What is a good resource to help start an open source project?

Question

I have an idea for an open souce project, but have absolutely no experience in either working on an existing project or starting one. For those of you that have some experience, what would you say would be a good resource/place to start on information for newbies interested in starting or working on an open source project?

Thanks,

Tomek

Answer 1

Here's a few
http://sourceforge.net/index.php
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

Answer 2

sourceforge.net is by far the best starting point.
freshmeat.net is also nice.

Answer 3

There's nothing particularly special about open source.

Start a project, stick it on github, and accept that you're very likely going to have to take it pretty far by yourself before anyone else ever cares about it.

There are tons of projects that can use help. If there's something specific you're interested in, it's not that hard to find existing projects doing it that can use help.

Answer 4

To start an OSS software a lot of people recommends: http://producingoss.com/ the book is free so everybody can get it.

Answer 5

Enough specific web resources have already been given by others, but I'd like to add Codehaus.

Also, I'd like to suggest a process for dealing with the information you find at the sites:

• Decide what you are interested in supporting. Products that you already enjoy to use make good starting points. Joining projects is soooo much easier than starting over yourself.
• Locate forums or mailing lists where this product is supported. Hang around there - get the mood of the community (or identify if there is a community).
• Post yourself - either questions or answers to questions from others.
• Make yourself known to the community. This doesn't have to be through posting your cv, but it helps if you don't post from an anonymous account that gives no clue about who's behind it.
• Participate in discussions, provide constructive feedback for suggestions, features. See if you enjoy this participation and if you want to keep it up for unforseen time.
• Identify features that you are unhappy with. This might be localization issues, documentation, specific features. Discuss them on the list. If they are easy: Fix them and post patches.