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?"
My 2 cents (Score:5, Informative)
This seems pretty normal. Any time you make an announcement on your project (including releases) you are going to drive traffic to its web site (that's why corporations pump out press releases). The fact that it dies down afterwards is totally normal, you'd expect people to come, see what's going on, download the stuff and leave.
Should I be thankful that there aren't tons of bug reports and feature requests?
Probably not. This might be an indication that the software is wonderful, but it's more likely an indication that the user base is small. As the user base increases they are going to find all sorts of weird problems (especially with different machine/OS configurations) which will get reported as bugs.
Is there more interest in a new project vs. one that is more or less mature?
I don't think new vs. old is as important as good vs. bad. If your project is useful and well executed then you'll get hits. Just compare Mozilla with any of the thousands of "new" projects listed on SourceForge.
Is the project too narrow to attract an audience?
I doubt that. Real Estate is a massive business world wide.
Could the underlying business (real estate) just be too saturated with web sites?
That's possible in any business, if your project had some uniqueness then the saturation will not be important. Getting the message out about your feature set will.
Just what are the secrets to a successful (measured by lots of contributors, etc) project...or am I just not defining success correctly?
I don't think number of contributors is the most important measure. How about number of people actually using the software? In POPFile there's a feature where it can report back (opt in) that it's being used, this gives me an idea of how many downloads converted into users. Another measure of success would be mentions of your project in the press.
John.
Re:My 2 cents (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah but how many Real Estate agents read Freshmeat? Even if the Read Estate industry is massive (and it is), this guys market is much smaller unless he gets the word out to the general public, which involves spending lots of money on advertising... Which is, of course, silly to do for a free project.
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.
Even more important (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, but the important part here is that by helping other people impliment this you *will* discover quirks/bugs/out-of-spec behavior in your project. The quality will improve greatly and you will soon have another, better release
Re:My 2 cents (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, I'm learning this. But not for the reasons you think. Try advertising a free project using Google's adwords. They'll kill the ad, asking you to substantiate the claim that the software is free. However, they don't actually give you any method to substantiate the claim -- they only give you the option to change the ad! I tried replying via email (never read/responded to) and even adding text to my Web site to note that the project was under a BSD license. No response, no way to undo their block.
Hmm. Now that I'm ranting about it, I think I'll change the ad text from "free" to "open source" and see if they block that. Fewer people will understand it, but a gimped ad is better than none, I guess.
Re:My 2 cents (Score:2)
That's probably true, but I think we need to look at this question from a different perspective.
I wouldn't doubt that real estate is a big business. In fact, I know it is, I know quite a number of real estate agents to confirm this fact. However, not many software developers are going to be all that concerned about real estate and so therefore, software like this won't scratch an itch for them.
Re:My 2 cents (Score:2)
The definition of success varies from project to project in open source. Many would say that you're successful, you took an open source project and extended it to your needs, that is one of the fundamentals of open source.
Not all open souce projects are going to be as wide spread as Linux or Apache, but is wide spread adoption really what you're looking for? It's g
Re:My 2 cents (Score:1)
When I look for some software I try to find the original branch and only if it doesn't do what I want look at the forks.
Wiki's are a good example. The first major on is usemod (there were some before this but they aren't around anymore) there are lots of other ones (Python, ASP, PHP, Zope and even more Perl ones) The
Re:My 2 cents (Score:2)
Really? [yardi.com]
-- Jack
My two pennies (Score:3, Informative)
As one who have fostered more than 150 open-source projects on Freshmeat - no I ain't the author for all of them, just find 'em and then list 'em on Freshmeat in the hope that the worldwide open-source community will somehow be enriched by the wider selection, I can tell you that unless your project is really, _really_ address a large segment of the public at large, the "flow" of enquirers will slow to a trickle - sometimes, even to 1 or 2 per day.
One thing that I've found, on my experience on fostering
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:1)
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Informative)
If you'd like to generate more of a user base here are a few ideas to try:
Cross post it to popular freeware sites and real estate sites. Remember that most freeware sites would rather have a link to the file than the actual file, so you don't need to worry about obsolete versions floating around out there.
