"The Big Reveal" debunked

[Mel Chua]

Saw this on 
http://www.neary-consulting.com/index.php/2010/12/08/curing-shy-developer-syndrome/, 
via the teachingopensource.org mailing list, and thought it would be 
interesting for the team:

However, another phenomenon is fighting against this desire for openness.

It is not uncommon for companies to want to keep their plans secret, so 
as to have a Big Reveal announcement effect at a major trade show. This 
can lead companies to ask their engineers to work internally on 
significant features for fear that the big surprise will be ruined 
otherwise. The alternative seems to be to announce a project when you 
start, rather than when you have something to show – but this can result 
in a long wait before products get to market, and impatience and bad 
press from the mainstream press.

I would argue that having engineers talk about design decisions & 
implementation details of significant features in a mailing list will 
not result in significant attention outside of your community – and when 
the press release and announcement comes, the community who knew it was 
coming will feel better about having been in on the secret from the 
beginning, rather than feeling worse because they have to deal with a 
big code drop which no one person can review.