JasperSoft Corp.'s open-source business intelligence products are speaking more languages than ever since the launch of an internationalization project in January.

The translation project, JasperBabylon , has invited the JasperSoft developer community to translate the business intelligence suite into 30 to 35 languages, said JasperSoft CEO Paul Doscher.

A peek at JasperBabylon shows the translation projects are in varying stages of completion depending on the language, and there's no timetable when certain languages will be fully translated, Doscher said. Some developers, for example, choose to translate certain modules in a particular font they need for their projects, he said.

Most software developers are "comfortable with using English," but for JasperSoft to gain wider acceptance, it's important to have it in local languages, Doscher said. The most recent release of JasperSoft Business Intelligence Suite Professional Edition 2.0 has been fully translated into French, German, Italian and Japanese, Doscher said.

JasperSoft is competing in a hot BI market with vendors such as Business Objects and Oracle. Like many other open-source vendors, JasperSoft allows users to download basic versions of its products and makes money by offering support packages.

Doscher said JasperSoft has about 6,000 paying customers, with an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 businesses using the free versions. Business tend to buy support from JasperSoft as they become more dependent on the software for their operations, Doscher said.

For those customers, JasperSoft is planning to release upgraded versions of its suite every four months, a shipping cycle that businesses expect from proprietary software companies, Doscher said.

He wouldn't say what's in store for the next release except that developers are working on better integration with business applications in addition to new "ad hoc" features that allow end users more flexibility to customize the data they're organizing.

However, JasperSoft is closing in on the release of the final piece of its BI suite. Users can expect within the next six weeks the professional version of JasperETL (Extract, Transfer and Load), a tool to clean up data and move it into a data warehouse, Doscher said.