You can also submit it to be reviewed somewhere (which can be a risk of it's own). When it gets reviewed, submit an announcement of the review to various real estate and PHP/MySQL news sites.
Write a HowTo for your project or find a user to write one and post it to the appropriate HowTo sites.
Post news on your site on a regular basis, like at least once a week. If you have to, set a schedule for news posts and post anything to keep with your schedule - even if it's just a "Nothing new, but updates to come - Here's what I'm working on" post. Sometimes a user will suggest something in response to a "Status" news item that will help you as you are developing. Be sure to publicly thank contributing users like that. It's an incentive for other users to speak openly and conrtibute ideas, if anything.
Whatever you do, don't be afraid to play the PR game. It may sound odd, but keeping the users engaged/entertained can go a long way.
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
No kidding. The fact is that big shops will write their own (or implement a large CRM, or...), while the small shops will follow the path of least resistance (like not doing computer-based anything, or keeping it to a minimum). Your best bet would be to set up an ASP (Application Service Provider) to host their data so they can get at it over the web, or set up appliance machines to do this task (or both).
This is one case where GPLed software has little value by itself (because there's few people to implement it in its target market), but you could add lots of value by implementing it (and make money in the process).
Re:Surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Surprising (Score:2)
You could list known hosting services that offer support and could probably get them to kick back a few dollars to your project each time somebody opens an account to use your software with. I've had several hosts make such a deal with me. Many of them would also be willing to post links back to your site which again would drive more eyes to you.
The key to vertical software like this is to fit the n
Re:Surprising (Score:2)
This makes me wonder, kinda in an OT way... how many open source project are there that are based on VBA / Office / VB / other MS technologies? Granted, it would take money to buy the base (office or such software), but then a person could use the solution for free.
My two questions:
Re:Surprising (Score:1)
"Free" may be "not really free" in the eye of the beholder (although most of it is released under a license which is considered GPL-compatible) since it runs on "closed platforms" and "closed technologies", but that's usually not a problem with the more normal Windows
Re:Surprising (Score:2)
Re:Surprising (Score:1)
You gotta be kidding me!?
I mean check out the DotNet workspaces over at gotdotnet. Do a search on sourceforge.net for Win32 apps. It's all over the place.
This is one of the larger problems with those who advocate Linux... they just don't know any better.
Re:Surprising (Score:2)
If you wanted traffic (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If you wanted traffic (Score:1)
Re:If you wanted traffic (Score:3, Funny)
Re:If you wanted traffic (Score:2)
Thanks
Re:If you wanted traffic (Score:3, Informative)
Which of course will get modded as redundant..
Re:If you wanted traffic (Score:1)
Re:If you wanted traffic (Score:1)
Thanks
Re:If you wanted traffic (Score:4, Informative)
I started on www.rwcinc.net/freerealty, which I at first thought was a news page but later figured out was a sort of changelog / download page. I had a look around for install instructions thinking I might do a test install, but couldn't find any on the page.
Looking for an overview I next clicked on 'upcoming features', but found it to be a bit developer specific. (As in I would grok it if I were familiar with the source but couldn't infer much about the software as a casual visitor, except that it uses images and a db).
After that I tried 'about this server' (thinking perhaps that the software was somehow server related, or that it needed to run on top of a specific server setup). For about half a second I thought I was looking at the system requirements for the software, then I realised it was a actually a blurb about the machine serving the website.
Next I tried 'demo site', thinking I could perhaps find a demo version of the software alongside install instructions. I stared at the page blankly for a bit then finally figured out that the software was some type of content management thingy for real estate listings.
Suggestions:
look at samba-tng versus samba (Score:5, Interesting)
Samba-tng forked off of samba quite a while ago. The user base using tng is still very small. There is a flurry of people checking it out each time a new release comes out (Which lately has been due to security problems in both code bases).
The user lists are fairly slow, and there are a few developers on the dev lists. The development is still highly active, but the purpose of TNG isn't as important to most people as the functionality and features of Samba it self. The people who need to the changes made in TNG, will go to TNG. However, the vast majority of people don't need anything beyond what the base Samba 2.x or 3.x code has.
