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Getting an Independent Project Started?
nightgeometry writes "Just as everyone has a book in them, as the saying goes, maybe everyone has a software project in them. I have an idea for a project; it is something I would want, but googling doesn't find me anything similar. My programming skills are not amazing, to say the least, but I can design and QA. I'd happily learn to code, but lets face it — getting to a good standard would take me years, by which time I would be bored of the project. So, my question is: in this situation, should I set up a project on SourceForge and hope to attract some developers there? (And if so, how do I attract developers?) Should I try a rent-a-coder type of site and outsource the work, or perhaps attempt to approach developers personally and share the idea, or something else entirely? I think the project could be worth something, but I'd certainly open source the idea if it got me the app I want. Then again, I am happy to invest some cash in the idea, and thus cover said outsource costs — it isn't a huge project that I am considering, and I really think a competent developer could probably get the thing done in a week or less (I'm not in cloud cuckoo land here; I've worked in the software industry for over ten years, and I'm confident that it's a fairly simple idea). To me, the question is interesting in two ways. Once I have a specific idea, what are next steps? Then, in general, what do people do at this stage (and this isn't specifically a software question; it would apply just as well if I thought I had a good design for a new engine or a new type of beer)?"
Use Functional Programming!
That's the easiest way.
Tell people the idea. Starting here, today...
No sig today...
The problem is that ideas are cheap; it's high-quality implementation that's difficult to achieve. That means that starting a SourceForge idea will never work if all you have is the idea. All the competent programmers who may even like your idea are already working on something else.
If you think this can be implemented by a wizard in under a week, it shouldn't take you more than a few months if you start learning now. Why not take this as an opportunity to expand your skill set. You may indeed get bored with the idea during the implementation, but the ability to force yourself to push through those times is another important thing to learn.
1. Get people interested in your ideas.
2. Get them to subscribe to your newsletter.
3. ???
4. Profit!
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
I think you'll have a hard time starting an open source project if you're not a programmer. As far as I know, most os projects get started by someone who provides the first code and a working alpha system, then if all goes well other people join. Or not. Also, the project needs a person who's willing to put in almost all of their time in order to keep it going. :-)
You'll have to find a programmer who is as thrilled about your project as you are
no, I don't have a sig
I would volunteer for the beer project you mentioned. I would like to develop some m4d5kiLlz in that particular field. Oh, and good luck with the software thing too! :)
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
People do not instantly jump onboard a project without seeing some benefit themselves.
If you cannot code, discuss it with some of your coder friends, write a blog about it, ask slashdot (you could have told us what it was about).
GET PEOPLE INTERESTED.
I also have lots of ideas and have spent the last 6 months picking up my c skills and learning about Linux. I did not sit down waiting for someone else to write the code, I got off my ass and learnt how to do it.
Its been a hard slog and often I've wondered whether its worth it, but lots of nice things are starting to become possible with my code.
If you do not put in the hard work you cannot expect others to.
Additionally, if you think you will get bored of a project partway through then is it really such a good idea?
Think about most of the successful products over the years: :)
they exist for a long time and I would hope the original visionary was still there to guide the process for a long time
liqbase
Before going through the effort of developing your own project, I'd recommend finding a partner.
If you can't manage to find 1 other person out there in the world that will be interested in your project, it might say one of the following two things:
* It wasn't worth doing
* You don't have the skills to market your project so it will be popular.
If you need to perfect what the project is, or learn how to 'sell' it, better to learn that now rather than after you go through the development effort.
Good luck. Creating your own project can be well work the effort!
Some freelancing is good. Some is terrible. Some things to watch out for:
1. People who don't speak your language well. Don't ask if you can understand them now, ask yourself if they will be able to understand a request to change a detail or glitch that you need to go in depth to explain. Also, make sure you can use the code they make. No joke, I've seen code comments in languages I couldn't begin to identify. Not helpful.
2. Over-pricing and under-pricing. Deicde what you're going to pay before you post, and post a range with that price on the upper end. Generally, these "bidding" sites reward straight forwardness.
3. Try to find open source developers first.
Also, why didn't you post your idea? If people know about the idea, they might just get excited and like it. Then they might offer to help. Then you might just have an open source project on your hands.
Programmers won't flock to your project if you make them do the initial work. You have to put up something that is at least semi-useful; something they can play with. After all, why would they contribute to your project when they could just start their own.
You don't have to be able to program in C. There are other languages that are a lot easier to learn and program things that do something useful. A good example is Moodle, a course management program written in PHP. The people who care the most about Moodle are teachers, not programmers. Using PHP means that teachers can contribute code.
My programming skills are not amazing, to say the least, but I can design and QA. I'd happily learn to code, but lets face it â" getting to a good standard would take me years, by which time I would be bored of the project.
1. What level of "design" are you talking about if you can't program, and thus can't do any technical level of designing?
2. All projects like this turn into long term entities if they're half-popular, unless they do a small task well, and stick to doing that small task.
3. Learn to program.
I've seen loads of projects built around an idea start, get some posts and ideas, and then die because the person with the idea simply hasn't got the ability to drive the project on (and other people simply don't care). The best way to get a project going is to program the initial implementation, even if it is basic and proof-of-concept. Then people get the motivation to add on their own bits and bobs.
You don't have to react stellar quality standards immediately. Just have something that works and see whether it flies or not.
Hack some version in few days using Python, and perhaps use the situation to learn/polish your python skills at the same time.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
As a project founder of a successful project on SourceForge (EJBCA), I can at least give this advice - do NOT start an empty project and hope to attract any developer. No-one will be interested in an empty project.
First of it's a slim chance anyone will find your project amongst the thousands of other project, your project will be bottom rated since nothing is released.
Second, as a developer, even if I agree completely with your ideas I might just start my own project, since you have nothing to build on.
There are thousands of projects started as "good ideas" that never released anything. The right way to start a new project on SourceForge is to make code first, and then register the project and make the initial release right away.
I have relatives / friends / acquaintances come to me several times a year with "the next great idea in software" and "all they need is someone to build it."
It's
a) Rarely a brand new idea.
b) Never fully thought out
c) Never has a business plan behind it
d) Not really funded.
e) not something I'm interested in.
Software is really hard to get right. Writing code is only a small part of it. If you partner up with a great coder, the project is probably still a failure.
I think your best bet for finding programming talent would be to talk to people you know. If you've been in the software industry for 10 years, you must know at least one guy who likes to work on stuff in his spare time. If the idea is cool enough, some people can be persuaded with as little as a case of good beer.
