Transferring the Leadership of Open Source Projects? 128
Another well timed submission on this same subject, mrgrumpy follows up with this query: "Quite some time ago (around 1997-1998) I built a Java based adventure
game called World.
Developed with Java1.1 (and at the time it was fairly leading
edge, it now looks a bit tired), you run around, collect treasure and kill things. As with all my great projects (hey, I won a Sparc5 for this), I had always intended to finish it,
but never did. Now I want to give it away to a good home where developers will continue to work on the code and bring my ideas to completion.
Every now and then I sit down and have a look at the code but I don't
really have the energy left to complete it (most of my energy was soaked up with my Masters degree). Other projects have taken over now, and I'm planning to go overseas for 12-18 months, so I know I won't get back to it for a very, very long time in any serious way.
I am happy to give the code away if a team of developers want to continue developing it. I can act as a grandfather figure to the project to give guidance and wisdom, and to clarify what my vision was, and what the code does. I'd prefer it to be GPL'd or a
similar license that won't shut the code up.
There was another project similar to this one called White Orb, which seems to have gone the way of the dodo, a shame because it had a lot of potential, so I don't want to release this one and have it gather dust. I could set the project up somewhere like SourceForge,
but as I said I'd rather just hand it all over to someone else and just look after it.
If you're interested, you could email me, or just leave a comment below. I want to pick either a team, or an individual
who I can be confident in that they'll get the project up and running."
So here are two projects looking for good homes. What's the best way of giving up control of an Open Source project (with the potential of varying degrees of continued project development by the original maintainer) in the hopes of it continuing on in good health?
rule number one (Score:5, Insightful)
-sam
Re:rule number one (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:rule number one (Score:2, Interesting)
And I think it is YOU who should look at the facts before posting. Take a look at the project page in SourceForge: 3 administrators and 19 developers - this is a good quantity of people, don't you agree? Are you sure that he wasn't helped by a lot of people?
Re:rule number one (Score:1)
Yeah, baby
Re:rule number one (Score:5, Insightful)
This first guy said outright that a lot of people have downloaded his application but few have submitted patches back to it. That flatly contradicts your suggestion. And as for the second guy, he doesn't sound so different -- he still seems to want to run things, he just wants a break from the tedium of actually writing the code. Boo frickin hoo to him, I say -- if this Java game is his baby he shouldn't expect someone else to care about it as much as he did. It's much easier for me to sympathize with the CVS guy -- he's done what he set out to do, now he's willing to let others go where they will with it. If the project is to continue, this is what will have to happen: some other lead developer (or group of developers) will have to see something in the project that they want fleshed out, so it can become *their* itch to scratch, not someone elses. People don't tend to scratch other peoples' software itch unless they're being paid to do it, which brings us back towards the proprietary model.
What you say sounds nice in theory and adheres nicely to the party line, but the sad fact is that the mechanics of things don't let them work out that way. Only the biggest projects have anything looking like a team effort -- Perl6 comes to mind -- and even then they're being lead by a core group of people, so it isn't really an exception to the rule.
Re:rule number one (Score:2)
Re:rule number one (Score:2)
Actually my own experience (from several open source projects) is that you cannot expect more than about one bug report per thousand downloads, and much less useful patches. Which implies that only the top twenty (well, maybe the top fifty) out of the many thousand projects listed on freshmeat get enough patches/bug reports/overall attention to make the developement really an open community effort. All the other projects rely almost entirely on one person to push along, find bugs, think about useful features, and get the project going. And they quietly die if that one person abandons them.
Re:rule number one (Score:1)
It seems reasonable that the people who had the original idea, or who do the most work, or who have the most knowledge about some project should have the most influence on its development.
I would rather work on a project with recognized, effective leadership than one dominated by covert egalitarianism freaks. But let me qualify that.
Egalitarianism isn't necessarily bad. If it comes about as a result of a small number of people of similar levels of relevant expertise coming together and working on a common project, then it's probably a good thing.
"Leadership" isn't necessarily good. When it is assigned as a result of weird corporate politics having no relation to the quality of the actual work being done, and when we submit to it out of economic necessity, rather than a desire to be part of some cool, interesting, maybe even popular technical project, then it's probably bad.
One of the great virtues of Open Source is that it helps develop leadership -- the kind of leadership that can inspire, coordinate, teach by example and teach by word without using economic or physical threats. An even greater virtue, in fact, the beautiful thing about Free Software, etc., is that it allows people to become members of groups that are compatible with their general preferences, cultural habits, and so on.