Then again.. I would also say, most people haven't checked out the rad features included in rpcclient with tng.. which makes pen testing windows extremely easy.. Oh wait, so does dcom.
Be thankful (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, you should be. And, you should be thankful that SCO hasn't gotten a hold of your code yet...
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?
Project web site (Score:5, Informative)
John.
Re:Project web site (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps... I think it was my project OpenRealty [jonroig.com] that got forked. (Not that I mind... working full time, I didn't have any time to support it -- one of the reasons it was GPL.)
For whatever it's worth, we're unifying as many of the branches as we can right now at www.open-realty.org [open-realty.org]. See my announcment on my site [jonroig.com]...
Re:Project web site (Score:3)
John.
Re:Project web site (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Offtopic: Reckon (Score:1)
Re:Offtopic: Reckon (Score:1)
Of course it was painfully awkward. You can't fit "reconnoitered" into that sentence without it being painfully awkward, because it just doesn't fit. That was the point. See how awkward the sentence is when I replace the incorrect word with the meaning of that word?
If, on the other hand, you meant my overusage of commas, you'd be correct. It's a fault of mine (along with extraneous parenthetical quotes) that I'm constantly fighting against.
Re:Offtopic: Reckon (Score:1)
I would either break the sentence into two, or restructure it with semicolons in a way that would make it easier for the reader to follow. I don't think the human mind likes to deal with sentences like yours, ones that almost contain comma-offset parenthetical statements within other comma-offset parenthetical statements.
A good way to split the sentence would
Re:Offtopic: Reckon (Score:1)
But I strive to be pedantic and annoying in an agreeable manner! And I agree, my sentence structure was crap.
Re:Offtopic: Reckon (Score:1)
Re:Offtopic: Reckon (Score:1)
Of course I agree that the sentence would be better without the "or" and with a semicolon instead.
Link to the mentioned project (Score:3, Informative)
You forked. (Score:1, Interesting)
Not surprising at all (Score:5, Informative)
Factor in that you're in a very niche market -- real estate offices who have the need for a dedicated software package, who know enough about computers to use Linux/PHP/Apache, and who don't have in-house developers. Then, consider that you're not actually maintaining the original project, but a project that branched from the original so that users won't have to upgrade. It doesn't leave many interested users.
This is part of the justification behind "release early, release often" -- the more you release, the more hits you generate, and the more likely you are to find interested users. All the same, don't expect to get the hits of the next big RPG platform or internet chat application. The users just aren't there.
Re:Not surprising at all (Score:3, Interesting)
Projects with broader appeal do get more hits and more feedback although I find that projects that are written well (few bugs or missing features) get very little feedback also. People just don't seem to write j
Ask Slashdot (abridged version) (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ask Slashdot (abridged version) (Score:1)
Promotion (Score:5, Informative)
There are a couple things I've found that help. First, find a discussion group focused on a subject relevant to your project, and mention it occasionally when it becomes relevant to the discussion -- this gets you kickstarted, but it's not a long-term solution. Second, you might start some kind of blog [kimbly.com] on the site, so that people have a reason to follow your progress. Rant about the state of the real estate market or something. This is the long-term solution.
I've done both of these things, and eventually they get you a lot more traffic than freshmeat ever will. The more traffic you get, the more likely that someone will link to your site, which will raise your google ranking, which increases the amount of traffic you get, which starts the whole feedback loop all over again. You just need to focus on making sure that your visitors have a reason to link you once they're there.
Re:Promotion (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, sigs for
Re:Promotion (Score:2)
First thing I did? Open Link in New Tab
It proves the point of his post.
Nice Circle of Life action going on there.
Re:Promotion (Score:2)
Actually you got that bacward with Freshmeat and googlewashing.
Here's the recipe to get your project on top of google : Say your project is about linking the Foo network with the Bar device
- Choose an explicit name for your project that is already used by some obscure group that you can find on google. Imagine there's an association called FOOBIP
Re:Promotion (Score:3, Interesting)
Get more out of freshmeat. (Score:2)
Every time a new release comes out, you can [should] use the "add release" link to submit a front page announcement. This also updates the version number, and gives you a chance to update the URLs.