I would be very surprised if you setup an empty project on SF and it actually attracted some talen to you.
How to not get a project started:
(1) Get on the front page of Slashot in front of tens of thousands of programmers
(2) Not say what the project is
(3) ???
(4) No profit!
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I like the idea of getting the basic project rolling via a get-a-coder style site and then setup a sourceforge site with the code, ramble up some interest (perhaps via /.?) and get other devs involved.
Okay, time for me to be shameless. If I find your project interesting, I'll lend a hand (and more than a hand if you give me a little something for my troubles). I know C, perl, tcl, bash, SQL, very well and lots of other languages not quite as well. I also have coder friends who like to do OSS stuff and even more so when there's a chance for pay (even if the pay is slim).
Sounds like you want just general ideas and information about projects in general, but you've got me curious, and I'd like to know more.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
I have the opposite problem. I want to create an app and market it in order to earn some extra cash, but I can't think of what to design that hasn't already been done a thousand times. I am confident in my coding skills and know that I could overcome almost any technical challenge, but I just don't have any ideas.
I've been in IT for close to twenty years. You know what I've heard a hundred times?? It's this:
"I have this great idea. You do the work. We'll split the profits."
Of course the don't quite say it the same way. It's usually something like, "I can't pay you right now, but the profits will be huge. When it succeeds I can give you 10%."
This is invariably followed by something like, "Oh, it's very easy for someone like you. Maybe a week or so of work."
So I'm a little jaded.
Here's my suggestion. Show that you are investing your *time* and *money* (though I am being redundant since time *is* money). It should be an equal investment from the beginning. I think you're willing to do this, so attracting others should not be as difficult.
I have so many non-programmer friends that have goofy ideas for projects that they run by me on a weekly basis, so let me save you some trouble. Nobody is interested in your "unique" spin on:
1. A dating site
2. A social networking site
3. A clone of Digg
4. A recipe tracker
5. Or anything else
If only an idea was all it took. Instead, we have to suffer through contributions of time, money, determination and skill.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Open-source works great for this. I've started several projects like this already.
Make friends with some programmers, find some of the tools available to oss projects - like sf.net or launchpad.net, work on the design & implementation, spread the word about it, accept patches and etc.
This project would be a good way to learn.
It doesn't actually take that long to learn if you understand the fundamentals (i.e. loops, conditions, arrays, and possibly classes).
...start off with creator pouring himself into the work. Alienate your friends, put another 40 hours a week into it, etc.
It sounds like you have a good idea, but it doesn't seem as though you have the necessary level of obsession to pull it off.
Yes, I've found that it's always easier to get somebody to tell you what you did wrong. You'll get more interest if you can get something working out there, even if it's a just a shell to demo the interface. Responses can sometimes be painful, but some of the interest will be constructive.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
I've been in the software development business for 25 years and I'm one of those Rentacoder contractors (top 200). I use the site to make initial contacts -- kinda 'get to know you' projects. If I get along with the buyer, then we move the relationship outside of RAC.
I'll tell you this from my experience... I don't deal with people who hide their idea behind NDAs. I don't have the time to spend teasing the idea out of you before I can evaluate it and calculate an expected effort/cost. Unless you have something that's patentable (but I guess what isn't these days) AND are willing to spend the cash to get it patented, just post your idea out in plain view. You'll get responses and an idea of how much it will cost -- or no responses and an idea that it isn't as easy as you think.
Nobody will steal your idea and do it themselves for two reasons. First, we're all too busy with what we're already doing. And second, making money at packaged software requires marketing, a support infrastructure, and a commitment to the product. I'm not set up for that. I'm just writing code.
Once you get a finished product out of a RAC coder, its yours. You can do whatever you want with it, including posting it on SourceForge. That gets your project off the ground and now you've got a second audience that will decide if it is worthwhile.
Most of the posts here are great, and cover the subject well. I tried to start an OSS project many years ago without being a capable coder. I had some initial interest, but it flagged almost immediately. What I didn't understand is that no one else was as interested in the project as I was, and that such a project couldn't be managed in the same way that a project at work was managed. People don't want to work all day for pay, then experience the same thing for free.
If your idea can get implemented at a basic level and then grow, I say pay someone to do the basic implementation and then, as someone above suggested, do a quick release. If it's something that you want to do, but it'll basically get written once and not grow much, keep the source to yourself and market it, maybe as share ware. You may find that, once someone gets the initial code written, you can maintain it yourself.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Do a screen mockup, using whatever tools you know. Show that around to whomever you know and respect, and see if it passes the giggles test.
maybe I can help you. i code for love and/or money. drop me a line. jay@flyingspark.eu
By being totally silent on your actual idea, you passed up a good opportunity to get people on board right here from Slashdot. Why the secretiveness, if a Sourceforge project was one of your options?
I'd approach friends or acquaintances in your personal network who have the relevant skills if you are less than certain about the idea and need a technical look-through. It may cost you - either cash or ownership - but there are benefits to getting an expert involved. Otherwise, if you are dead certain on the idea and have the cash to spare, go the rent-a-coder route. Cheap and you retain control/ownership of the idea.
-- Manik Surtani
code and the process of coding. OK, code is like air, you got nothing without it, obviously. And bad code is certainly a minus for a project, but less of a minus than no code at all...
What I mean is if you go to SourceForge and poke around you'll find that there are a really large number of nascent projects that are basically no more than a name, a description of an idea, and nothing else. Rare is the instance where such a project attracts any attention. People are usually looking for solutions, not so much ideas. If I need something those empty projects really don't offer me anything. There is precious little motive for OSS developers to 'join' such a project, they can simply set up their own project, one that DOES have whatever code they came up with, and at least that project will offer some sort of technical starting point.
You'll also find that the process of implementation itself often serves to help focus and refine a raw idea. Even more valuable in that regard is the input of other people who are actually working on the implementation and the idea with you.
Projects succeed or fail for a wide variety of reasons, most of which, especially at the beginning, are not really technical in nature. Just as in the commercial world. For every Linux Kernel, or Apache, or whatever there are or were probably a 100 people who set out to build a POSIX compliant OS kernel or a high performance web server. Again the same sort of examples can be drawn from the commercial software world. Success comes from timeliness, luck, savvy promotion, political/managerial skill, determination, quality, technical excellence, and probably many other factors.
