://www.bileblog.org/wp-login.php ?
April 17th, 2007 at 5:24 am
What’s that “ยด” character….
Office sucks
April 18th, 2007 at 7:57 am
Psst…Sonatype…
April 21st, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Well, if you need a _real_ (functional ;-) ) issue/defect tracker, for larger projects, you should probably try SolveDirect (http://www.solvedirect.com) – although its pretty too ;-)
kind regards,
Alex
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:53 pm
my mum’s got an atlsassian – myself I prefer the german sheppard – a much better guard dog. Of course being german and a sheppard you have to keep
him away from the jewish sheep.
June 12th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Joel Spolsky is a know-all cretin. If he spent more time making his software actually work without bugs, and less time pontificating about how everyone else should do it, his world would be a better place. ‘Cos he can’t build software for shit. He probably can’t shit, either.