The product name comes from the second and third syllables of the Japanese word pronounced as Gojira, which is Japanese for Godzilla.[5] The name originated from a nickname Atlassian developers used to refer to Bugzilla, which was previously used internally for bug-tracking.[5]
Description
According to Atlassian, Jira is used for issue tracking and project management.[6] Some of the organizations that have used Jira at some point in time for bug-tracking and project management include Fedora Commons,[7]Hibernate,[8] and the Apache Software Foundation, which uses both Jira and Bugzilla.[9] Jira includes tools allowing migration from competitor Bugzilla.[10]
Jira implements the Networked Help Desk API for sharing customer support tickets with other issue tracking systems.[16]
License
Jira is a commercial software product that can be licensed for running on-premises or available as a hosted application.[17] Jira was an open source tool available for anyone to download. Subsequently, the product was made closed-source and Atlassian created a business around this product.[citation needed]
Atlassian provides Jira for free to open source projects meeting certain criteria, and to organizations that are non-academic, non-commercial, non-governmental, non-political, non-profit, and secular. The full source code is available for its users to modify under a developer source license.[17]
Security
In April 2010, a cross-site scripting vulnerability in Jira led to the compromise of two Apache Software Foundation servers. The Jira password database was also compromised. The database contained unsalted password hashes, which are vulnerable to rainbow attacks, dictionary lookups and cracking tools. Apache advised users to change their passwords.[18] Atlassian themselves were also targeted as part of the same attack and admitted that a legacy database with passwords stored in plain text had been compromised.[19]
Evolution
When launched in 2002, Jira was purely issue tracking software, targeted at software developers. The app was later adopted by non-IT organizations as a project management tool. The process accelerated after the launch of Atlassian Marketplace in 2012, which allowed third-party developers to offer project management plugins for Jira.[20]BigPicture, Scriptrunner, Advanced Roadmaps (formerly Portfolio), Structure, Tempo Planner, and ActivityTimeline[21][22] are major project management plugins for Jira.[23]