To focus more on the question at hand, I would say that producing a mediocre initial implementation of an idea yourself is not necessarily a bad idea. If, as you say, it is not really a highly difficult idea to implement then chances are you CAN produce something yourself. Maybe it isn't great code, and maybe your prototype won't much resemble the eventual mature project down the road, but it will provide some kind of starting point. Something people can look at and play with and improve on, and something they can use to get a handle on the concept and understand what it is you ultimately want to do.
I don't know what your idea is, and I don't know how fully formed it is. Thus I can't really say whether or not it would make sense to pay someone to work on it. Very few software projects are successful when the customer has less than a precise idea of what they want code to do. If you can articulate the goals of the project, what the code needs to do, and some vision of what it should look like from the perspective of various stakeholders (users/admins/developers/business/etc) then it might be worth paying someone to do it. But if you go that route really make sure you go through the process of articulating all these things, write them down, try to discuss them with others who might be interested.
If you can't articulate things at that level, then chances are anyone you hire to work on the thing will at best end up spending a lot of extra effort, time, and money, and chances are slim that the results will be satisfactory.
The other issue with say using a 'rent-a-coder' is that you really have little idea of the sort of quality of person you will get. They may well not be any more skilled at coding than you are yourself. Maybe worse. Sure, you can check their past work history and talk to them and maybe look at samples of their work, but if it were simple to pick out the good developers from that crowd then everyone would have crackerjack dev teams. Also I think you'll find the really good people you CAN find that way are either booked solid, or they quickly end up permanently attached to some team someplace and what is left in rent-a-coder land are the ones that aren't so great. Plus a lot of those type guys ARE good in the sense that they are quite skilled at quickly knocking off bits of code that do some little task, but they mostly aren't good
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
1. Sell the idea to a big corporation like Microsoft.
2. Have disgruntled Linux users see said idea in implementation without a free alternative.
3. Your problem will solve itself.
I would go for it. Never give up on your dreams. There are always people out there willing to listen and to help. Anyone that tells you to stop thinking and trying is a fool.
I'm not sure you'll read this but I hope so.
I'm about to start to learn how to program on my own, just for fun. For me it's to become better at certain computer challenges and to see if I'd like it enough to change career and start a B.Sc in computer science next year. That being said...
I read a lot on the subject and there are languages that are powerful and yet easy enough to learn. I'm especially thinking about Python since this is the language I decided to pick up.
In order to decide if this language is for you, read the foreword and the preface of "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, 2nd edition". This open source textbook can be found here: http://openbookproject.net//thinkCSpy/
I also found a lot of info on the Python wiki: http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide
I hope this helps you decide.
Here is the quote from "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, 2nd edition" that explains why to pick up Python.
How and why I came to use Python
In 1999, the College Board's Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science exam was given in C++ for the first time. As in many high schools throughout the country, the decision to change languages had a direct impact on the computer science curriculum at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia, where I teach. Up to this point, Pascal was the language of instruction in both our first-year and AP courses. In keeping with past practice of giving students two years of exposure to the same language, we made the decision to switch to C++ in the first-year course for the 1997-98 school year so that we would be in step with the College Board's change for the AP course the following year.
Two years later, I was convinced that C++ was a poor choice to use for introducing students to computer science. While it is certainly a very powerful programming language, it is also an extremely difficult language to learn and teach. I found myself constantly fighting with C++'s difficult syntax and multiple ways of doing things, and I was losing many students unnecessarily as a result. Convinced there had to be a better language choice for our first-year class, I went looking for an alternative to C++.
I needed a language that would run on the machines in our GNU/Linux lab as well as on the Windows and Macintosh platforms most students have at home. I wanted it to be free software, so that students could use it at home regardless of their income. I wanted a language that was used by professional programmers, and one that had an active developer community around it. It had to support both procedural and object-oriented programming. And most importantly, it had to be easy to learn and teach. When I investigated the choices with these goals in mind, Python stood out as the best candidate for the job.
I asked one of Yorktown's talented students, Matt Ahrens, to give Python a try. In two months he not only learned the language but wrote an application called pyTicket that enabled our staff to report technology problems via the Web. I knew that Matt could not have finished an application of that scale in so short a time in C++, and this accomplishment, combined with Matt's positive assessment of Python, suggested that Python was the solution I was looking for.
Ideas are worth nothing. If you have cash, hire programmers. If you don't, I'd recommend you proceed with next phase of the project. You need to show real progress and commitment.
For a project to succeed, you will need:
.) Someone that finance it.
.) Someone that will sell it.
.) Someone that will build it.
If you are thinking in just one or two of these items is just like trying to build a table with two legs.
The dot-bomb is calling. You're infringing on the intellectual property of all those web company business plans, and they want to make sure you don't go any further and buy any Aeron chairs before you've written a line of code.
It's not you personally: but since you apparently don't consider your idea sophisticated or protectable in court enough to be able to admit what it is, you apparently have no way to protect it and have Microsoft or any of the patent trolls steal your work. If you have a genuine workable, talk to a competent business lawyer and a genuine programmer you trust enough to discuss your idea with, and see if it is really worth anything. Then watch a few episodes of 'the Dragon's Den' to learn how not to do a business plan.
Great question. Starting a project is hard. Keep talking to people, try to decide on a programming language and see if there are tools you can buy to get a simple implementation without much programming perhaps?
Unless of course its an interface (or something more low-level), where you may need to know C or a language that's a bit tougher to just pick up a "dummies book" for...
Good luck. I'm interested in hearing the idea...
-Tres
Try http://www.cambrianhouse.com/ it's a crowdsourcing site, sharing ideas and skills. Maybe it will work for you. they didn't like my idea of a quelength website to publicly monitor queues at various places I go like passport offices.
so, as a non-programmer he'll just have to show something better communicated than most projects. Show a good plan, mock-up, descriptoon etc and you'll get people who'll want to make it real.
Its like business, most projects are started by "businessmen" who usually have few skills other than planning and organising.
When I was an teenager, I learned Basic, but never got further than that in terms of programming. In my current job, a colleague was making all these neat Python script for data crunching (the stuff I would do with formulas in Excel). I decided to give it a try and learn it myself (which took about two days). This was one of the best things that happenend to me that year: I can now make neat little and larger programs that typically take me less than a day, including a simple but effective GUI. So if you want to built a hacked version and get the project started: learn Python in a weekend and make a proto in a few days yourself.
