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?"
Suggestion (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
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The issue isn't to get the project well known: the issue is to find those people for whom the project would be useful/interesting and make the project well known within that s
Re:Suggestion (Score:5, Interesting)
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I would put it very simple to the university, "I appreciate the support, but I need support as well."
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Availability != Willingness
I have the sort of the same problem; but my little project is terribly specialist and outside of the US I'm the only person who really seems to care about Information Cards. So I just potter along, slowly adding features when I have time and dealing with emails asking when it will be ready. The people that are using it are simply customising it for their own needs (which is the general idea, there's a provider model for this and everyone assumes the core is correct; ah, how I wi
No URL? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No URL? (Score:4, Informative)
Stephan
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Re:No URL? (Score:4, Informative)
The last time I messed with it it was pretty straightforward. Is it somehow more complicated now than "type in some name/version info for the release, upload a source tarball"?
Well, that and free web hosting for the project site.
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Re:No URL? (Score:4, Insightful)
Back on topic: IMHO the best way to get more interest in the project is to find like minded people. What is your software trying to do/solve? Google something that would find it - post your URL in a few forums. Leave the link in your forum signature with a "looking for developers". Actually do something about getting your stuff out there. An online resume with a link to the software perhaps? There is a hundred ways to get information out to the world. Mostly they just require a little effort.
Re:No URL? (Score:4, Insightful)
Freely available is not effortless. Wish people would stop belittling such complaints. Just because you aren't paying money for something doesn't mean you're not paying in some way. Before using something, I like to have an idea whether it'll pay to go to the effort of learning about it, dealing with its idiosyncrasies, and jumping through whatever hoops are in the way.
Just one amazingly trivial seeming hurdle can be enough to dissuade people. For instance, many people abandoned big newspapers' web sites when they started demanding registration.
There's a lot to "real" software development, whatever that is exactly. Ought to have a web presence, perhaps sourceforge, or perhaps your very own site. You'll want CVS or Subversion over the Internet. Probably need forums, some kind of bug tracking (Bugzilla?), and an IRC channel can't hurt either. Your source probably needs sprucing up to various standards. GNU has a lot on just how the code should be indented and commented. Then there's getting it integrated with automatic build and test software, like make (autoconf and automake) or Ant for builds, and things like Fitnesse and Cruise Control. All this is getting to be a lot of ancillary work for a few developers. But I do agree something has to change if current resources are causing publicity to be a bad thing.
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What people should realize is the "many eyes" theory and related open source theories are all urban legend except for the huge successes they originate from (Linux, Apache, Wikipedia, etc.).
For 99% of the projects that are relatively small, it's all non
Re:No URL? (Score:4, Insightful)
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well, it's a nice gui, but it doesn't look like it's scriptable... is there anything that does what release forge does, that can be scripted, and perhaps automatically fill in values that (this gui) asks you to fill in?
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The selecting from a long list is a different issue, one for the downloader, so not immediately relevent, but anyhow, if you spend a small amount of time, then this is a simple and straight foward task for the user (if you are lazy and spend no time mamaging it, then yes, you _COULD_ make it more c
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.
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Disagree that creating your own site is easier (you may build a site so it becomes easier, but you are going to have to maintain that project for a long time before the time spent setting it up pays off).
Many people do not have a static IP or the knowledge of how to get a domain/sever space/ write the cgi etc to do this, or want to
Free of course does not mean free of critism, but you put it
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(you may build a site so it becomes easier, but you are going to have to maintain that project for a long time before the time spent setting it up pays off).
Just plain disagree, with how easy it is to get a reasonably-priced, reasonably-featured virtual host. Pretty much ready to go out of the box, but with ssh access, it means releases can be done with a shell one-liner, or less than twenty lines of Perl, say.
Many people do not have a static IP
Which is why there are services like DynDNS -- which has prices measured by the year. And there are others which do the same thing, for free.
or the knowledge of how to get a domain/sever space/ write the cgi etc to do this, or want to
And many people do have that knowledge. For those people, it is easier to do it yourself than to work with Sour
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1- Consider how you will show the release - mod_dir, a generated html page, a dymaic htmlpage etc.
2- Consider what you will need (ssh/ftp/web/php/mysql or whatever).
3- a find hosting provider - if you don't know one of hand trwal google for the features you need at a good price that seems reputible.
4- create the html/php whatever for the site (its go
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Any better aternative you would recommend?