The other canned meat. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Instant webtraffic.... (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Instant webtraffic.... (Score:1)
It's like an engine (Score:5, Interesting)
1) your project is too specialized, you have a smallish community of people who use it, few bug reports now and then, and you end up doing all the work on your project.
2) your project is interesting enough that the community around it grows to a point where most of the improvements come from patches, bug reports
3) your project is very interesting and the community around it grows exponentially. The improvements / bug reports flood you and, essentially, your own bandwidth is not enough to maintain the project. You have to delegate and trust other people, in which case A) you're a shitty project manager and someone else who has that talent eventually makes a code fork and takes it over, or B) you become a successful OSS project maintainer, the extreme case of which, for example, is Linus.
The added fun is that, if you code well while you start the project, it can go from a shitty thing to something of interest, just because the look-n-feel that detracted people from trying it before now attracts more people. That's where all the interest is, see how you can "prime the pump" and build a community around your ideas by doing the initial work, then watch the improvements come already made.
I personally choose to create/maintain projects that I reckon will fall in or near category 2), because I don't want to maintain big projects anymore, with the flood of patches, suggestions and hate mail that comes with it, but I don't want to end up having my name associated with a shitty tarball that nobody cares about either.
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. ;)
Simple. (Score:2, Troll)
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.
Re:Simple. (Score:2)
Yes it was. It was an answer to a blindingly generalised question. And I appreciate you saying, "I don't fall into that category", but that wasn't my point. My point wasn't that EVERYBODY who writes OSS these days is well off or a college kid, just that MOST people are because MOST people are poorer now (especially IT people) than they have been in recent history. Everybody I know is working as hard as they can just to pay their bills. Nobod
Re:Simple. (Score:2)
Re:Simple. (Score:2)
Alot of the people who do coding code it because they want that feature. They submit a patch and that's that.
Re:Simple. (Score:2)
As always though the two top motivations are that geeks like to code and that geeks like to show off what the
Re:Simple. (Score:2)
Just to throw a spanner in your appaulingly overrated statement... I'm a student who gets no money from his parents, so earns his rent, food, going out money, and who codes and writes in his free time because he enjoys it, because it's interesting, because people like his software [sf.net], and because
Metamod dilemna! (Score:2)
So I'm faced with this question:
Original Discussion: Community Involvement for an Open Source Project?
Rating: Troll.
This rating is Unfair ( ) (o) ( ) Fair
I don't believe in wimping out and selecting the middle choice, so I picked Fair. It's a troll. It just happens to be an Interesting and/or Insi
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:My experience with real estate software. (Score:2)
The Gwydion Dylan experience (Score:3, Interesting)
Dylan is a wonderful, elegant, extensible language that really puts Java to shame. Usually when there's a programming language article on slashdot, people end up describing their dream language... and it usually what they describe matches Dylan quite well. But still it's very hard to attract new programmers to the language.
It's a great compiler, and a team using it earned second place in the 2001 ICFP Programming Contest. The compiler is still being improved, but in all honestly, there's just a few dedicated volunteers working on it.
I don't know how to explain it's lack of "success", except to note that few geeks are really geeky enough to stray away from the mainstream languages.
Re:The Gwydion Dylan experience (Score:4, Informative)
Do you wanna know the first thing I thought of when I read the name?
Bob Dylan.
I then thought "old" almost instinctually.
I'm not putting it down, I'm just saying what I thought, and being honest.
Re:The Gwydion Dylan experience (Score:2)
My Dad thought it meant Dylan Thomas.
Whoever he is.
Re:The Gwydion Dylan experience (Score:2)
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=151
No, I didn't know who Dylan Thomas is... however, Google is your friend
Re:The Gwydion Dylan experience (Score:1)
Yes it is.
http://www.lyricsdepot.com/simon-garfunkel/a-simp
Re:The Gwydion Dylan experience (Score:1)
It's not widely supported as of the northern summer of 2001, with only two major implementations...
Okay. Not widely supported, I can handle that. But, 2001? What about now?