BTW The way I learned was just with a hello world, reading a file, writing to a file, doing some filtering on the read file, crawling a dir, adding a two button GUI, etc.
Wanna bet the author is from Nigeria?
Chaeron Corporation
> I have an idea for a project; it is something I would want, but googling
> doesn't find me anything similar.
Really??? This seems ridiculously unlikely.
> My programming skills are not amazing, to say the least, but I can design
> and QA. I'd happily learn to code, but lets face it â" getting to a good
> standard would take me years, by which time I would be bored of the project.
If the project is an interest/amusement then don't even bother to start it. Successful projects are driven by *need* and a real-world problem (unless someone somewhere is funding it).
> So, my question is: in this situation, should I set up a project on
> SourceForge and hope to attract some developers there?
> (And if so, how do I attract developers?)
It is very unlikely that will happen. You are a tiny shrub in a vast forest. What about your project is likely to attract any lumberjacks?
> Should I try a rent-a-coder type of site and outsource the work, or perhaps
> attempt to approach developers personally and share the idea, or something
> else entirely?
There is no harm in trying approach developers, but I suspect you'll find many are already over committed.
> I think the project could be worth something, but I'd certainly open source
> the idea if it got me the app I want. Then again, I am happy to invest some
> cash in the idea, and thus cover said outsource costs â" it isn't a huge
> project that I am considering, and I really think a competent developer
> could probably get the thing done in a week or less (I'm not in cloud cuckoo
> land here; I've worked in the software industry for over ten years, and I'm
> confident that it's a fairly simple idea)
I think your cuckoo. There is a software problem a developer could solve in a week that isn't already solved? The IT industry is well past the stage of low-hanging fruit.
> To me, the question is interesting in two ways. Once I have a specific idea,
> what are next steps? Then, in general, what do people do at this stage (and
> this isn't specifically a software question; it would apply just as well if
> I thought I had a good design for a new engine or a new type of beer)?"
Different type of products are not comparable. IT does not have the same fundamentals as the brewing industry.
And again, successful software projects [I believe] do not grow out of interesting ideas they grow out of solutions to [potentially interesting] real problems.
Using "Common Sense" is being either to arrogant or to ignorant to ask people who know more about something than you.
I have worked on a couple successful OSS projects; never led one but I learned a few things about their management.
First, there is always a "lead from the front" mentality which is to say that the project leaders are often responsible for a bulk of the code. They are the ultimate arbiter of contributions, design considerations, architecture, etc. In fact, this is one of the things that makes OSS successful - a dearth of PHB shot-callers (not that I am implying that you are necessarily one, but if, as you said, you weren't programming during those ten years in the software industry....)
If you are serious about setting up this project, take a month and really learn your language as well as the design considerations necessary to deploy the project. Talk to one of your programmers about your idea. If you are serious about open sourcing it, post the ACTUAL idea in the Ask Slashdot question. You'll get a half-dozen "Did you try (insert half-finished project here)?" posts or someone will say "Yeah, I do that all the time. I just use Excel." Or if it is a really good idea, someone will start a project, write all the code FOR you and let you (and us) use it for free without all the hassle of mailing lists, bug-tracking, etc. :)
Good luck!
~Sean
Ideas are cheap, and frankly if Google finds *nothing* there are two possibilities:
1. you are a genius
-or-
2. your idea stinks, makes no sense, is infeasible, or there is a better solution that solves the problem in a more efficient way.
As a programmer, I get extremely cynical whenever someone says "I have an idea, and all I need is a programmer". They almost always follow it up with "it'll only take a week to build".
The best thing to do at this point is to flesh out the idea:
1. what does it do (in 3 sentences or less)
2. who will use it
3. how will it make money (or not)
4. flowchart its high-level functions
5. sketch out a rough interface if possible
Once you have all of that, you can show it to a competent programmer, and they should be able to tell you almost instantly if your idea holds water, as well as highlight any weaknesses or failure points. If you do a good enough job of writing your plan, the programmer(s) will be much more interested in joining the project. More importantly, having a plan will make it 10 times more likely the project will come to fruition.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Non-programmer-types often think that software design can just be dreamed up from airy nothing, but it is as much a discipline as coding. Find experts familiar with designing and developing software - there are many steps in as many methodologies - and hand over the ball and let someone else run with it. Acquire the business expertise to complement the technical experts or decide you can keep up with the technical wizards.
If you have an idea, ask a few friends (with software engineering experience) to join you to the local pub. Simply ask them what they think about it.
What might happen is that they tell you it won't work, will be too costly, nobody will be interested and/or simply not possible. If this is the case, ditch the idea. If you are able to get them interested, you can move to the topic of actually getting a few people to look at this closely and/or make a prototype. If your friends don't have the time, they probably will know a few others who might be interested.
A lot of ideas jumped straight to implementation-phase during the dot-com age, with the results we all know. A lot of dead/defunct sf.net projects exist. Ideas are cheap, good ideas are scarce.
This sig is intentionally left blank
I've never done this before on Slashdot, but this time I feel the need to break this question down into much smaller pieces.
"maybe everyone has a software project in them"
But not everyone grasps the logic required to convert an idea to machine executable software. Sometimes they are actually thinking of a business process that only humans can execute, and even then the process is not necessarily cost effective.
"googling doesn't find me anything similar"
Are you entirely sure you're searching the right terms? Unfortunately, jargon varies widely, from whatever language you may describe as human.
"but I can design and QA"
QA ability is always debatable, but design is something you can prove. So PROVE it. That's what flowcharts, mock-ups, psuedo-code, UML, and visual prototyping are for. Even something as dumb as PowerPoint/Impress can be used to fake a UI design. Static web sites can be made to prototype UI for a more complex web application. If you can't do some combination of those in your design, in a way that programmers will understand, you don't really know that it will work as software.
"I'd happily learn to code"
Again, prove it. CODE IT. If it doesn't work out, ask for help AFTER you try, not before.
"getting to a good standard would take me years"
It takes longer than a lifetime in some cases. I know professional programmers (making "the big bucks") that haven't yet achieved "a good standard." If it compiles, runs, and meets internal business requirements, there's such a thing as good enough.
"by which time I would be bored of the project"
Really?? Then maybe this idea isn't so great after all. If this is true, why would it be worth your money to hire a coder, or fool volunteers into getting bored for you?
"I set up a project on SourceForge"
NO!!! Do NOT further pollute SourceForge with a project you're not willing to see through to the logical end, on your own. Search for projects that haven't been updated for a year or longer. There's already far too many. Get to functional (it doesn't have to be great, just functional) first. Then it might be worth sharing.
