Community Involvement for an Open Source Project?

pfleming asks: "Several months ago I began a maintenance fork of some niche software. Essentially, these are PHP/MySQL scripts for real estate offices. The original developer moved on to an incompatible version to what I was using. Upgrading for me and many other users was not the easiest option. Luckily the software is GPL'd and so continued work on the fork is not a big deal. I have set up a site, made it available for download, announced the availability of the fork on Freshmeat and the forums for the original software. Now I have a few people subscribed to the project on Freshmeat, and a few on a mailman list set up for the project. This project has been listed on the GNU Website and other mirror sites but doesn't get much discussion on the mailman list and nothing from the Freshmeat subscribers. There is usually an increase in interest (indicated by a short term increase in site hits) when new releases are announced but this fades back to regular traffic of ~40 visits per day as measured by webalizer after a short period of time. Is this an anomaly? Should I be thankful that there aren't tons of bug reports and feature requests?"

"More questions for you to chew on:

• Is there more interest in a new project vs. one that is more or less mature?
• Is the project too narrow to attract an audience?
• Could the underlying business (real estate) just be too saturated with web sites?

Just what are the secrets to a successful (measured by lots of contributors, etc) project...or am I just not defining success correctly?

What other thoughts does Slashdot have on this subject?"

Comments

If you wanted traffic

[SHEENmaster]

you should've linked directly to your project from the slashdot post. (We all know that slashdot is really just a front for the real estate mafia.)

Re:If you wanted traffic

[mrseigen]

Nice post you have here. Would be a shame if something were to happen to it.

Be thankful

[flicken]

Should I be thankful that there aren't tons of bug reports and feature requests?

Yes, you should be. And, you should be thankful that SCO hasn't gotten a hold of your code yet...

Re:Project web site

[tarquin_fim_bim]

If so, I recon the "... so easy even a real estate agent can use it.." might offend the intended audience a tad. Just a guess.

Ask Slashdot (abridged version)

[stratjakt]

I wrote some SQL scripts and noone has clicked my pay pal link. What am I doing wrong?

Even more important

[einhverfr]

What the guy needs to do is get a few RE offices up and running with the software and get those RE agents to talk to others about it. In addition there are specialist RE web sites where RE agents could discuss the project and hence get more coverage of his project

Yes, but the important part here is that by helping other people impliment this you *will* discover quirks/bugs/out-of-spec behavior in your project. The quality will improve greatly and you will soon have another, better release ;-) Then when the next people try it they will have an easier time :-)

~googolplex

[riordan]

Well undoubtedly his hits are about to increase a tad bit...