Recruitment Options For a Small-Scale FOSS Project? 210
thermian writes "I've been developing my open source project for several years now, and I've never found a solution to one fairly important issue. How can a small-scale project attract new members? My project is pretty specialist, (no URL, sorry, I can't afford to get my server nuked) and I find that while it gets a fair bit of use, most users come to my software out of a need to solve their problem, or use my tutorials to learn about the subject, and none seem inclined to stick around and help make the product better. This is a fairly serious problem for me now, because my software has recently been adopted by a university, and I'm just not in a position to manage the entire set of applications and update everything on my own. Just preparing a version for release to students has been especially hard. The open source maxim 'Many eyes make all bugs shallow' only works if those 'many eyes' are available. So do you have any suggestions as to how, and where, to find people who fancy joining open source projects?"
Forums..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Spend More Time Recruiting (Score:4, Interesting)
You may also consider adjusting the amount of time you have to devote to various tasks to increase the amount of time you spend cultivating the ecosystem. For example, if you spend 70% of your time coding, 20% managing documentation / the web site / etc., and 10% of your time with PR, answering user e-mails, reaching out to users, etc., try upping the 10% to 20% or more. Linus' coding chops were only one part of why we've all heard of Linux.
Re:No URL? (Score:3, Interesting)
Same problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a few developers on one project that have never really contributed anything too, I have tried several methods in motivating them but all I get is the one liner commited from them and then nothing for years.
I wish I had an answer to this problem, but I don't think there is one. Everyone is interested in the popular projects and the rest are left out.
Sounds like the University is abusing you (Score:1, Interesting)
I would have politely told them "can't do it, not enough resources".
abandon it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No URL? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Try the University (Score:5, Interesting)
Emphasis mine... take note of the emphasis.
15. Disclaimer of Warranty.
THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND , EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
Also from the same source:
4. Conveying Verbatim Copies.
You may convey verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice; keep intact all notices stating that this License and any non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code; keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty; and give all recipients a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee.
Here is my suggestion for you. Issue a letter to the university that has adopted your project and lay out a plan for supporting your software that flows a little bit like a business plan.
Dear University,
I have recently noted that you have adopted the use of a F/OSS software program that I am the primary developer for. I would like to thank you for your choice to promote Free and Open Sourced Software and say that I am honored by your selection of my project in particular to serve your needs.
At this time, I feel that it would be appropriate to inform you that this F/OSS project, while it may accomplish all of your needs, is not considered feature complete or mature at the present time. There are a number of features which I feel would benefit your University that I have planned for the next release, but scarce time and a lack of a budget causes progress on this release to move along at a slower than desirable pace. Additionally, due to the unwarrented nature of F/OSS it is appropriate for me to caution you that your use of the software that I have developed is at your own risk (I have done my best to make this software as bulletproof as possible, but undiscovered bugs are known to exist in the most heavily tested software products).
Having said all that, I am greatly interested the opportunity that University use of my F/OSS project presents, and I would like to present a set of possibilities for consideration that would greatly improve my ability to guarantee that you have the most mature, feature-complete software possible in the months ahead.
I hope you will consid
Re:No URL? (Score:5, Interesting)
one possible solution (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is you want somebody who is qualified to hit the ground running on your project. With the same OSS mindset. Chances are very high that person is already up to their ass in alligators with their own project.
Maybe some sort of cooperative agreement would work. I'll give you 40 hours to work on hyour project if you help me for 40 hours.
Or sommething like that.
Just a thought.
Re:Suggestion (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No URL? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, selecting the file from a list of other recently (an unrelated) uploaded files is part of releasing your software on SourceForge. If you actually maintained a project there you'd know what I'm talking about. (sorry not trying to be rude).
My original point was that some people find SourceForge to be more trouble than it's worth and host their own project on their own server.
Of course you have to upload your file, but, like I said, it can't be automated. Part of being an effective developer is automating redundant tasks, like releasing software. You've hear of ubiquitous automation, right?
I like SourceForge and use it a lot, but there are tradeoffs. "Free" doesn't mean free from criticism.
Re:No URL == Credibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No URL == Credibility (Score:3, Interesting)
For what it's worth, I've gone into my preferences and set "Funny" to -5. It's amazing how much more palatable Slashdot is once you do this.
Start with making your users fix bugs, and .. (Score:3, Interesting)
Set up a wiki and encourage users to document. Use excerpts from forum discussions to build the wiki initially.
You have users for god's sake: that means whether you know it or not, you have a community. If they're nagging at you w/ requests, that means you already have a conversation going. Give them the tools and incentive (that means you stop fixing things alone) to contribute. Involve them. At the very least you can ask them to prioritize the feature requests.
Stop coding now. You're buried too deep to see the bigger picture. (I'm guessing, of course.)
Finally, have fun. If it's no longer fun, either make it fun, or stop doing it.
Re:No URL? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes I didn't want to trumpet the website itself, it would seem a bit like publicity whoring, but a lot of it was the desire not to cause my friends server that provides the images for the site from going into meltdown. (I could have just removed the images I guess).
When he gets to work and reads his server logs I may need to hide.
Anyway, the question is a general one, not specific to my project I'm sure.
Crapshoot (Score:3, Interesting)
None of my other projects ever garnered much interest of any kind that I could see.
What I'm getting at here are a couple of points.