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Community Involvement for an Open Source Project?

Posted by Cliff on from the getting-them-interested-and-keepin'-'em-that-way dept.

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?"

4 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. My 2 cents by JohnGrahamCumming · · Score: 5, Informative
    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?

    This seems pretty normal. Any time you make an announcement on your project (including releases) you are going to drive traffic to its web site (that's why corporations pump out press releases). The fact that it dies down afterwards is totally normal, you'd expect people to come, see what's going on, download the stuff and leave.

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

    Probably not. This might be an indication that the software is wonderful, but it's more likely an indication that the user base is small. As the user base increases they are going to find all sorts of weird problems (especially with different machine/OS configurations) which will get reported as bugs.

    Is there more interest in a new project vs. one that is more or less mature?

    I don't think new vs. old is as important as good vs. bad. If your project is useful and well executed then you'll get hits. Just compare Mozilla with any of the thousands of "new" projects listed on SourceForge.

    Is the project too narrow to attract an audience?

    I doubt that. Real Estate is a massive business world wide.

    Could the underlying business (real estate) just be too saturated with web sites?

    That's possible in any business, if your project had some uniqueness then the saturation will not be important. Getting the message out about your feature set will.

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

    I don't think number of contributors is the most important measure. How about number of people actually using the software? In POPFile there's a feature where it can report back (opt in) that it's being used, this gives me an idea of how many downloads converted into users. Another measure of success would be mentions of your project in the press.

    John.

  2. Project web site by JohnGrahamCumming · · Score: 5, Informative

    It seems likely that the project is Free Realty.

    John.

    1. Re:Project web site by ph00dz · · Score: 5, Informative

      Perhaps... I think it was my project OpenRealty that got forked. (Not that I mind... working full time, I didn't have any time to support it -- one of the reasons it was GPL.)

      For whatever it's worth, we're unifying as many of the branches as we can right now at www.open-realty.org. See my announcment on my site...

  3. Promotion by kimbly · · Score: 5, Informative

    You have to let people know the project exists. Simply listing it on freshmeat won't get you much, as I know (I've listed a couple of projects there). My site gets practically zero traffic from those listings.

    There are a couple things I've found that help. First, find a discussion group focused on a subject relevant to your project, and mention it occasionally when it becomes relevant to the discussion -- this gets you kickstarted, but it's not a long-term solution. Second, you might start some kind of blog on the site, so that people have a reason to follow your progress. Rant about the state of the real estate market or something. This is the long-term solution.

    I've done both of these things, and eventually they get you a lot more traffic than freshmeat ever will. The more traffic you get, the more likely that someone will link to your site, which will raise your google ranking, which increases the amount of traffic you get, which starts the whole feedback loop all over again. You just need to focus on making sure that your visitors have a reason to link you once they're there.