Open Source Competition or Collaboration

Question

I always have found the open source space interesting but have never actually participated in any projects. I recently had what I thought was a great a idea that was different from other projects I had seen in the area (in case it matters it was a .NET DI framework).

My question is if I have a funky idea should I join an existing project and share my ideas or create a competing project with exactly what I want. There are a few projects in the space the are similar to what I was thinking but they don't quite capture the same ideals.

Is extra competition frown upon in the open source space?

Answer 1

the short answer to this is another question: do you want to contribute to a discussion, or do things your way?

Answer 2

Competition is as important as collaboration in open source. Assuming the licenses are compatible, features and ideas can be cross-pollenating. Everybody wins.

Answer 3

You may want to consider writing it your own way and turning that process into an article that you could submit to CodeProject. Then if there seems to be interest in the article, add it to SourceForge. I've seen a lot of tools and widgets get a quick audience and coding help that way. One that I use often is XPTable, which started as a CodeProject article and eventually became an open source project on SourceForge.

BTW, you'll know if its a hit, because you'll start to get lots of requests for improvement, or people even submitting their own fixes and enhancements to your article.

Answer 4

Thank you for your time. I have decided to contribute directly for the project in some areas they were hurting. By doing so I can help the project and learn from the masters.