Stephan
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Re:No URL? (Score:5, Interesting)
How about... (Score:2, Informative)
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If they hosted mercurial as well, I would have used that, but the other things outweigh the slight misadvantage of using bzr (which is performance, for large projects). For projects of moderate size, launchpad is a winner.
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I'm curious...do you have an alternative suggestion which is better in your eyes?
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Re:No URL? (Score:5, Insightful)
PS: The idea of getting "highly skilled software engineers to work on your project for free" is over. Find a corporate/university sponsor and pay someone - or find a corporate/university sponsor who is willing to donate an engineers time to the project. Or be VERY patient and be happy for a small amount of progress. Many paid engineers work on projects like Linux.
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No URL == Credibility (Score:5, Insightful)
For some people shameless self-promotion feels very sleazy. Apart from that, not everyone looking for help on their project is going to get a story on Slashdot. His question was probably accepted because it was legit and not just an attempt to tap /. for talent.
If he would have included info about the project there would have been a dozen +5 Funny post that said: "Well for starters you could try posting on /. harharhar."
Personally I find this question interesting an I think it warrants more than "post the link".
Re:No URL == Credibility (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No URL == Credibility (Score:5, Funny)
Well I've got a project I'm working right now that I'd love everyone to know the details of. It's really super.
It will be the most secure and robust thing you've ever seen. In fact it will be the BEST thing you've ever seen.
We've got it in the works right now. I've seen the early betas, and it's AWESOME.
It's sort of open-source but not really if you read the fine print. But who reads that?
This will do everything you've always wanted it to do and more. It will literally blow you away.
When we release this thing, everyone will be crapping their trousers about how cool it is and how we managed to sit on it for so long. You really will be so amazed that you will soil yourselves.
Hell YEAH! It's that awesome. Just don't ask us too many detailed questions about what it is or what it does.
Just stick around and wait for the press releases. They'll tell you how incredibly cool our new product is.
Thanks,
Steve BallmerRe: (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.
Re:No URL? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Nice one, now I'm going to get in trouble with my free hosting friend....
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- John
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Well, I was a little curious and did find the site a little interesting. Since you name was in the linked email address it wasn't that hard to find. I was almost going to link to your /. id as well.
Your friend shouldn't have too much to worry about since the link was only in the comments and not on the front page.
Besides, now anyone else reading this who is interested in solving n-body problems can help. You might as well try to kill 2 birds.
he's picking on the birds now! (Score:2)
I probably should have left the email bit blank, didn't think that one through. I was more interested in possible solutions then an answer for me.
I can't move the images, it would ruin the tutorials.
I wonder if the real solution isn't the typical open source one. Get off my arse and try to create a solution myself. Possibly involving beer and hookers, ah, no, I mean php and mysql.
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Most big projects are more general-purpose. Everyone needs a text editor or email client. Many people need a database or web server. Programmers are big
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.
Re:No URL? (Score:5, Informative)
But without knowing what your project is, it is hard to know what you are doing wrong. Because you probably are doing something wrong if your project is generally useful but noone is willing to help. I also run an open source project (on a really slow site so no link :)) and have gotten quite a lot of code contributions from other people. Here are some tips on what I did to try and attract people. Take it with a grain of salt, I know nothing about nBody modelling.
Presentation is everything! If you can't convey interest to a potential contributor in less than two minutes after they have visited your site for the first time, then you have lost. You need to present your project in the most favorable way possible. You need to show me why I would want to use your code, why I would want to choose your modelling package over any of the hundreds of alternatives. I found no screenshots, no API documentation or tutorials during the ten minutes i spent browsing your project. Just a lot of text. Boooring!
In the same vein as above, you need top quality documentation. And it needs to be very visible. Preferably a front page link. One reason why the parser generator Bison is so popular is because it includes a detailed introduction to language parsing in general. So if you want your toolkit to be popular a good idea is to include an easy introduction to nBody modelling.
Present what your project is capable of doing, or what tasks it is supposed to solve. Can i write a space flight simulator using your library? Can I write a Python wrapper? I don't know.
If I get seriously interested in nBody modelling then I'm likely to want to contact you with questions about the code, bug reports and patches. But your email address isn't available. I know you have an issue tracker but that is no substitute for email. New people often perfer personal communication.
