How do I attract developers to an Open Source project? [closed]

Answer 1

The book Producing Open Source Software by Karl Fogel is a great book to read. It helps you understand the Open Source development model and what drives OSS developers to contribute to a project. I highly recommend taking a look at the book.

Answer 2

Why not ask here? Newer programmers looking for experience to fill a resume might jump on board.

Us older geeks, well from my own experience, I work on what I like. For me it's mostly AI related or (don't laugh) Warcraft and Civ4 mods.

Answer 3

I don't think people start open source projects thinking that they will get help for it. Most good open source projects started with only one or two people working on a project that they loved.

Over a period of time, their project was valuable to others as well, and that is when they started getting volunteers. So, you should just get going on your project and people will come.

Answer 4

Many years ago, people advertised new code releases on Freshmeat. I don't know if that's still commonplace anymore. (I just read their about page, and it seems to be more for Unix-orientated and cross-platform software projects. If your software is more for Windows, there may be better forums.)

Another thing I just thought of is the licensing aspects of your code. Again, I can't speak for the Windows open source crowd, however, in Linux circles, generally your code must use GPL, or at least a GPL-compatible licence, to get much traction.

Good luck with growing your project!

Answer 5

I've started a few open-source projects on Sourceforge. The only one that got other people to contribute was one that (a) had functionality valuable to commercial developers and (b) there was no commercial product available that had the functionality. Basically, it was a niche that had not been commercialized. The people who found it did so by Googling for certain terms.

So, for me, getting people to contribute was a matter of doing something "unique."

BTW, once a commercial product became available that did what my project did, the contributions stopped. I guess it was easier to buy the thing than to help build it.

Answer 6

I've started an open source project Octopussy 3 years ago now. I can confirm at least 2 things from answers already posted:

1. choose a good name (as said in Producing Open Source Software book)
2. release on Freshmeat helps

1) At the beginning, I really liked the idea of the octopussy using his 8 tentacles to catch all logs and to have an animal to make an "O'Reilly book style"

BUT

• searching Octopussy returns James Bond movie... :(
• all octopussy domain names were reserved so I chose 8pussy.org which sounds porn site... :( (EDIT: The official website is now octopussy.pm... :) )

2) I made my first release anouncement on Freshmeat 6 months after my first public release on SourceForge, and I saw the difference... a jump from 30 downloads/month to 160 downloads/month

More downloads don't necessarily means more developers, but it gives more feedbacks !