"Should I try a rent-a-coder type of site and outsource the work"
Is it worth the money to you? Then yes, pay other people for it. Just make sure they give you all the licensing rights, which may cost you more in the end. Otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of nice code that you don't really own, even though you "paid" for it. People tend to forget that paying for programming labor and paying for copyright are two different things.
"I think the project could be worth something"
Yes it could be, if you're willing to implement it until it is functional. Otherwise, it's worthless, to you and everyone else.
"cover said outsource costs"
If you're not willing to cover these costs on your own, and assume all the risk, I doubt it's worthwhile.
"I've worked in the software industry for over ten years, and I'm confident that it's a fairly simple idea"
My luddite cousin has too. I still help him find the ON button. Working near software development is not proof of knowing anything about it.
"what are next steps?"
You said you can design, so Design. That should always be the first step, even if you can code well. You have to know the target before you can reach it, by any means. Get as far as you can with design alone, and the next specification steps should fall naturally from there.
1) Anything that can be hacked together in a week is by definition fairly trivial/boring and not the sort of thing that a skilled programmer is likely to do for free in his spare time. OTOH if you offer someone a few hundred bucks for a weeks work (if that is really all it is), they may go for it if bored.
2) If you can't yourself design/code it in a week then there is no guarantee that your seat-of-the-pants guess that someone else might be able to do so is even in the ballpark! An experienced developer will certainly be able to design/develop it better & faster then you, but they'll also be able to estimate it better than you, and maybe see all sorts of complexities and pitfalls that you don't have the skill to see.
3) If it really is a weeks work for someone experienced, and if you are at least knowlegable enough to make that call, then it shouldn't take you more than a couple of months to do it. If the idea is that great, then why not put together an initial version yourself, and if it's actually useful THEN others may be willing to jump in and clean up the code and extend/polish it.
Are you passionate about this idea? Are you willing to commit to it? How are you willing to manifest that commitment? You say that you are unqualified to write the code but what are you willing and qualified to do?
At a minimum, a software project needs more than just coders. It also needs evangelists. People who are passionate about the software and are willing to get the message out to the software's intended audience. You can build a better mousetrap but the world won't beat a path to your door unless you are willing to market it.
A non-trivial project could also stand to have analysts, designers, a usability engineer, an information architect, a software architect, subject matter experts, a product manager, a project manager. Also, a copy writer wouldn't hurt. An online application should also have community managers. Depending on the size of the effort, these roles may be filled by different people or by fewer people wearing different hats as they perform these different functions. How many of these hats are you willing to wear?
I have grown tired working for the man and have just recently started my own software development house. We are looking to partner with visionaries and startup entrepreneurs to bring the next generation of great applications to the web. If you really feel like you've got something important and are willing to put in some sweat in order to bring your baby to life, then contact me and let's discuss this further.
I should think this would be a good learning opportunity for you. I agree with many of the previous posters that until people/other developers see something tangible that they can play with, you will need to drive this bus. If it's truly a worthwhile idea, then your enthusiasm should persist for the months it will take you to get up to speed.
And then you'll know what to do next.
From your original post, it looks like you might want to make money from it. Or not. First thing is to decide which it is.
My advice would be to not try to make money from it. If it is as you say - "I really think a competent developer could probably get the thing done in a week or less", well as soon as you market it every competent developer will look at it, think the same thing, and write an open source one.
If it's really as whiz-bang as you're saying and only a week's worth of coding...well, sourceforge will have one probably inside of a month of your release.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
if it is a good idea that is worth something then get a loan and rent a place near an Indian CS university for a few months to get the work done. *however* you still need to know what ur doing even if your paying others to do the grunt work. Do as much QA as you can.
Since you have not given away any particulars of your idea, we all must reply in the abstract. The question, then, is what is your idea and how valuable is your association with it. Since it sounds like you are a developer, you likely do not know what a long and tortuous process is getting a large open source project off the ground. If it's a new idea, then the idea and the process of implementing that idea are probably not well defined.
Getting at the definition of what you are to build is the hardest part because you can't gloss over it or fake it or hide it behind undefined conjecture as you can in the development phase. So, in the end, what value do you add to the project?
I myself am a developer and I have been at work on my own open-source project that could be the next killer app. But I myself have to drive it, to push it forward, to make it happen and solve the problems. Making the decision to start over from the beginning, refining the design, going through periods of time when you retreat to just defining packages of interfaces without even implementations, to just perform a mental exercise of solving the problems of the design.
Having had the misfortune of getting involved with semi-rich entrepreneurs with great ideas, and the agony that results when you have a non-technical person indiscriminately making technical decision, I would be wary of working with someone who has not even taken the first step down the road of software development.
If you have a good idea (will do a NDA to find out what it is) I will build it for free for a percentage of the profits. Good ideas are under rated. Email me at yxy@yxyband.com if you are interested
The more complex the task, the simpler the steps need to be.
Think of a programmer as a being an auto mechanic. Trying to 'attract' programmers to an idea, is sort of like saying "I have this idea for a car, and I just need someone to buy it and put it together for me." A successful open-source project would be likened to the experimental 'kit' car your neighbor is always tinkering with in his garage. He probably spent 2 years working on it solo, and now its far enough along that some of his auto-mechanic friends got excited about it. They come work on it every weekend because it interests them. Stop thinking that there are a bunch of programmers that are just out 'looking' for a project to donate time to, any more than auto mechanics spend their saturdays going door to door offering to do oil changes. Every project I have ever been involved with, and every person I've known who has worked on a project, has done so because the project was useful to them already. Open source development tends to be 'evolutionary' which is why most of the really successful projects tend to derive from an existing codebase (Think Firefox, etc...)
If you don't know a better way to do something when you have finished it that proves is that you have stopped learning.
In rare trivial cases that might mean you have learned all there is to learn. If that happens more then once you should seek out more challenging work.
I say that with 20 years+ as a professional programmer and engineer (with a couple of genuine engineering degrees).
Everybody who slings code worth anything once started a project they were in no way equipped to complete. If nothing else the 'learning' project done by the barely competent will help clarify the final apps design. It will also possibly show the original poster that his 'great idea' isn't so great after all and in fact may not be implementable. Being truly over your head at least once is also invaluable. You ether sink or swim. If you are a sinker better to know it sooner rather then later and plan accordingly.
