How to successfully start and maintain an open source project?

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+6 Q:

How to successfully start and maintain an open source project?

I have an open source project idea and i would like to implement it. What are the best practices and do(s) and don't(s) that i should follow in order to successfully grow it to a community and then keep that community active and involved.

I am looking for expert answers(from existing open-source project maintainers if possible), links, articles. No trolling please.

I also need abstract answers related to open source only, so don't go on about asking what my project is or isn't about. All i can say is that it is a multi-user social web app. engine.

+2 A:

I don't know if this is what you are looking for but it cover some aspects of Open Source projects:

http://www.dreamsongs.com/IHE/

John Doe 2010-10-21 08:10:26

A free book about Open Source... thank you! ;-)

captaintokyo 2010-10-21 08:20:33

+1 A:

Make something other people want to use, something that lacks or improve on something existinig but make it really better. Put it on github or bitbucket, release it under a permissive license such as LGPL if it is library or GPL if its a program. If what you made is good, patches, suggetions and bugs will start rolling in. Dont be an ass to people who post bugs or ask questions. Success.

AntonioP 2010-10-21 08:13:26

Sometimes it's not even necessary to think about what other people would want to use since in some cases that might be really hard, subjective and brain consuming. There is this probabilistic thing that if you would want to use it really bad, then there is a big chance that at least 1 million people would want to use it too(if implemented right), thus i like to keep this one in mind and keep things simple. I also think it is a mistake to start shaping an open source idea by community from the start since that might diverge into something ugly, impossible to implement and lots of wasted time.

Jsz 2010-10-21 08:36:42

I agree fully, Jsz.

AntonioP 2010-10-21 12:27:12

I would begin by having a look at http://code.google.com/ or SourceForge (sorry - wasn't allowed to add the 2nd hyperlink.) Both of those host some pretty popular software - find something you've used maybe and see how they have done it.

That said, I've found projects on SourceForge that are skimpy on stuff like documentation or support of any kind, and yet they're still heavily used.

So, to paraphrase what has already been said: "Build it, and they will come." ;)

exception 2010-10-21 08:24:30

ansaurus

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How to successfully start and maintain an open source project?

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