Re:rule number one (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_10/bezr
Second, as an open source author myself of a program that has received about as many downloads as the first questioner, I know my project would probably die if I left. It's a good project and I provide lots and lots of documentation and it's useful (in business) to thousands of people. Still, if I don't do work no one else does.
Not that there hasn't been a lot of interest but people usually lose interst or make it do what they want and after a couple patches go about their business. I don't have any serious complaints about it but it can be somewhat frustrating seeing all new faces all the time.
The only projects that will survive the project leader's departure are those with strong core groups or a strong hierarchy of leaders and co-leaders.
I consider my project fairly successful and it's the work of basically just me. No team. That's just one counter-example but there are countless others like it in the open source community. Maybe if my project was sexier I would have more developers, who knows.
Luckily for me and my users I still have enough fire and drive (for now) to 'finish' my project.
My advice to people wanting to step down (with no clear successor) would be to put out feelers, grab about 3 people, give them full access, and wish for magic to happen.
Re:rule number one (Score:1)
Good software (usually open source) usually won't die if the founder forgets about it. The fact is that most software can be replaced with something else (however difficult that may be) if development stops.
Re:rule number one (Score:3, Interesting)
The catch twenty-two of project maintenance is that anybody who has the experience knows how much effort it requires and will be reluctant to volunteer, so the people who will actually step forward are those who are too inexperienced to know better.
Re:rule number one (Score:3, Insightful)
Not in my experience. Perhaps your generalization holds up for others, though. But for me, the only way to keep my projects going is to walk away from them immediately. I am not a big developer. But for example, I wrote a few Applescripts for Outlook Express on the Macintosh. Including a well-loved script that restored password-protection to the app. I always released this code into the wild with text that stated the code was not only free, but that it had scratched my itch and others were invited to take over. All my Applescripts & Perl programs have since been completely taken over by others.
Perhaps in order to have a successful passing-of-the-baton, you need to disclaim ownership and encourage others to do as they wish. I see this as a flaw of mrgrumpy's approach to passing on his Java game, World. He wants to be the "grandfather" figure giving guidance and vision. He wants it to be GPL'd or similar. He wants to be sure the project won't gather dust. He needs too many assurances, and developers have a fear of commitment. When I use/patch code, I play with it out of curiosity and interest. So by encouraging freedom -- even freedom to fork code into new directions that I never intended -- my code always finds a new home or two.
don't worry about it (Score:1)
Anyway, regarding the initial Q. My suggestion is this: ask around in the user community, and see if anyone's interested in taking over as a maintainer. If not, forget about it -- just leave it to gather dust. Put up a web page with the current sources, details, etc. and a note indicating that you no longer have time to maintain it, and let it be.
If it's useful to other people, and it works, and some tweak needs to be made, somebody will make it. They may also wind becoming de-facto maintainer of the software (I know about this -- it happened to me ;)
If the new maintainer happens to irritate its users, the source is still out there, and if it has a decent free license, they can pick their own new maintainer and fork it. Maybe at some point down the line they'll merge back in (egcs/gcc), maybe not (NCSA httpd/apache) -- it doesn't matter as long as the code is good.
All of this is well and good -- it's the open source project lifecycle! Don't worry about it! If your project is useful, it will be used!
I know what I'm talking about here, because I found a big, unmaintained project that 'scratched an itch' a time ago; I found the existing third-party patches out there, integrated them all, made it portable to new OSes, and released a new version. Hey presto, I was the new (de-facto) maintainer. It worked great. That's open source for ya.
Also, babbage said: This first guy said outright that a lot of people have downloaded his application but few have submitted patches back to it.
Depends on the project. Sysadmin/developer users generally submit patches, end-users don't. Also, if there's an active developer community, there's less incentive to 'scratch your own itch' when you can just throw in a suggestion and get it scratched for free ;)
This is another key point -- while you're still actively developing it, and appearing to "own" it, it will not pick up a new maintainer. You need to give people a need for a maintainer, before one will appear!
GAIM (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GAIM (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, there's other IM clients and protocols out there, but AOL's IM is certainly the king (from what I see). From past experience with some of these open source clients (read: haven't touched 'em in several months), I found that GAIM was probably several (if not more) steps ahead of the competition.
