Where to find volunteers for an opensource project ?

Question

The usual question being asked is: "I am cool and I want to provide my skills for an opensource project. Where do I find it?" Example:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1188982/what-is-the-best-way-to-find-a-open-source-project-to-volunteer-for-closed

However, I found no trace of the opposite question. Suppose I have a project plan, but I realize that is totally unrealistic just by myself. I need someone to help. Where should I look ?

I would like to point out that the "build it and they will come" approach never really worked in my experience. I seeded a number of software projects, but in the end collaborators either never came, or they came but never provided any help.

Edit : I think that one of the most relevant facts is that people are less involved into a project if they join after the start. X has an idea, and starts some code. Y joins, but the level of involvement will never be the same. X is the one who kicked off the project in the first place. Having a plan, and collecting people around the plan before start coding is different. Everyone will be involved from line 1 and mentally share the ownership of the project.

Proposed solutions are for now:

• Twitter
• Sourceforge job board

Answer 1

I've had the opposite experience - on a couple of projects, I've put together just enough to get started and then had volunteers doing more work than I have time for myself. This can be tricky itself in terms of "letting go" of a project and "allowing" others to do things you might not have done yourself.

If your current project plan is unrealistic for just you, is there a smaller chunk which you could bite off and still have something useful at the end? I believe people are much more likely to want to join in if you have real, useful code rather than just a plan.

Answer 2

Twitter helped me a bit.

When I started my first open source projects only few downloaded/used them. Then I started becoming active in Twitter. Started following and having conversations with like minded people.

My last open source projects had 4 volunteers whom I met in Twitter. Everyone from different country. I was able to complete the project fast but as Jon skeet said it was a difficult task to manage them. Had to review the source code, make corrections if any and sometimes I felt I could have done it by myself ;-)

so make contacts.

Answer 3

I'm almost on the second year of our open source project and so far the core development team is 1 person apart from me (he has been around since the beginning of the project). We have picked up only 3 or 4 patch contributors, only one of which is consistently active (as he doesn't have any projects of his own).

You really have to give people something that distinguishes your project (and makes it head and shoulders above the competition) from another project before they'll be ready to volunteer for your project. For instance, I contribute patches to various open source projects, but I'd never consider volunteering as a developer, because I have my own projects that take all my time.

Tips: Get the word out on relevant forums, wikis, and communities related to the features or purpose of your application. Make something usable that people can play with and try out. Write good code that's easy to read so that people aren't turned off by your project. And most importantly, don't take it personally or become discouraged if you end up doing it all yourself.

Answer 4

I've had some level of sucess from the source forge job posting board. However you do need an idea on a structure for how to work with people who are interested and what direction you can point them in. Can't expect people to just pick it up and know where to start, at least that's what I learnt ;-)