Ask Slashdot: What's The Best Place To Suggest New Open Source Software?

dryriver writes: Somebody I know has been searching up and down the internet for an open source software that can apply GPU pixel shaders (HLSL/GLSL/Cg/SweetFX) to a video and save the result out to a video file. He came up with nothing, so I said "Why not petition the open source community to create such a tool?" His reply was "Where exactly does one go to ask for a new open source software?"

So that is my question: Where on the internet can one best go to request that a new open source software tool that does not exist yet be developed? Or do open source tools only come into existence when someone -- a coder -- starts to build a software, opens the source, and invites other coders to join the fray?
This is a good place to discuss the general logistics of new open source projects -- so leave your best answers in the comments. What's the best place to suggest new open source software?

Comments

Re:Two options...

[mwvdlee]

Third options:

3: Find a project that already does something very close to what you want and who'll probably see the value of your suggestion.

I have both suggested such things to other projects and have taken on similar feature requests on my own open source projects.
If it's a good idea, it doesn't matter where it came from.

On the other hand, if you're looking for a place to dump your ideas and then expect other people to go looking for them, then why do you expect somebody to take the effort for your idea while you couldn't even be bothered with it yourself?

My 20 years of experience

[raymorris]

I've been working in open source for 20 years, so I'll share my thoughts. I don't have statistics, and it would be hard to define statistics that aren't misleading. For example, counting the number of projects would count a script I wrote in two hours equally with the Linux kernel, or the Apache web server. So counting the number of projects doesn't make much sense.

A very common scenario is work done by a companies that use the software, but don't run the project. At my last job, I spent a lot of time developing Moodle, an open source ecampus software. The university I worked for was one of hundreds of schools and companies that use Moodle. I worked on features in Moodle that would be of use to the college I worked for. I suspect this model accounts for most of the hours spent working on open source, though possibly not most of the people or projects. Moodle was started as a master's thesis (or maybe phd).

I expect that the largest number of *projects* may be hobbyists and school-related (including masters and phd projects). Many, many people have released many, many small projects. Often, these are just enough to do the job, not as highly polished as something that has a marketing team trying to sell it. Sometimes they are well polished, but often not - if it works, that's often enough. These also tend to be projects that hobbyists *use*. Companies tend to sponsor projects used by companies, hobbysts tend to work on projects they use for their hobbies.

I would say that a minority of projects, but often big, important projects, are have a lot of development from a company selling a version of the software or support and related materials. Mysql and RedHat are good examples. These tend to include software used by companies. If thousands of companies are using some software, there is probably an opportunity to create a company providing support to them. Often, these projects started as hobbyist / school projects, and the company was founded after the software was successful.

Another set is formerly proprietary software that has been open sourced and is supported by the company. That would include Netscape/Firefox.

So I'd say the statistics depend on which statistics you look at. Most projects? Hobbyist. Most hours invested? Businesses that use the software. Most important? Often both developed by businesses that use it and a company that coordinates the project.

* After Moodle started being used by different schools, each contributing code, a company was set up to coordinate development, with a QA department, etc. The schools and companies who use Moodle develop features, the Moodle company makes sure that doesn't turn into chaos.