OpenX – those 2008 priorities in full

Not long after London-based advertising software startup OpenAds spent some of its $20.5 million in VC funding on changing its name for the for the sixth time, its confusing the hell out of its customers. Again.

This week well meaning company blogger/marketer Scott Switzer posted about OpenX’s priorities in 2008. These include stability, simplicity, integration and efficiency.

Hold on a sec, did he just say stability? Yep.

“Our current version of OpenX, v2.4, is the first stable release since the release of phpAdsNew in 2002. Almost everything (except the interface!) has changed. We need to work on making the core OpenX server as stable as ever. We currently have about 120 outstanding bugs, and more unverified bugs from the forums that we are making a top priority to get resolved. (UPDATE: v2.4 has around 25 outstanding bugs, and the remainder are bugs for v2.5 beta)”

Now, full points to a company for blogging its priorities openly, but the point about bugs has started a comment war on the company’s blog.

As one commenter notes:

“Thanks for being honest in the post, but 120 bugs is a lot for saying that 2.4 is stable. That scares me away from wanting to use it and switch to Google’s Ad Manager. You made great points against Ad Manager and I really, really want to use you all but if OpenX is not stable it is hard to switch. =( “

However many bugs OpenX has got, maybe it would be a cool idea to iron out the bugs first, then start posting about priorities.

OpenX has around $20.5 million in funding from Accel Partners, Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Mangrove Capital Partners and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.