One thing I noticed is that you are using CMake for building, which is cool. But most people aren't as used to CMake as to autotools and make so you need to provide explicit and complete instructions for building your project. It is little details like that that makes your project much more appealing for potential developers.
And last (because it is not so important), use dependencies. For example, if you can use the hash table implementation in glib instead of writing your own. Then do so! You might be able to write a good hash table in less than 400 lines, but by using glib's hash table you just saved yourself from maintaining 400 extra lines of code. There are probably both particle and linear algebra packages you could depend on to make the burden of maintaining your code easier for you.
Is it a computer science related university? (Score:2, Insightful)
More support requests *your* problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose your user base where bigger. Say 100k users. Or 10 million. Could anyone still expect you to help out anyone of those users? Ofcourse not, and in that case these 10M users would be forced to help themselves (to some degree) anyway. The same goes for a university that decides to add X students to your userbase.
Probably it's more a question of why you are working on the project, and what you get from that. Set your own priorities, decide how much time you want to invest, and go from there.
May I suggest you ask the university to do some inhouse filtering of issues/questions (eg. using a local webpage / contact person), and give you a regularly updated 'top 10' list of what they consider most urgent/important.
- If you want to support the widest possible userbase, then you might work on those issues that *also* affect other users of your project.
- If you put this university first, then you could work their list from the top down.
- If you're just doing it for fun, you could cherrypick from their list whatever issue seems most interesting.
--Do only what only you can do. -Edsger Wybe Dijkstra
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In fact, getting to the point where someone else can do what only I can do is a rather important goal for me at the moment...
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> issue, or maybe put a professor with a clue on the job.
Universities don't work that way. If you want one of the profs to assist you, you must engage his interest (Which may be very possible. You might also get a prof to assign you a grad student).
Try the University (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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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,
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While I wrote that generic sounding letter, I used Microsoft Vista as a gauge for as the possibly negative things that I was saying about open source. Is Microsoft Vista feature complete? No. They keep adding service packs. Is Microsoft Vista mature? No. It experiences severe configuration issues that thwart usage by organizations who have made the mistake to try to utilize it.
That said, in order to stay general without knowing the name or use of the software tool we are talking about, I think sayin
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Forums..... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://code.google.com/p/nmod/ (Score:3, Informative)
Recruit? (Score:5, Informative)
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The downside is that if the pay ends up being greater than the price for some commercial software, you're screwed. I think this is one of the reasons why many Open Source projects fail. Not large enough userbase.
Perhaps another solution would be offering the software to other universities, and ask for help there.
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And how would he make money? Here is an idea, what about charging money for the software? Why that would work...
Cynicism aside this is actually the reason why Open Source as noble as it is, will fail to attract critical mass...
If you think now there is critical mass, take a look at the bottom lines of Open Source companies and Closed Source companies. NOT EVEN CLOSE...
Yes you can recruit them! I've done it. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have a user list then quite often a plea for programmers/testers will achieve results. I have done this a few times for my major project and it has always worked.
I also disagree wiht parent that you should have posted the url on slashdot. You would have been slashdotted, for sure, the chances of finding interested developers is low. Most would have just been idle browsers.
A post on your own user list is far more likely to give results since the users have a vested interest in the software and are far more likely to be open to being "recruited".
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Slashdotters don't like be advertised to ... (Score:2)
Then he got a friend to post a namecheck and point out that he was being a doofus and that he should have linked to the project.
3
Incidentally in soviet Russia, Natalie Portman told me netcraft had confirmed, FOSS develops you. I certainly welcome our new FOSS developed overlords.
Specifics (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really difficult to give advice without knowing the specifics. For instance, you might have luck adding a plugin system, so that the barrier to entry is low enough for more people to join in without feeling like they have to become a proper developer. But that only works for some types of application.
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.
Personality, and money. (Score:4, Insightful)
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google hosting (mostly but not all)
How much more open then five years under the GPL can I be.
Yes I want someone to share the project, but employ and reimburse? I think you miss the point. I want to find ways of finding people who would want to join in.
Volunteering means they get to choose what they do, not me.
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.