I don't expect that 10 years in software but no coding at all amounts to sufficient experience to write a tight application spec or reasonable time estimate (anybody else have experience with PHBs and their 1 week projects?). I could be wrong. I don't know the original poster. In my experience the only people that can write really tight specs and truly grind the analysis to the fine points have strong coding backgrounds on similar projects. Analysts with strong business understanding are needed for a team working complicated problems, but if they personally don't have appropriate technical skills (coding, database, network etc) they always need lots of help to get to a tight spec.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
No project worth doing can be done in a week. It takes a week for your programmer to understand what needs to be done, even on the simplest piece of code, and as much as a week to set up infrastructure like a wiki or forum with accounts for the inner circle and make sure they know how to use it, days to weeks to make your paper prototype, demo, or user manual, days to debug the acceptance criteria, days to test it, and a month to have naive users test it, and another week to adjust the UI, and don't forget debugging the manual, having the distribution media reproduced, distribution art, publicity, setting up customer service (though you could use the wiki or forum for that) and depending on what it does, so many more silly little tasks that have nothing to do with the code . . . .
And two lines of code do not take 5 minutes to replace. You can't do anything in less than 20 minutes.
Which brings me to feature creep which can make your project grind on for an eternity.
Anything worth doing takes at least nine months and a week.
This is the sort of thing one encountered in dot coms: a bunch of MBAs who couldn't code had an idea and figured they just needed implementation help. This approach was and still is so wrongheaded that it's almost impossible to believe the number of investors who fell for it. Understanding what's wrong with it has been much covered elsewhere; see Joel on Software, especially here and here and here. Actually, you should spend an afternoon reading everything in his archives.
Then mosey over to Paul Graham, where you should read this and this. Actually, read about half his archive, including all the computer-related stuff. Chances are you could spend about a day with both; then read The Mythical Man Month and Peopleware. Once you're done with all four, you should have a much better idea of why what you're describing is virtually impossible--something many others on this thread are dancing around, but which I'll come out and say.
I see two main possibilities, and not too many shades between:
(1) You want to make money off the idea, in which case you have to do what everyone else who's ever had an idea for a business has had to do: invest. Invest your time, invest your money, take the usual risks. If it's the kind of idea a competent programmer could polish off in a few months even, you're not talking about a huge investment.
(2) If you've given up on profit, tell as many people as possible what your idea is. If it's a great idea, someone will pick up on it. Or more likely, someone will tell you where to download it. Unfortunately, unless you do this in the next 24 hours, you've already missed out on your chance to tell a big chunk of Slashdot's readers, which would've been a good forum. People who read Slashdot, almost by definition, have a lot of time to waste.
Most of the other responses to this thread have been skeptical, and I am too. Chances are slim whatever you're contemplating doesn't exist, could be developed easily, and would make you any meaningful money if you exploited it commercially. Sight unseen, chances are also slim it would get to be widely known even if you released it tomorrow as a GPLed, bug-free, cross-platform work of art. But if it's really something you want to develop, and you can't do it yourself, the choices seem pretty obvious: keep it secret and invest your own time/money, or tell everyone and give up the opportunity to make it a business.
just use http://www.cofundos.org/
1) Any software project which can be written in a week by "any competent developer" is not going to be worth anything, so you may as well spill the beans on your idea.
2) No competent developer is going to blindly agree to a project that falls into (1) above.
3) Any project that falls into (1) has probably already been done a billion times, so you may as well spill the beans so someone can tell you where to get the software that already implements your idea. It will save you a lot of time.
There's a really good thread about this on the Microsoft XNA game developer's forum:
http://forums.xna.com/forums/p/12407/65734.aspx
Worth reading for people who think their ideas are valuable and especially those who want help implementing them but are afraid to tell anyone about them for fear they'll be stolen.
If you want to work in a field where ideas have significant value then go into marketing or advertising, or become a short story writer.
In the software world:
1) Ideas have vanishingly small value. Only implementations of ideas are worth anything.
2) Everyone has more ideas than they could ever implement.
3) Chances are good that others already had your special idea many times before. Never ever get hung up on the idea that someone might, or has, stolen your idea. In general ideas themselves are not protectable or are not worth worrying about.
4) People do not steal unproven ideas, they steal proven ones. So tell everyone your secret idea because it might help you and won't hurt, and if you are successful then they're all going to steal your idea at that point anyway.
5) Nobody wants to write your software for you. If we're going to work on something then we're going to use our own ideas. If you like your idea then go implement it because NOBODY ELSE IN THE WHOLE WORLD IS GOING TO DO IT FOR YOU.
6) So get started. Making a beginning is half the battle. Don't just think and plan. Write some code. Produce some permanent artifact from your work every day.
7) Successful open-source projects start out as COMPLETE WORKING SYSTEMS written by the person or people who had the original "itch". Once there's something there that you can use then other people will start using it and then they'll want to make changes and enhancements. So don't expect any volunteer help until the project is already mostly "done" from your own point of view.
8) If you release a product using your idea, and someone else copies the idea and gets rich when you don't, then it's because they did a better job than you did and you need to get over it. If you sit around thinking that billion dollars should have been yours and they screwed you and you deserve more then it will totally destroy your life. The competition is not about who has the best cool sexy idea, it's about who can make the idea into something real and successful.
All ideas should be like supermarket coupons. They should have a little note at the bottom that says "cash value 1/100 of one cent".
G.
There are few good programmers out there that have no "great" ideas of their own that they're tossing around.
If you want them to work on your ideas you're going to have to pay them.
The ellusive qualitity programmer that can feasibly code for free probably has no car, no job, and still lives at home. The demographic that most fits is 15 year olds.
So if you're lucky you'll find some high schooler that has nothing better to do and no reason to worry about money. And on top of that actually knows how to program.
Otherwise you need to learn to program yourself just like most people who have great ideas for programming projects.
I didn't learn to program so other people could tell me what to make.
Work Safe Porn
Create a bunch of screen-shots and related examples that show what you have in mind. Then get feedback. If its an IT-related tool, then ask software-engineering forums, wiki's, and discussion groups what they think of it. The feedback may not be kind and diplomatic, so be prepared to get peppered. If its not IT-related, such as a say a real-estate application, then try real-estate forums.
You may also want to try building a prototype in MS-Access. Its easy to get something up and running in Access as long is it doesn't require some odd GUI widget (which may be purchasable though). Even if you don't intend the final project to be in Access, it's still good for quick prototyping. (Or even consider Open-Office Base.)
