What is a good way to drum up interest in my open source project?

Question

I maintain a coding library for .NET/Mono called SixPack. It's a general purpose class library based on good architectural principles, and is currently being used in a number of websites. We think that code quality is pretty good, and we strive to improve every day.

Although the code, is pretty well tested on real-world projects, we keep on adding new features and we need a lot of testers to keep on ensuring good quality.

Where can I announce the project so I can get people interested? I tried some forums, but it does not seem to be a common way to do it (as there are not many project announced there).

Thanks for any hints you might have from your previous experiences!

EDIT: I am NOT looking for hosting. The project is ALREADY HOSTED on Google Code. We just need to ANNOUNCE the project. Sourceforge, Codeplex, etc. offer hosting...

Answer 1

CodeProject has a collaboration and testing forum intended for this purpose; doesn't get a tremendous amount of traffic, but might be worth a shot.

A better idea would be to write an article talking about the goals and accomplishments of your project, write some good demo code, and post them as an article on CodeProject (and your own project website). There are other sites that allow this as well, but CP has been an excellent resource for it in my opinion because of the focus on the article (vs. code dump/hosting) aspect. Just put some thought into your writing, and don't try to use it to sell anything.

And i guess once you have something cool to demo, you could put together a good website for it and submit that to Slashdot, Digg, or one of those other social link-farming sites.

Answer 2

I think Freshmeat is still around... at least in '96 it was the way to go.

Answer 3

Although StackOverflow is not the right place for these announcements, many people seem to be interested in joining or helping open-source projects and do post questions that can be answered, in topic, announcing the project. See the "related questions" box on the right.

To answer my own question, I could answer these questions to get some tester.

Answer 4

I agree with Shog9 about how to promote it. Create a blog where you show how to use it, Explain some of the architecture etc...

I just looked at the page on Google code. It is very hard to understand what the library is good for. You ned a better intro so when people do find you they know what they are looking at. (I had to browse the code to figurte out what it was)

Answer 5

Obviously you need to host it on one (or more) open source hosting sites. Such as:

Sourceforge Freshmeat (note: all freshmeat projects are also listed on SF) codeplex (for .NET stuff mainly)

Once there, people get a good impression that it's really open source and won't disappear one day if/when you move on.

sourceforge, for one, has an announcement feature, and always puts different projects on its main page, it also sends out an email with featured projects occasionally. Obviously if you're looking for some way to spam everyone interested in OSS projects you'll be disappointed, but you should be able to reach more people who are interested in your project via sourceforge.

If you need testers, SF also allows you to advertise amongst its members by posting 'wanted' people to the project details.

Answer 6

My favorites like Codeplex and sourceforge were mentioned, but Here is another good one (C# Open Source).

Answer 7

If it's compatible with Mono, then you might have some luck over at Launchpad. It's a heavily Linux/Ubuntu oriented site, nonetheless there are no sorts of restrictions on what kinds of open source projects can be hosted. In fact, I tend to host all my open source projects there nowadays (mainly because I do love the site design and features, not least the Bazaar integration). Admittedly, this may not be the best way to publicise your project, but if you're interested in promoting the Mono/Linux end of it, it's definitely worth at least mirroring it on Launchpad.

Answer 8

My recommendation is to release it on codeplex or sourcefrorge. Blog about it, kick and shout the blog post writing about the project. The main goal is go get as many links to the site as posible.

Do other social activites like tweet about it. Build social buzz.