I think in the end it really comes down to how much of a demand among "geeks" the program has. With the CVS extension mentioned, it certainly is a good tool to have, but it is a Windows product; GAIM is more Linux/UNIX which tends to draw a larger geek crowd. If you were to compare Windows to UNIX users, you would find considerably more people with serious programming skill on the UNIX side. These are the people who would pick up and develop these projects.
Re:GAIM (Score:1)
Gaim has actually transferred hands two or three times (depending on whether you count me as the current maintainer; I don't). Mark started it, Jim took over it, then Rob. Now I'm doing the majority of the code; though Rob's still the maintainer, handles releases, documentation, and the website (along with Chris), and writes a significant amount of code. I just write code (and an occasional rant).
I can't say how Mark or Jim or Rob got involved with Gaim; I wasn't there for it and don't know the whole stories. The reason I got involved with Gaim was because it sucked. The GNOME panel applet version didn't even compile; the first patch I put in to Gaim was to get it to at least compile. I'm currently in the process of getting the rest of it to do what I want it to do.
Right now there are three or four people who Rob and I would be quite comfortable giving the code to if we wanted to quit. I don't think it's ever really been an issue; there will always be someone there making it better.
I think, possibly unfortunately depending on perspective, that bjb is right: Windows for some reason doesn't attract people who are willing and able to write open source code. Whatever the reason, it ends up that Windows projects are hard to pass on. But it's not solely limited to Windows open source projects. Any project where people aren't submitting patches is hard to pass on.
What I would do, if I didn't know who to pass the code on to, is to announce my retirement, and start keeping a public list of feature requests made by you and other users (SourceForge is great for this, hint hint, plug plug). Someone may eventually put in patches, and you can pass the project off to them. If no one does, you still can write code for it when you have time and interest. Of course, if you can't come up with any feature requests, and neither can anyone else, does it really need to continue to be worked on, other than bug fixes?
When I have someone take over... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parallels with Perl and CPAN (Score:2, Informative)
You know what we need? (Score:5, Funny)
"Yes TECO, you don't like EMACS. You know whats happens when you talk about EMACS though don't you? Here, Jerry Springer is on the telly. Thats it, you just sit there..."
Re:You know what we need? (Score:2, Informative)
Such a place [sourceforge.net] has existed for some time now.
aka unmaintained-free-software.org (Score:1)
Does it really need improvement? (Score:5, Insightful)
You say that the application is sufficient for your own needs. Isn't that enough? Rest on your laurels, and be satisfied with the project as it is. Don't go looking for someone to take it over, if someone is truly suited for the task, they will come looking for you.
Unlimited growth is the creed of the cancer cell.
Re:Does it really need improvement? (Score:2, Interesting)
Then just move on with your life. If someone finds your project and has an itch they need to scratch, they'll contact you about taking over or whatever.
That's what happened with Lyntin--Lyn stopped development and a year later I discovered the project and we chatted and I took over and moved it to sourceforge and so on so forth.
On the flip side, you can always take a super passive role on your project. If it does everything you want it to do, then it's "done" and you can just hang out and deal with patches if people send them in.
Re:Does it really need improvement? (Score:1)
hard (Score:5, Insightful)
Come now, be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a long look through the projects on SourceForge. Notice anything? That's right, most of them haven't been updated in well over a year, and most of them are being run by one person on their own.
Although open source projects hold great potential for cooperative development, it seems that in the real world there are few bazaars and plenty of lonely coders working on their own projects. Some of these are lucky enough to generate interest, but most don't. Then again, most aren't particularly novel anyway.
The truth is that there are a million projects out there, some of which are more far more [sourceforge.net] worthy [sourceforge.net] and interesting than the things suggested here. And if people are looking for something to contribute to, then they're going to go for these high-profile projects rather than someone's home-grown application.
So I guess you'll be lucky to find anyone to take these over (well apart from posting it on /. perhaps). Open source is great, but it only works for projects interesting enough to generate "many eyes" rather than someone's personal hobby code.
Re:Come now, be honest (Score:3, Insightful)
Building on another post [slashdot.org] I made last week, I would rewrite your sentence as follows: "Open source is great, but it only works for projects interesting enough to generate interested contributors rather than someone's personal hobby code." Getting interested contributors doesn't require many eyes looking at the project, although it helps. It only really requires "luring" or "wooing" a couple like-minded people. Unfortunately, people tend to consolidate efforts and work on projects with the most critical mass. So a lone geek reinventing the wheel shouldn't be surprised to find that others want to put their efforts to the wheel that's already turning.