Table-ized A.I.
Recently I just finished a personal project, a Baseball Management game called HEBL (shamless plug BTW). I am trying to scrape together 12 people to help finish me find bugs and play the game(for free), hell where do I go? There are several thousand Rotisserie baseball sites out there, but this not Rotisserie baseball. So it can hard just finding random people to take a risk with what you are doing.
The rules of my game are detailed, but not complicated, and I just have to get people to register and maybe I can get interest. Do you realize how HARD it is just to get people to register? I work for a subscription web-site company and it is a HUGE challenge to get people to just register. Hell, I basically for an email and a name on my web-site, some people will look at it and say 'to much trouble!'.
If you think you are going to start a programming project and people are going to start working with you right away without knowing you, good luck, but be realistic. There are hundreds of people out there pursuing their own interests, not just looking around for someone else to provide them with one.
I (like many others here) have been doing web stuff for over 10 years and have helped people develop systems like what you're probably wanting. Nothing worth doing can be done in a week or so. Years ago I started helping a friend build a different approach to ecommerce shopping carts (foxycart.com) and I thought it would take a weekend. We're still working on it.
The main point I want to make is anything you "would get bored of" is hard to sell to someone else to do the work for you, especially if you're trying to entice them with the hope of future profits. If you can't put in the day after day, hour after hour grunt work to make a business profitable, don't waste a developer's time building it.
Web-based companies, in my opinion, should be championed by web developers, not just guys with an idea. If you're going to build and sell furniture, as an example, I think you should know how to put together a chair. Rarely do successful people start a business they aren't intimately involved in, but for some reason entrepreneurs attempt to do this with a web-based businesses every day... and then wonder why they fail.
Stick to your core business skills, add a website like you'd add any marketing tool. If you want to build a web-based business and that's not your area of expertise, then find a developer who has the same vision you do and work together or go do something else.
That's just my opinionated opinion. :) I've seen things succeed and fail and know how frustrating and rewarding both can be.
Need ecommerce that doesn't suck? FoxyCart is for you.
"Once I have a specific idea, what are next steps?"
Refine your idea. Ideas always start vague, they need to be nurtured, rethought, and made even more specific. A good way to do this is TO TELL PEOPLE YOUR IDEA!
OK, I'll start, since I have a great idea: I would like a pony.
Yeah, it's kind of vague - what kind of pony? I'm not a ponyologist and don't know the first thing about ponies so I need to find someone who can help me select the best pony in the world.
Who is going to buy me this pony? I'd really rather not pay for it although I'm willing to part with some spare change.
Where will I put the pony? I've heard you can store them on sourceforge, but that this often results in pony cancer and other nasty pony diseases.
Who is going to feed my pony? I've heard they need to be fed at for at least week, although I good ponyologist probably just needs to feed my pony for a couple of days.
I have already started attempting to develop my idea, so I'll tell you some advice that people have been telling me. I wrote on a piece of paper, "want free pony" and then went down to a busy street corner and started asking strangers to help me and they all gave me the same advice, so I assume it's good ... "GET A JOB!"
I have exact the same story to tell as the person who asked the question.
I have worked with software development, I would also want to make my own project, I have no skills in programming etc.
Reading at the answers from coders has been great.
I can also feel some of the pain of the OP. It is a real pain to work with software without being a developer sometimes. It would be great to have something to call your own.
Vanity at play, perhaps.
Like, you don't put things in a cart, but in a basket?
write out your general idea.
fill in the details or otherwise write the specification such that a programmer can understand it.
either start coding the project yourself and/or pay someone to write the code for you. Money is the incentive when other incentives don't exist.
QA and feedback to the coder as the coder does produces what he understands the project to be, so to keep him on track with your goal. Here you are a participant.
keep this up until the project is done or you run out of money.
Try to plan development in a manner that something of the project is workable enough to possible attract other devs. to contribute volentary. In other words try focusing paid for dev on teh harder and less interesting parts of development.
you do the documentation, based on your project goals and verified with what you actually get developed.
"Once I have a specific idea, what are next steps?"
Get coding. Well, learn what you need to know to achieve what you want to do, write on a piece of paper how your program is going to work, then get coding. You've got to get your hands dirty. You won't find anyone to do that for you, however you'll find lots of people to answer your questions.
You just got troll'd!
Congratulations: you've stumbled on a universal truth. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Folks who can bring ideas to life are very valuable.
So, whatever your idea is, it isn't so unique that there's no relevant mailing list on which to discuss it. Seriously, it just isn't. Go find the mailing list, lurk for a month or so until you get the feel of the place and then post a note laying out your vision.
I'll offer a word of advice though: don't waste your breath telling folks how simple your idea is. Your goal is to convince these folks to help you. There's nothing quite so insulting as telling someone that you're laying a trivial a trivial task on him because he wasn't bright enough to think of it himself and you can't be bothered to learn his worthless skill set so you could build it yourself. Seriously. Just lay out your vision. Let them tell you how easy or hard it is.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
His need was basically an issue tracking system that was half database and half spreadsheet. They wanted the rigor of a database but also the flexibility of a spreadsheet so that anybody can add a column willy-nilly and highlight stuff with colors, bold, etc.. There is a huge need in general for something that is half-spreadsheet and half-database and I've not found anything that does the job yet.
Have you researched IBM's Lotus Domino?
Domino uses document-based databases. While relational databases require every record in a table to have the same fields, Domino can have different fields in each document. Fields are easily added "willy-nilly", and non-programmers quickly learn to develop simple applications. "Views" display multiple documents meeting specified criteria with sorting, totals, and formatting. Domino 6 added the ability to edit documents in Views so an application can act very much like a spreadsheet. (The current version 8 added integration with Eclipse, but the functionality you need has been stable since 2002's version 6.)
Domino receives little respect on Slashdot because the software is proprietary and application development is too easy to satisfy most programmers. Domino is the perfect solution for businesses replacing spreadsheet "applications". A company of less than 1000 employees can buy an unlimited-user never-expiring application server license for $2650. Most functionality can be created by normal users using the Notes client, including adding columns and formatting to Views. Advanced programming requires a developer license for another $800, probably unnecessary for the simple application you describe.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
To quote Calvin Coolidge -
'Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not, nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not, unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not, the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.'
"I am Rich" app - $5,600. ;)
Less than a week of work
Worth a lot more if apple didn't pull it.
