How to get users to your Open Source project

Question

I'm one of the developers an founders of Ra-Ajax which is Open Source and Free of Charge (LGPL licensed, hosted at Google Code) and I have a lot of reasons to do what I do, which is to spend most of my time maintaining an Open Source project which I earn close to ZIP money on.

Some of my intentions are that I want Open Web to win, I want Open Innovation and Open Source to win, I want Mono to succeed and I want software and especially building block software to be commoditized since I see software as the basic building blocks of civilization and the carrier of information - which for me is hugely important. In addition I'd like to use Ra-Ajax as a foundation for our consulting services and our own commercial applications and spin offs.

So anyway, with my intentions out of the way I hope people could help me understand this question, and hopefully without jumping on me for linking to Ra-Ajax...

I am 100% confident in that Ra-Ajax is the really superior choice for doing Ajax on ASP.NET. So why don't I have a "gazillion" of users? Sure Ra-Ajax as a project is pretty fresh, it was founded in late June and its first release was in late August. So I guess some things will come with time. But seeing the curves for jQuery at Alexa.com in its early days I'd hope I'd have far more users already...?

I would really hate Ra-Ajax to become the "BetaMax" of Ajax libraries for ASP.NET. So I am therefore asking the SO users how to ensure adoption of my Ajax library...?

Am I doing something wrong? If so what am I doing wrong? Can I improve the website somehow? Are there some forums I should be in. Have others here had success with Open Source projects (obviously I assume) and if so HOW did you get massive adoption...?

Have I chosen the wrong license (LGPL)...?

What are the general steps to massively increase adoption of an Open Source project...?

Are there any samples of seriously kick-ass great FOSS projects which just completely failed due to "no known reasons" - like the BetaMax vs. VHS story...?

Sorry for posting such a long question, but this really bugs me and I'm really trying to crack the code here...

Answer 1

See also:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/95710/how-do-you-promoteadvertiseevangelize-your-open-source-project
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/265417/how-to-persuade-people-to-contribute-to-an-open-source-project
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/188495/open-source-virgin-what-steps-to-take

Answer 2

Please see Lance Roberts' comment below

There are a lot of really great products in the world that are not successful for various reasons. In your particular case, I see these problems:

• Lack of a clear focus. Why build your controls from the ground up? Why not do something useful with a tool like jQuery to service a higher level business need.
• Selection of a limiting target platform. Why limit yourself to ASP.NET. People in this market generally do not value open source as highly as those working with Python or Ruby. Those ALT.NET folks do not like WebForms programming.
• An abundance of AJAX libraries - everyone seems to have created their own.
• Coalescence around a few mature libraries. Microsoft seem to be adopting jQuery
• Late entry to market, I've never heard of your library till today. Other products come to mind when you say AJAX.
• Your view that the outcome of the open source development effort will be the foundation of your consulting organisation. People work on open source because they love software and not because it will make you money. Even if you licence using GPL, people don't like the idea of the end goal being someone making money off their efforts.
• Bad product naming.
• Your website doesn't come across as supporting open source software. You are only a couple of clicks from pricing shoved in your face.
• A lack of business/leadership acumen. Your questions would be considered by some to be naive.

I suggest that you read Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore, or search for general information on why products fail.

Answer 3

I personally don't use libraries that are more restrictive,"free", than MIT, and I know many businesses won't touch aything with gpl in the license name, so yes your license doesn't help your covertion rate.

Answer 4

Two things that I think are definitely holding back your project is your choice of project hosting and your license choice. More ASP.net developers hang out on CodePlex then any other open source hosting site, so you'd have a much better chance of reaching your audience there. Also, CodePlex does a much better job of promoting it's projects (just one example, if you search for "asp.net ajax" in the Google Code search box, your project doesn't show up, instead it's a bunch of irrelevant projects).

GPL certainly isn't a bad license, but a lot of corporations won't use or are hesitant to use GPL software because of it's viral nature. One of the permissive licenses (such as Apache) have the lowest resistence to usage in corporations.