Honest? how bout pragmatic. (Score:4, Insightful)
Um... I'm trying to figure out just what you're saying...
Here we've got a CVS client for windows integrated with the windows explorer that somebody created because they thought WinCvs "wasn't good enough". Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds darned useful to me since I use CVS every day at work and get sick of using both explorer and WinCvs to do everything. Perhaps you know of some better projects which make this thing redundant? I sure don't.
Next, you seem to be implying that there are particular "more worthy" projects people should be working on. You supply a link to freenet and to mind.sourceforge.net whatever that is. Two pie in the sky projects that already have more developers then they'd ever warrant and likely will never amount to a hill of beans.
If you think Open Source is "public service" then you have fun with your "worthy" projects. Me, I'll be spending my time working on the tools that make my life easier. (and yes Margaret that includes whole operating systems for my extended family to use that I can actually get to work for them) Why will I give these tools away? So the next guy can work on something *more* useful, and maybe, just maybe, make my life easier in return.
hacker ethic n.
1. The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible. (taken from the Jargon File [tuxedo.org])
The two submissions are vastly different, (Score:5, Funny)
At that I've got an open source project I'd like finished:
A 3D first person RPG with overhead views that has MMP, LAN, and single player potential. Easy to mod, fantastic graphics and addictive gameplay.
work done:
downloaded gcc
anyone interested?
Re:The two submissions are vastly different, (Score:1)
That's not how it works (Score:1, Funny)
The only way you can get that is: code it yourself, debug it yourself and test it yourself. Then release and await praise.
No, I don't do that either....
I'm interested (Score:2)
Re:The two submissions are vastly different, (Score:2)
Here's a tip: run away from any project that says "will do xyz" or "aims to be", or "wants to create", or "eventually
Of course they were serious for the week it took to get things registered. Then reality and inexperience hit and they quietly slunk away.
Re:The two submissions are vastly different, (Score:2)
It wasn't my homework (Score:1)
Re:Funny you should mention... (Score:2, Funny)
Just a suggestion . . .
not necessarily (Score:3, Insightful)
What might well "die" is the evolution of the product; a user patching their own code is not likely to go through the effort of propogating their patch, when there's no active maintainer who they can simply email. The project may well end up not evolving further because of this, but hey if the program is mature, that isnt too much of a loss.
And then eventually someone might come along with an idea that uses the "stale" project as a seed for something greater, and start evolving it again.
Re:not necessarily (Score:1)
I agree, it's the evolution that dies not the use. I regularly make use of other people's half-finished software projects, most of which will never be completed, and this hasn't made them any less valuable to me.
The problem I encounter is that none of these projects has been GPL'ed, and half of them haven't had their source code released. For those for which I have source code, in most instances I have sent the authors patches; but few of the patches have ever been released back into the public code stream. Since the projects are not GPL'ed (or equivalent), I am not able to fork the project and carry it forward into its second life.
My plea to the authors of both the projects is for them to open source them, publish the source code, and announce to their users that they will no longer be maintaining the projects. As long as the projects are free to be carried forward by another maintainer, at their leisure, then someone will eventually pick it up.
Post to slashdot (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What's TortoiseCVS like? (Score:1)
I've used it against SourceForge and private CVS repositories for a while now and never had a problem (and I'm using SSH against SourceForge, which under Windoze is no mean feat!).
I just wish its main window had a minimise button though!
World URL (Score:1)
Fink (Score:1)
Wait for somebody to come to you... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait for somebody else to have an itch to scratch. The idea that you need to "appoint" a new leader is contrary to the non-heirarchical nature of open-source.
Michael Chisari
dominion@tao.ca
Merge (Score:1)
Forgotten projects (Score:1, Funny)
I don't agree with some of the comments here (Score:4, Interesting)
Most of the posts say, just let the community judge it.
Well that's fine if you have a large site that's really popular. But what if you don't?
Sure my site gets good traffic, but nothing fantastic.... I do not advertise, or offer anything substantial other than code.
My purpose is to code, not to get traffic....
So what's my alternative.... Be another freshmeat or sourceforge project that doesn't get traffic too? I mean go and see for yourself how many defunct projects there are..... and the list! Oh my god the list.... So many to go through, so many with no source code at all!
The solution:
Traffic
And lots of it. These two projects will now probably get a home thanks to Slashdot.
My Proposal:
Maybe Slashdot can add a new feature.... Projects in need of a home, and can showcase a new project every day or week.
