Slashdot Mirror
How To Spread Word About My FOSS Project?
An anonymous reader writes "I'm in a bit of a bind with an open source web software project of mine. It's a very small project that I've been developing for over three years. By now it's got a promising feature set, but very few users and virtually no community around it. The problem is that people I have asked to try it refuse to do so because it doesn't have a thriving community. It's an infinite loop: without users, we won't have a community, and without a community, users aren't coming. So, Slashdot, my question is: how can I build a community and help get the word out about a project led by 2 people and with only 5-6 regulars on our forum and IRC?"
some of us might be interested in it. You've just missed your best PR opportunity yet!
Try posting to freshmeat?
http://freshmeat.net/about
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
spot on. no one wants to commit to using software that will disappear if you get hit by a bus.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
"I sure wish someone had an open sourced lolcats generator"
cat cat | sed 's/Meow/I can haz cheezburger?/g'
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Make it as easy as possible for users to try your software.
Take the time to create and maintain packaging for major Linux and BSD distributions. Or at least make it as easy as possible for someone to maintain a distribution package of the current stable version.
Make it easy to migrate to, and if possible, back out of again, from the popular alternative(s). Such as Import / Export functionality from popular commercial software (if there is any). In other words, as easy as possible for people to try your software.
Improve documentation. Write basic tutorials for with specific instructions for more distributions. Ensure you have a good wiki / FAQ / knowledgebase dealing with installation and usage issues that have been already reported, and keep it up to date with new issues that arise in newer releases. I hate seeing a FAQ for project X that hasn't been updated since the original 0.9 release 3 years ago.
Of course it has to be useful. Preferably better than the other free (either gratis or open-source / libre) alternatives.
Does the usefulness of the web software itself increase with an increased userbase? Look at marketing that deals with the network effect. In general, look at IT marketing, consider what would work with your target userbase, and try to go with that. How much do you know about your userbase? Market research is vital, even on FLOSS projects.
(Again, I'm the OP. Yay for keeping up with your own threads!)
If there were any info. on what the project is and where to check it out. (I realize a lot of people would have made snarky comments if that info had been included too. A regular catch 22 -- but this is a great opportunity and you should post a description and link to the project in this thread.)
No. It'd get modded down for spam, and I would be flamed out the whazoo for slashvertising.
Without any specifics I would think most answers are going to be just as generic. Post about it in different message boards, post about it at aggregator type sites (reddit, digg) - use twitter, facebook or whatever else might help people find out about it.
We actually have a pretty strong web presence - we're on Twitter, FreshMeat, SourceForge, and I've posted to sites like The Admin Zone before, asking for help with testing. We're actually in a late beta stage right now.
Who are the intended users? Where would those people be that you might show up and promote your project? Are their user groups that might be a good place to frequent?
The project is basically a CMS that integrates a lot of the features found in a wiki, e.g. templates, the raw power of system messages, namespaces, etc. It also has very CMS-ey features like access control lists, a template system, a real admin panel, and module support. I started the project hoping to provide an alternative to MediaWiki - and it uses MediaWiki's formatting language - but since I started it, it's gone way off on its own path as my own need for features increased. In a way, it's a CMS I built to meet my own needs, but written in a portable fashion enough that anyone should be able to use it. This has made it rough around the edges in some places (e.g., the GUI editor gets very little love, and there's no toolbar making it easy to insert any type of formatting). But overall the interface is pretty polished and smooth, and there are hooks nearly everywhere for plugins.
Would a publication/site that deals with FOSS or whatever problem your project solves be interested in doing a write-up? Will they accept one from someone on the project or one of the users?
I'll definitely talk to the other member of the project, who takes care of our marketing and packaging, about finding a site or two that would be willing to do this. You've got a point, we haven't been great at doing this, but the few times we have tried and persisted (e.g. BitNami) it has worked.
If it runs on Linux is it available through the package management systems of the major distros?
We've tried. Fedora bitched at us for not splitting off trivial components like jQuery, TinyMCE and Text_Wiki into extra packages. I responded by reminding them that we had to fork a small part of TinyMCE (we modified the gzip script to use the project's central cache directory), jQuery is only one file, and we forked the shit out of Text_Wiki after it got abandoned by the original developer, finally just replacing it with our own parsing engine. Perhaps the aforementioned co-manager can get it in the repos now that the most glaring problem - Text_Wiki - is taken care of.
Debian... well, all the licenses we use are DFSG compliant but they vary. Widely. There's a lot of third party code for stuff I couldn't be bothered to write on my own. Think table parsing (from MediaWiki), the diff renderer (phpWiki), TinyMCE, jQuery, and countless others. All of the third party code is documented (with copies of licenses) in a cute little HTML document, but there's a shit ton of it, under licenses ranging from Creative Commons to *GPL to BSD/MIT to PHP.
The main challenge with packaging is the fact that it needs a MySQL or PostgreSQL database to run (the project itself is written in PHP). It's hard to get that kind of thing working under the environment of a package manager.
Another
The fact the product is Open Source or free will not get any thing out...
Lets figure out some things...
The 5C's
Customer or for your case you end users what is you app targeted for Corporate users or end users.
Company or your OSS group that has developed the software what are your values why do you want the product to grow what makes your group better then most
Context what itch are you trying to scratch. Does it solve a problem
Collaborators who do you need to work with to make your program run. Is it linux only or does it work on windows... Do you need 3rd party tools to run it. Do you have any people who are willing to push your product.
Competitors Sure you may have some cool new features but are they better then what the other Open Source tools have... Are there closed source application that do the same thing you do. If so how do you defend against any advantages.
Next is the STP
Segmentation What is the product the best fit for.
Targeting Really push to the people the product is the best fit for. If they prefer a closed source solution or a big name you will be wasting your time. However there are other people who want you app in the open source form.
Positioning make sure you make your product to really show off what it needs to do for your targeted group of people
The 4P
Product what is your product what does it do
Price Sure it is open source and it is free are you going to offer consulting or support services if so how much are you going to charge.
Place What will be your range you want the product to first go out
Promotions Well if you are going to do consulting for your product you might as well add some Linux support too.
These is Marketing 101 in a nutshell.
Basic marketing isn't trying to trick people into getting your product but finding where people would like your product.
Sure your product may not have a big following that is ok there are a lot of small software companies to make software to a lot of big players. I myself when I worked as a consultant myself made software for many large companies that was custom for them even if there was Open Source alternatives I created code and documentation for them so the code is theirs and with No strings attached.
For Open Source tools the trick is to make sure that you are willing to back it up and if fail it is possible for others to pick it up.
Open Source Projects do die sometimes so do closed source product. However there are people making closed source products and selling them. The fact that it is open source and has a small comunity isn't an excuse. You just need to market the product
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.