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1) Where it is at the core of a business process for a highly technical audience (ie the linux kernel, php, python)
or
2) It is replacing software that has as its primary competitors software in the thousands or tens of thousands per seat (Blender, mysql)
or
3) It is sexy or fun to work on (Ogre3D, Blender, Firefox
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Re:Same problem (Score:4, Insightful)
My point is that there is a myth that "if you build it they will come", it's not true because people want the reputation for contributing to popular projects not my useful but no name projects. It doesn't look as impressive on their CV.
abandon it (Score:3, Interesting)
Lack of info (Score:4, Informative)
Why did the OP not link to that page? Surely Google can handle a little slashdotting! For those who don't want to follow the link -
This means modelling asteroid/comet motion, spacecraft flight, planetary systems, or stellar cluster/small galaxy systems.
The toolkit contains a Particle Particle nBody model, an OpenGL viewer to display the output of the nBody model, and a number of utilities for generating new projects and editing existing output files.
If you really want people to jump onboard with your project, then you need to publicise it. No point complaining that nobody helps if folks have never heard of it.
Go Out And Ask (Score:2)
So get around, use those services. But what will help most is finding people that you think might be interested and asking. Go to a forum, and post
GSoC (Score:5, Insightful)
It's becoming increasingly more competitive for organizations to become accepted as the program continues to evolve, but any established project with a vibrant user community has the potential to get accepted. Once accepted, Google basically provides an incentive for students to become involved with a project's development by seeding them with a summer stipend. It's a little more involved than that, but that's the gist.
This is the first year BRL-CAD [brlcad.org] gets to participate and I can already say it's looking to be a lot of fun. It forces a project to organize, coordinate, market, and communicate more. It's a lot of work but well worth it
Chill (Score:2)
Are you making money out of the universitity deal - if so then it is a different question, you want to know how to make money out of goodwill.
If not then the universitity deal is irrelevent - you write OS software because you want to, who uses it or what they do with it should only ever be of secondary concern, and if it because more worrying than enjoying working on it, drop it.
If you are looking for like minded people to share your interest and help you, then that is a matter of going out to find them - g
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Just Offer Everyone... (Score:3, Funny)
That'll get 'em for sure! ;)
He should have submitted to... (Score:2)
business model (Score:2)
If no users of your project will pay, it means that the project wasn't really that valuable to them; they might just be trying to take advantage of your voluntary slave labor. You can keep on supporting your project as an act of charity. Or
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.
Some common sense ... (Score:2)
What do you need and where are you looking? (Score:2)
What you may want to do is look at your 'program needs' list and post in the related places for development of those needs. I.e. say your program uses a GUI in QT and you believe it can use improvement, post about your problems in a QT for
make it easy (Score:3, Informative)
Here are some questions to which it should be easy to find answers:
1. How do I get the code?
1a. Where is the repository, and what type (cvs, svn...)?
1b. What branch/version should I check out?
1c. What external projects/libraries/etc. does it depend on, and how do I get them, and which versions of them do I need? (If allowed by the license, consider hosting a version with your source for one-stop shopping.)
1d. Ideally put this in a step-by-step "for dummies" set of instructions on your project's web page. Or you could make available a script to run that does it all for you - but well-documented so I can figure out what the script is doing and why. Oh, and make sure it works for you if you follow it exactly on a virgin machine!
2. How do I build it?
2a. What language(s) is the source written in?
2b. What compiler(s)/build system(s) do I need, and where do I get them?
2c. Where are the makefile(s)/build files etc. and what does each of them build, exactly?
2d. See 1d.
3. How do I run/use it, and where is the target(s) (executable, shared lib, whatever...) that was built?
4. How can I get help if I need it?
4a. IRC chat is useful, but if most of the developers are on the other side of the world, it would be nice to also have a mailing list to which to post so I don't have to stay up all night. Preferably a mailing list that allows attachments for error output or screenshots.
4b. Ideally your FAQ should actually be made up of questions people have actually asked, especially if they are asked frequently. FAQs rarely do this for some reason - I've often seen the same question asked over and over in help forums, and never answered.
4c. Answer the questions people are asking. Even if the answer is "if you can't figure this out, you don't belong here" - try to phrase that as nicely as you can.
5. What is your process for managing versions and how/when they are changed in your repository?
5a. If you allow checkins of incomplete code, how do I know if I've found a real bug that I should fix, versus something that will be "fixed" when the person working on the feature checks in the rest of it?
I've had trouble finding these answers on small, big, and really big projects.
Those are the ones I can remember having trouble with right now. If you think the answers to these should be obvious, you are looking for programmers who either have experience in all the tools you are using, or who are smarter than me. Which is alright, but either way, it would be nice of you to at least put down a list of required skills and experience, so I don't waste my time trying to help and then give up in frustration.