Re:I don't agree with some of the comments here (Score:1)
Re:I don't agree with some of the comments here (Score:2)
Like unmaintained-free-software.org [unmaintain...ftware.org]?
Re:I don't agree with some of the comments here (Score:1)
If you don't consider your projects worthwhile enough to take the time to list them on sourceforge and freshmeat (freshmeat in particular IMHO) then how can you expect anyone else to care that much about them? This TortoiseCVS thing sounds like a great idea, and probably would have been picked up if it was on freshmeat. Maybe you just need a big shove in the listing direction...
So here's your invition: List those puppies on freshmeat! Do it today!
Don't just expect Slashdot to do your legwork for ya...
I (and the company) use it (Score:4, Informative)
1) It is really good and does not need much in terms of patches. I use it all the time and I love it.
2) Debugging a Windows Shell Extension is a royal pain in the ass. I actually tried to debug Tortoise because I wanted to change a few things. But I gave up when debugging became difficult.
As a result it says one thing. You did a great job....
Re:I (and the company) use it (Score:1)
I use TortiseCVS, and it's wonderful. I'd even be willing to donate a small amount of money to help support the maintainer if that's necessary to attract one, but knowing the general practice on that grounds I do NOT recommend that you try to collect donations and pay someone... true volunteers are your only hope. With something of the quality of TortiseCVS, there's got to be SOMEBODY out there who wants the fame...
walk away (Score:2, Insightful)
Cathedral and Bazaar (Score:2)
easy (Score:3, Insightful)
"I have given up working on this software. You are free to use it as usual. It works fine, and I can't think of anything else I want to do with it. If you'd like to take over the project and add new and exciting features, please contact me at [insert email here]. Cheers."
What's the problem?
Re:easy (Score:1)
Consider a BSD license (Score:5, Insightful)
However, as the code is Free, anyone can take it and use it. It appears that you are looking for free labor to do your bidding. Sorry, the world doesn't work that way. You can close up your code and it dies, or you can put it out there and hope that someone will do something with it.
With the BSD license, someone may take your code and use it, even if in a non-free capacity. With the GPL, they may use it but only in a free capacity.
You aren't interested, so move on. If you want others to benefit from your work, make it easy to find (properly built web pages to search engines can find it) and place it out for the world.
Maybe someone will use it, maybe not. Maybe they'll e-mail you questions, maybe not.
If you're done however, accept it and move on.
If there was a large team of coders working on the project, than this question makes sense. If you were providing genuine leadership, it makes sense to find a replacement.
However, they appear to be software projects that you are done with. Put the code up there. People can use it, or not. People should download it, decide where to go, and setup a fork. If you are lucky, 2-3 projects will form using your code. If not, none will.
Regardless, there is no maintainer/leadership issue, as these are solo projects.
Best of luck,
Alex
Unmaintained Free Software (Score:5, Informative)
OK, shameless plug, but anyways, this is IMHO exactly what these people are looking for...
Unmaintained Free Software [unmaintain...ftware.org] is a site which keeps track of unmaintained (or orphaned) Free Software related projects.
It's a central place for people who want to
The ultimate goal of the site is to help find a new maintainer for software which is currently unmaintained.
Any comments, questions or other feedback (patches anyone?) is highly welcome...
Uwe.
Re:Unmaintained Free Software (Score:2)
Sometimes saving old code is the best way to get a new developer going, or let someone find a good way to do something without having to reinvent the wheel. The project doesn't have to be renewed - just as a knowledge base in itself it's extremely valuable.
So anyway, thanks.
Re:Unmaintained Free Software (Score:1)
Re:Unmaintained Free Software (Score:1)
I intend on working on a 'leadership exchange' and a 'leaderdev' resource to do exactly what your page does (and is implied in this submission in general), but in a more general and collaborative way. (As a part of that, I will probably be working with you to improve both of our resources :)
I propose my 'leaderdev' resource to connect projects with leadership and leaders with leadership resources to shepherd (and sometimes pass on) their projects.
Please watch this space [relentless.org] for more developments--I am in the process as we speak of putting together the proposal and site/resources.
Don't hesitate to contact me if you're interested in collaborating, even at this early stage, at my email address [mailto]. --Chris
a post on slashdot's front page (Score:1, Funny)
or perhaps you already thought of that?
Allan
I use TortoiseCVS and I have only 1 question. (Score:1)
Everybuddy/GAIM (Score:2, Interesting)
The previous maintainer was a man called Torrey Searle, and he was also one of the people who have helped with GAIM (our projects are very intertwined, I really should write a history some day). The way is worked for us was something like this.
