Making Your Code OSS-Appealing?

goldcd writes "A while back I wrote some pretty reasonable forum code, a PHPBB alternative. A few years down the line it's pretty stable, I've stopped tinkering with it, and it's standing up by itself. I have neither the time, inclination, nor inspiration to do anything more with it, but would very much like to give the code to the world to use and expand upon. Now I could just upload it as it is onto SourceForge, but currently it's very specific in its usage and I'd be ashamed of what 'proper' coders would think of my amateur offering — I'm afraid it would be laughed at and ignored. On the other hand, I don't want to waste hours of my own time perfecting it for people just to 'rip off' as is, and never contribute anything. My question is, what do you have to do to make your code 'OSS appealing?'"

Comments

Re:Well

[rucs_hack]

I released my first OSS project as a horrifically badly organised mess of dissertation code. I got feedback from some domain specialists and better coders, and the codebase got better.

Now its a mature project with a very specialised user base, but its provided me with more fun then I ever imagined.

Code is never finished though.

Incidentally, I'd have replied to the main article, but for me there was no reply button, don't know why.

Reply Button

[Anonymous Coward]

The reply button is on that annoying little floating widget to the left (or above comments, if you press the button with the arrow point up).

Not the best visibility, though, admittedly.

Re:Just let them come

[Ash Vince]

Just do it. It's highly unlikely anyone will laugh at you. Anyone that has spent time to read through your code is unlikely to be so juvenile as to mail you just to point out how bad it is. Actually they might point out how bad it is, but they might point it out in helpful way that helped to make you a better coder. I have written an awful lot of shit code in my time, but I very grateful to the people who have given me constructive advice on how to improve it in future.

someone might need a small bit

[pruss]

It's worth noting that if you post the code, it will get into Open Source code search engines, and then someone searching for, say, a particular subroutine, or a newbie trying to figure out how to do something (perhaps something very simple), will be able to benefit and either use or learn from the code.

I've posted a lot of very messy code that does various Palm-related things. I get a lot more downloads of binaries than source typically, but nobody's complained that the code is messy, ugly or whatever. It's a gift horse, after all, and in my experience everybody understands that. Put a disclaimer about the code being messy if you like.

My advice is: Swallow your pride and post it. Nobody loses (unless you can make some money from its staying closed), and someone might gain.