Making an Open Source Application More Successful?

morphex asks: "I've written an application for information and task management called the Issue Dealer that has hundreds of users, many of them very satisfied with how it works. However, new user growth has been slow, and there's not much of a community surrounding it. What can I do to encourage wider use of the application, and what can I do to get more developers interested in development and bugfixing? In short, what's missing in this picture to make it an Open Source success story?"

Comments

4 practical advises:

[Spy der Mann]

1. Post it on Sourceforge.
Open Source advocates often search sourceforge for projects that might fulfill their needs. Plus, sourceforge helps you build a community, and external people can analyze your sourcecode directly without having to download the tgz. It also gives you the advantage of having version control systems for the development.

2. Build a community, make a forum.
A community is very important, and user forums are a MUST. If you don't have forums, you also make the impression that your program is a "single user" program (single user programs often lack quality due to not enough user base, beta testers, etc.) and that its support might finish unexpectedly. (Making developer forums is also encouraged)

3. Revamp your website.
Finally, try to make a more impressive website, having a dull website can scare potential users away (typical thought: "if they program the same way they make websites...").

Compare a typical open source website before and after redesigning the webpage. Which one looks more appealing? By personal experience, I can tell you that if new users have to choose, they'll choose the software with better webpage, regardless of the software quality.

4. Advertise.
Finally, try to advertise in more places, make your webpages google friendly, etc.

Do something the others haven't done

[wysiwia]

There's sure enough already several other similar solutions out there which compete with you. So you should do something the others haven't done. Something which is obviously visible in the eyes of your users. So I propose first see that the GUI of your application fits the users and for that go to wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/).

Of course there are countless other things you could do but concentrate on the important things first and do the rest afterwards. Just think the best advertisment you get is your happy users talking about your application.

O. Wyss

Re:OK, It's about effective communication.

[Goalie_Ca]

Try to get your software published in a journal and get it out to conferences. I've seen it work with a project in the lab i work in.