Torrey was like your selfs way too busy to keep up work on the project, I was always working away, reporting bugs and such, as I seemed like the most active devel on the project it must have seemed to him that I was the logical choice. The story goes pritty much the same with GAIM incase anyone was wondering.
However, in your case there are no other active devels, but I am sure that this
Also in my case, Torrey looks in every so often and wakes me up, he has moved a lot closer to me as well (he used to be in the US, he has now moved to Europe, and I live in the UK) so we are planning to meet up some time soon, so I am sure we will have a chat about eb then.
The last thing I would have to say is make sure you get along with this person, it would be very hard if you a few months down the line find you have given 'your baby' to someone who is nothing like you and you don't get along with.
Take care all - Robert Lazzurs
Wanted: free labour (Score:4, Insightful)
Your "vision"? My that sounds pompous. If someone else is willing to take over, they won't want the crutch of having to take orders from someone else; open source is about freedom. If they do take suggestions from you, be happy, but don't think you'll be able to sit there like a god and direct your minions how to code "your" project. When you hand it over, you hand it over. It's not yours any more. And depending on the quality of the code and how finished it is (I quote: "I had always intended to finish it"), perhaps nobody will want it. Think of it it as evolution in action :).
The first case is much different; it describes a project whose author has fulfilled all his goals for it and wants to pass it on to keep it "live", as I see it. TortoiseCVS may just require the occasional fix and feature addition; it sounds like a stable program. I'll probably try it out, as I currently use WinCVS at work.
Re:Wanted: free labour (Score:1)
Re:Wanted: free labour (Score:1)
scratch that itch! (Score:2, Funny)
Phew! Good thing you didn't say "I had to scratch an itch", because thats would have been silly.
Tortoise Rocks! (Score:5, Informative)
right-click, "commit"...
right-click, "update"...
makes me smile whenever i see emails from the cvs server with the designer's name on them.
to the guy who wrote it - thank you so much for making using cvs a joy under windows. what on earth do you think tortoise should be doing that it isn't now? the thing's finished as far as i can see! (and yes, that does mean it sends email
The abandonware problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been writing a graphics application which uses several open-source libraries. So far there's a cross-platform OpenGL interface, a GUI package for OpenGL, an XML input/output package, and a VRML->Web3D translator. All of them almost work. All are to some extent abandonware. I've put some work into fixing the GUI package, but don't have the time to dig into all the others.
And we're going to be in real trouble when (not if, when; read their financials) VA tanks and takes SourceForge down with it.
post it on www.unmaintained-free-software.org (Score:3, Informative)
If you have or know of a project that no longer has its leader(s), post it on http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org/ [unmaintain...ftware.org]. At least people will have a chance to find it. Check it out; you might be surprised what's there -- gs [unmaintain...ftware.org] f'rinstance.
Not gonna happen (Score:3, Interesting)
Well documented code may attract developers (Score:3, Insightful)
The class I TA for at MIT is 6.170: Lab in Software Engineering [mit.edu]. We force the students to learn how to write software using these documentation tools, in part to help them come up with better designs, but in part so that they can work more effectively as a team in their final project.
--Kurt
Do what the ministers do (Score:2, Interesting)
This should be no different. By all means hand the project over, but then sever all ties to the project. Accept the fact that someone else is at the helm, and they may have a different vision than you.
What are you all talking about? (Score:1)
In Reality, Open Source == Shareware (Score:1)
Some blowhard with a penchant for LSD and communism just steps up into the mix and you've got yourself a philosophy!!! but in practice this is just shareware. Nothing new to see here.
You show me apache, I show you PKZIP.
Two points... (Score:2, Interesting)
2) These projects are lucky, in that being posted to the front page of Slashdot is likely to give them a *lot* of exposure (countering point #1), and hopefully someone in this crowd will choose to take up the ball. Other projects doing the same thing probably won't be posted to
Get some momentum going, then try it... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't plan to get a new project leader any time soon, but I think I could without much trouble. The key is getting some active development going on the project, before asking someone to take it over. Consider managing the project for just one more release with a few new features, and soliciting for help. The new development activity will hopefully attract some contributors. From these, you should have one or two candidates for a new project leader.
-Erik
Bring them on slowly (Score:1)
An you are, of a course, aware that "complainer" is another word for "volunteer".