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.