Thanks for letting me vent.
We all know what Mila Kunis would say. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry to word this so aggressively, but what the hell are you doing? Open Source does not mean "I am free labor for everyone." Nor does it mean, "I am a doormat, please walk all over me."
Listen, I'm no Linux kernel developer. I'm a poetry guy who was looking for a cheap way to get my poems out in front of eyeballs back in 1994, and coincidentally the Web had just appeared. So I'm only a long-time Web geek at best. And maybe that's not the kind of experience that some would respect. But I've put out probably 100 Open Source products in that time -- 50 phpBB mods, 10 Greasemonkey scripts, 5 Movable Type plugins, and a handful of awful, awful old scripts that nobody should ever use. I'm a father of two with a full-time job, and I've have had 15 year-olds tell me they couldn't be bothered to read the readme, because their time is more valuable than my own. I've had people come to my forums, stomp their virtual feet, and demand that I support them for free in much better fashion. After all, they ask, why did I release a product if I don't intend to add their feature requests and do the installations for them?
Listen, their agendas are not your agendas. Their timetables are not your timetables. And most most MOST importantly, your job is not to be their serving wench. It's not a job at all! Get it straight in your head what you are doing this for. I can't tell you why you do it, but making yourself so stressed out that you have to post on Slashdot begging for help (but not giving out your project name, so you can be an even bigger martyr when it all goes south) IS NOT THE REASON.
You know what I do? I say yes if I can, maybe if maybe, and no if I cannot. And I mean it. Don't make it more than that. Stop feeling obligated. And if you made promises that do obligate you in ways that you cannot meet, it's not the end of the world, but get back to the table and renegotiate. If people blackmail you with statements like "I guess I need another product" or "YOU put it out there, YOU DO IT" then just put that burden right to the side. I don't get bothered that someone might uninstall the app. They're cutting their losses (their lost time) and in the process they cut my losses (of time invested in someone who cannot help himself or herself) too. If you say you cannot build a feature and someone complains, tell them to build it. Seriously. Don't be mean, don't be vindictive, don't be snide. Mean it. If you are stressed and this isn't even your paying job, then draw lines and see who comes to your side. If they don't, then it didn't really matter to them. In which case, you're free to work on what matters to you, in a way that is healthy and sane.
Promotion (Score:2)
From my own experience, I'd say it takes a lot of time to begin to attract additional developers to a project. The project I founded (OpenQabal) has about 6 or 7 people on the dev mailing list, but to this date I am, as far as I can remember, the only on
Re: (Score:2)
Find related abandonware and steal their users (Score:2)
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.
Relevant book (Score:2, Informative)
Make joining easy (Score:2)
Assuming you already made something cool, you need to make sure your project has visability to people who might want to help. This means at minimum, public documentation and some sort of archived email list or forum where they can contact you (and each other) and get questions answered.
It has to seem like an alive and healthy project where their contributions will be valued, and accomplish s
You have a university using it? (Score:2)
If you have a university (or any other organization with budgets and developer resources) using it, then they should be supporting it, and if they don't want to they should be paying you for your time. If they're not willing to do that, then you need to reconsider whether you should be supporting th
Real advice (Score:5, Insightful)
- writing better developer-level documentation
- providing a list of "starter projects"
- giving talks and webinars about Amanda's internals
- rewriting parts of the application in a more accessible language (Perl)
- making myself highly available for answers and advice
I've tried to increase investment byCrapshoot (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.
An answer (Score:3, Informative)
In order to augment attraction of potential developers you have to offer improved accessibility to your project (nicely formatted and documented source code, a doxygen-like online source tree with additional comments, an up-to-date FAQ and maybe even a short "manual" which concisely explains the manner in which you've laid out your project.
Once somebody has implemented his own creation into your project, you've got a bite. Now you have to make it as convenient as possible for him to share his modification (a visible "submit modifications" section of your website, encouragements to submit personal additions on the "contact" section, etc. If he satisfies your current code standard can add his modifications into your next release, contact him with thanks, hints and your own take on the modification and its future.
When the new "co-developer" has the impression of being able to contribute something useful and appreciated to the project, and if he accepts the direction you are heading and the guidelines you provide, the relation can flourish.
Of course, not every contributer will turn out to be a long-lasting co-developer and friend (also, forks happen), but you have to offer optimal conditions if you want to further the probability.