Community Involvement for an Open Source Project? 148
pfleming asks: "Several months ago I began a maintenance fork of some niche software. Essentially, these are PHP/MySQL scripts for real estate offices.
The original developer moved on to an incompatible version to what I was using. Upgrading for me and many other users was not the easiest option. Luckily the software is GPL'd and so continued work on the fork is not a big deal.
I have set up a site, made it available for download, announced the availability of the fork on Freshmeat and the forums for the original software. Now I have a few people subscribed to the project on Freshmeat, and a few on a mailman list set up for the project. This project has been listed on the GNU Website and other mirror sites but doesn't get much discussion on the mailman list and nothing from the Freshmeat subscribers. There is usually an increase in interest (indicated by a short term increase in site hits) when new releases are announced but this fades back to regular traffic of ~40 visits per day as measured by webalizer after a short period of time. Is this an anomaly? Should I be thankful that there aren't tons of bug reports and feature requests?"
"More questions for you to chew on:
- Is there more interest in a new project vs. one that is more or less mature?
- Is the project too narrow to attract an audience?
- Could the underlying business (real estate) just be too saturated with web sites?
What other thoughts does Slashdot have on this subject?"
Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Because they are PHP/MySQL scripts for real estate offices. Calculate number of real estate offices in the US. Substract those that have a meaningful IT infrastructure beyond a few PCs to type and print contracts. Then substract those that use custom software. Then substract those that don't use an Office/VBA solution, or simply a Microsoft platform (and from my experience those are the majority). Then substract those that have actual in-house developers. Finally, substract those that use PHP and MySQL, specifically. Then add the number of people who create and sell software solutions for real estate offices based on PHP/MySQL. There you go, about 40 people.
If you are Apache, Perl, Python, GAIM, etc, etc. then yes, it's an anomaly. What you're seeing is about right, considering it's a pretty narrow niche. People won't get excited about something just because it's listed on FreshMeat and is GPLE'd. There are one-liner bash scripts there with wider audience than your code.
But I don't see what you're worried about - that's how it works. The fact that its released will eventually help someone out. Just don't expect Yahoo-sized traffic.
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My 2 cents (Score:5, Insightful)
Word of mouth is far more powerful than advertising. What the guy needs to do is get a few RE offices up and running with the software and get those RE agents to talk to others about it. In addition there are specialist RE web sites where RE agents could discuss the project and hence get more coverage of his project.
John.
Insta' +87 Funny!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Can I just ask, pretty please, to not have to wade through 46 SCO jokes everytime anything has to do with code?
The Tipping Point (Score:3, Insightful)
As for being thankful about not having bugs and feature requests, well I suppose it depends on your outlook. I can imagine you're the only person who can answer it you. Coding for your own sake? Then it's probably good, you can set your own direction without any monkeys on your back. If you're coding for the glory, well, perhaps a broader choice of topic might help. ;)
My experience with real estate software. (Score:4, Insightful)
I installed and setup systems using Agent Office/Online Agent and for the Lightning 2000 mls service, which essentially seems to be a very fancy terminal emulator. screenshots here [homeseekerssoftware.com] They have been buying software from this company for FOURTEEN YEARS. You're competing against some big guns I think. The best thing you've got going for you is that these softwares are quite expensive, due to the fact that they are niche softwares, and that there is a lot of money in real estate. If you can offer a better real-estate -specific database at a lower price, maybe you can compete, but it had better convert and import the database they already have.
Re:Simple. (Score:4, Insightful)
I am neither hugely wealthy, nor am I some bored college student. I am work five days a week and have a wife and kids and yet I am developing my own project under the GPL.
The reasons people write Open Source software vary greatly from having an itch to scratch to altruism to sticking it to the man.
Sounds like maintenance mode. (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it possible that the majority of your user base aren't really that interested in new features, but basicly want to keep the (well-working) system they have, just as you did? On the same note, isn't it also likely that those that are happy with the old product are also mostly the same that haven't been bitten by any major bugs?
To me, the situation seems pretty normal for a system that is in more or less "maintenance" mode. Now, the question is if that is what you want it to be, or do you want to start new development based on this platform? If it's the latter, you'd have to work rather intensely to argue for why going away from that system (to an incompatible one) was a poor decision. Many developing new features subscribe to the idea that to make an omelet, you need to break a few eggs...
Kjella
Marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
Open Source, like anything other business, requires Marketing. You need to do market research, advertise your product, and most importantly, get customers.
Find out how to make money from your software. If you can't, is it a worthwhile hobby?
Finally, what is your business model? Are you going to be a consultant or sell the software or both?
If you're going to sell the software, consider moving to a different platform, like Java or .NET. PHP scripts are a hard sell. When Zend gets their act together and...
Open Source Myth (Score:1, Insightful)
You often see people claim a benefit for OSS that it'll be bug-free because everyone can examine the source for bugs. (An even more extreme claim is that OSS will be more secure because it's been scoured for secruity problems, implying people are proactively inspection the software even when its not barfing on them.) What that claim overlooks, however, is that very few people will actually bother to do so. They could, in theory, but they won't, any more than if the source were closed.
It's niche software with few users. But of those users, even fewer are going to care about actually looking at the code. Most users have a problem to solve, and that doesn't include debugging your code. They just want to use the software.
And all the other developers aren't going to rush over to your project and start code inspecting it for you. They've got their own projects to do. The 40,000 people writing Yet Another Text Editor / Ide aren't going to drop everything and help you out, as it's not their current interest. So it doesn't matter than 40,000 developers could inspect your software; it won't actually happen just because your source is available.
Thus, you aren't going to get hits in proportion to the number of potential developers that could see your code. You're going to get hits in proportion to the number of actual users -- and you're going to get actual support from the fraction of those users that are (a) programmers and (b) have time to spare. For niche software, that will be small.
Large, popular, trendy, and crucial projects will get a lot of attention. Other projects won't particularly benefit just from slapping an OSS label on it and creating a freshmeat homepage. There's this notion that there's a huge pool of idle programmers just waiting for something to do on OSS; the reality is that there's a huge number of OSS projects just waiting for someone to do something with them.
Re:Surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Either this is a lame promo (Score:3, Insightful)
Well anyway, if you really want to attract more attention to this project, here are some important things to consider:
Real estate people mostly don't get the free as in freedom of speech and/or free as in beer concepts.
Want to get their input? Sell the thing, it's still open source, and you're not going against the GPL and should be able to keep your pages at Freshmeat, GNU.org and SF (if you do have a project site there).
Know how to pimp your project... When targeting RE agents, showcase the commercial features... When targeting coders, showcase the technical features (like plugins/modules, themes, some sort of data extraction layer, etc. etc.)
Most importantly give incentive to people who contributed code/fixes.