Great, original ideas can be worth money and take very little work to produce.
It's just extremely rare.
I have actually done it. Had an idea, a calling and the skills. Built is and published it. And this is when the reality kicks in. The wonderful idea needs to be validated by the money you make otherwise itâ(TM)s just an intellectual exercise and maybe the time and money would have been better spent with the family. You need make it known. The connections, the net presence, the will to spend even more time to promote it. There is so much noise on the net and the attention span is quite low these days. You need to have a 10s impact otherwise people will just move on attracted by the fad of the day. You need to be vocal. Building it is fun because you are passionate about it. Once it is done, it is pretty much like postnatal depression and the question you ask yourself is "now what?". And you realize that the fun is over. If youâ(TM)re the sales type then it is fine. If youâ(TM)re the programmer type, you need a partner or the connections.
There's prior art to the I am rich app. It's called the pet rock.
Faddish items are always a winning idea, provided that you have to convince the world that your fad is worth their cash.
I have a similar problem with a few twists.
I have a not for profit organization that operates on the web. We have many services and tools already working and have for a long time. However we have more that needs doing and older things needing to be revamped. Our simple IT and Dev staff are overwhelmed.
Most of what we need doing are temporariy and only perhaps the need for a full time, part time coder. Because we are just getting by with donations and a little advertising to cover the costs of our servers. We have no money to pay anyone. Not that we would at least want to give back some token at some point but we find ourselves in a catch 22. In order to grow and perhaps having enough outside income to reward everyone with a coffee cup or T-shirt. We are stuck.
What we need is to attract people with a couple of different coding skills to help our community out. But how can we do that? We have nothing to give back but perhaps the feeling you did good. It is also limited by the fact we aren't doing charity work. We do support to amateurs and their hobby. I know I'm not saying what it is. However our organization is the biggest in the world and serves up millions of pages a month. It's harder than it looks to find these people.
It's rather hard to go to source forge for this. I'm an administrator (not the IT type) and it's become part of my job to find these people. I'm a little stuck guys even though I've been a daily reader of /. it has not helped me in this part of my life. :)
I've had one of my ideas take off into a big .COM investment, hundred employees, etc., etc... Died a .COM death.
A lot of work and inspiration went into it, but a lot of it was timing and luck, getting the investment and such.
Since then, I've had a lot of better ideas, but not been the type to be able to stir up investment, nor fund things myself...
I've had a number of people approach me with their own ideas, wanting to draw on my experience and talents. After a free "lunch meeting," I'll offer some week-long consulting on the idea for a couple of grand. Most will refuse. They want your input and your time for free. A couple of freakin' thousand for an initial review and commentary, and they will balk at that. It shows the lack of "putting your money where your mouth is" that a lot of the "I got a great idea!" guys actually have. Nine out of ten times, this is the case. And it is actually a pretty good self-regulating filter for the fly-by-night'ers.
That being said, I will shortly (if all goes well) being doing a number of months work for a fellow who has a good solid idea, an initial product, connections in the industry, some good business judgment, and willingness to invest in his own idea. Even though it's not "my baby," it's refreshing to see someone this committed to their idea, and I'm looking forward to a successful (and probably ongoing) relationship.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
At this stage you need to write the Business Case or you could write a Business Plan. Ethier way it will give you some hard parameters and documentation to move forward with.
The Busines Plan is a great document for you to really challenge your idea and work through the analysis.
If you want to include other people in your idea you need to explain it to them and you can use the Business Plan to do that.
Good luck with the idea!Paul
If you want to market the idea, you're probably screwed unless you can put a lot of money into it up front. There are so many nonsense patent laws out there that you are almost certainly going to have someone screaming about "I have a patent on the OK button and another on scrolling a list of items" and such. If you can't afford the lawyers, you can't afford to go into the software business.
Successful Troll is successful.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
Post what you need on Craigslist. You don't have to spell the whole thing out, just a general idea of what u'd like the software to do.
Offer them some equity in the company. Or pay them. Even if it's open source, you can still own the copyright and potentially generate revenue on it.
Posting jobs on CL actually costs money, but, it's a decent and easy way to find some ppl who might be able to get the job done.
If you have an idea that you wish to turn into a working system/application then the next step for you is to describe that idea in terms of a Business Case.
Your idea needs to be communicated to a varied audience and the Business Case is the right tool for that level of communication.
If others can see that your idea generates value, they will begin to show interest.
Stop dreaming and start capturing your idea in a form that other people can understand.
I created FOSS Factory for exactly this reason. Everyone has a project in them. In fact, most people I know have enough projects in them that they'll never find the time to work on all of them.
FOSS Factory is a place where you can post your ideas, and if people like them, they can come and make them happen. The approach is collaborative in all aspects of production, including design, funding, management and development.
Similar idea to Cambrian House, but specifically focused on FOSS.
Well, I am a freelance programmer, and I would be willing to hear your idea. If it is something very specific to your needs, or you want to retain the rights to it yourself, I can quote you a price to develop it for you and you would own it. If it is a project that might have commercial value and you only want it for your own use (no interest in selling product or owning the rights), I could develop it for free for you and make money selling it to others.
if you don't do it yourself. Check out this project as an example. This guy is generous. He has a $100 budget for it. And you get your choice of C, C++ and VB to develop it. Hurry! only 20 days left to bid on it as I write this!
1. Write out your idea using a couple of paragraphs and a simple diagram.
2. Take this documentation and approach the professor form your local university that teaches the 400-level Software Engineering class.
3. Ask that professor to have the 400-level class lab develop your software as their class project.
4. Explain that you can make yourself available during lab time to provide requirements, test prototypes and provide other user-level input.
5a. If you don't mind your idea being publicly available, ask the professor to have the project placed under an open source license that fits your business model (Apache, MIT, BSD, whatever) and placed on the web. Google Code and SourceForge might be good places.
5b. If you prefer to keep your idea private, ask the professor how you could pay for the effort. Many universities have programs that encourage the school to work with small business. You may be able to operate in one of those programs. Most senior professors will either understand how this works or can direct you to someone who does.
Just remember that your interests will always be secondary using this approach. The purpose of the lab is to train students. If you can provide the students with an interesting project, it makes the lab that much more interesting and it gives purpose to their efforts. Make sure that, as the idea guy, you do not attempt to conceal your business interests from the students. They are quick to detect falseness and will lose interest in your project. Also, if you stay actively engaged, you may find some good employees during the whole experience also.
Good luck.