Recruitment Options For a Small-Scale FOSS Project?

thermian writes "I've been developing my open source project for several years now, and I've never found a solution to one fairly important issue. How can a small-scale project attract new members? My project is pretty specialist, (no URL, sorry, I can't afford to get my server nuked) and I find that while it gets a fair bit of use, most users come to my software out of a need to solve their problem, or use my tutorials to learn about the subject, and none seem inclined to stick around and help make the product better. This is a fairly serious problem for me now, because my software has recently been adopted by a university, and I'm just not in a position to manage the entire set of applications and update everything on my own. Just preparing a version for release to students has been especially hard. The open source maxim 'Many eyes make all bugs shallow' only works if those 'many eyes' are available. So do you have any suggestions as to how, and where, to find people who fancy joining open source projects?"

Comments

Re:step 1: post to slashdot

[Starky]

This guy again. Clearly someone who is vying for the "Saddest Loser on the Planet" award.

Whoever has such a sad, lonely life that they gain some kind of emotional satisfaction out of posting this kind of thing *over and over* again needs some counseling. Seriously.

Is there someone out there in the Slashdot universe who could delete these things?

Re:Try the University

[clint999]

I understand your point, but frankly, the "harhar post it on slashdot" crowd is absolutely right. The people he wants read this site, I can guarantee it, and at least a mention of the project's site would have done him some enormous good. Honestly, creating interest in something you're doing involves announcing its existence to like-minded people. What better forum than this one?