How do I attract developers to an open source project? Obviously if the project were cool or valuable it would be easier to find people. (In fact, they would probably come to me.) But what do I do for the mundane or unexciting?
Advertise the project? Spam forums? Or just keep on plugging away hoping that some other folks notice?
Is it a matter of time, project awesomeness, or luck?
People are only going to work on things they find valuable. What's exciting about a web server? Nothing much, but Apache just keeps going and going - the folks that started the project all cared. So, I'd suggest that you ask for help where your users are.
Also, no-one's going to want to beat on a code-base that they can't see doing anything, so you get to do version 0.01 all by yourself. Yay!
The web-book Producing Open Source Software is an excellent starting point, because it addresses a bunch of stuff that you're sure to have overlooked.
I don't think people start open source projects thinking that they will get help for it. Most good open source projects started with only one or two people working on a project that they loved.
Over a period of time, their project was valuable to others as well, and that is when they started getting volunteers. So, you should just get going on your project and people will come.
Many years ago, people advertised new code releases on Freshmeat. I don't know if that's still commonplace anymore. (I just read their about page, and it seems to be more for Unix-orientated and cross-platform software projects. If your software is more for Windows, there may be better forums.)
Another thing I just thought of is the licensing aspects of your code. Again, I can't speak for the Windows open source crowd, however, in Linux circles, generally your code must use GPL, or at least a GPL-compatible licence, to get much traction.
Good luck with growing your project!
The book Producing Open Source Software by Karl Fogel is a great book to read. It helps you understand the Open Source development model and what drives OSS developers to contribute to a project. I highly recommend taking a look at the book.
I've started a few open-source projects on Sourceforge. The only one that got other people to contribute was one that (a) had functionality valuable to commercial developers and (b) there was no commercial product available that had the functionality. Basically, it was a niche that had not been commercialized. The people who found it did so by Googling for certain terms.
So, for me, getting people to contribute was a matter of doing something "unique."
BTW, once a commercial product became available that did what my project did, the contributions stopped. I guess it was easier to buy the thing than to help build it.
Why not ask here? Newer programmers looking for experience to fill a resume might jump on board.
Us older geeks, well from my own experience, I work on what I like. For me it's mostly AI related or (don't laugh) Warcraft and Civ4 mods.
Come to think of it, this might not be a bad suggestion. A sort of open source job posting. that's part of Stack Overflow. Great exposure. Maybe even a badge in it. ;)
I've started an open source project Octopussy 3 years ago now. I can confirm at least 2 things from answers already posted:
1) At the beginning, I really liked the idea of the octopussy using his 8 tentacles to catch all logs and to have an animal to make an "O'Reilly book style"
BUT
2) I made my first release anouncement on Freshmeat 6 months after my first public release on SourceForge, and I saw the difference... a jump from 30 downloads/month to 160 downloads/month
More downloads don't necessarily means more developers, but it gives more feedbacks !