Just my 2 cents worth of non-cents.
Do you want buzz, or are you seeking hype? (Score:2, Interesting)
I prefer buzz. My own software projects are posted on my web servers and have plenty to offer to those who find them. Someone eventually wanders by, sees it, likes it, then mentions it to someone else. Many of these mentions happen on Usenet or mailing lists that get archived. Now people searching for certain terms will find those posts that link to me.
Eventually, people who run di
~googolplex (Score:2, Funny)
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.
Well , thank you for not listing it in the article (Score:1, Flamebait)
Yes. I am kidding.
Re:Well , thank you for not listing it in the arti (Score:2)
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 the
What's most important (Score:3, Interesting)
I recently listed a project [freshmeat.net] on freshmeat as well as posted information to usenet newsgroups where some will find it relative and interesting to the newsgroup.
The description was edited by a freshmeat editor and could probably be written differently to attract a little more attention. But this project is not going to die, cause I won't let it... Cause it's useful to me, and that's the most important I can think of.
Re:What's most important (Score:2)
have you thought about applying some of the concepts in your project to AI? of course, your concepts won't drive the whole thing, but it could give reasonably sound direction to automated thinking.
just a thought.. interesting project by the way.
Re:What's most important (Score:2)
Thanks for your interest/comment
Usually... (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at this from positive side. 1) 40 visitors a day, means maybe 1-4 new sites using your software. 2) No bug reports - probably no bugs so that's very good, isn't it?
(of course it could be opposite, after first look people discard it and never think about it again, but...
One of good ideas to "exist" on the market is to package your stuff for some major distributions and try to include it - even if not in core of one, then at least in official software archives. So crazy people like me, who look through all packages dselect displays get to notice it
"Good Enough" (Score:3, Interesting)
To take a personal example, bsdiff [daemonology.net] is a tool for generating binary patches (in particular, for upgrading software). It is measurably and quantifiably better -- that is, it produces smaller patch files -- than any other software available, both free and commercial (eg, $2750/seat). Despite this, the only place where I'm aware of bsdiff being used is in another project of my own (FreeBSD Update). Most people found a tool which was "good enough" for their needs a long time ago, and aren't going to change now.
Re:"Good Enough" (Score:2)
Just look at tar cfvz
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.
Freshmeat lists closed source too. (Score:2)
Market Problem (Score:2, Informative)
The small offices usally get free or very cheap web sites that contain listings from the MLS's (that is that database where all listings in a market are stored). These people could be a potential market for you but they are not going to contribute anythi
Re:Market Problem (Score:1)
Similar Situation (Score:3, Informative)
I'd love to find a good way to attract more user participation, mainly because I'd like to improve the product for my own use and I've found that other people tend to give me really good ideas for features, when they aren't bogged down in the actual coding like I am.
It is difficult to even get people to tell to drop by and "vote" in an online poll to tell me their environment so I know where to focus my efforts to get the most benefit to the community.
One good thing about writing my own software though is I'm much more likely to write to an author of an application I use to thank them, or drop by a forum and let them know I use it. Heck I'll even write bug reports now
Re:Similar Situation (Score:2)
http://freshmeat.net/projects/tasklist/?topic_id= 1 015 [freshmeat.net]
You project seems not only more mature than mine, but more powerful too (I had functionality like sub-tasks in the previous version, but I have chosen to re-impliment them to allow for a more flexible product in the long term, I wish to adapt the software to be used a
another measure of success (Score:1)
"measure of success" is just a vague way of saying "what i want out of it". so dig deep into your psyche and figure out what you want. that's it.
for example, i am a programmer and usually what i want out of any collaborative project more than anything (more than users, more than fame, more than financial gain) is to find a fellow programmer who shares the vision of the project and has the comptetency and cycles to build upon the work. for me, the primary measure of success for a project is how well ha
my own experiences... (Score:1)
When there's a new version release, and I announce it on freshmeat, the site get's many hits, and that holds up for about a week.
I don't get much bug reports, either. By now the program is small, so there aren't many bugs to expect, but I think it depends very very much on the user base. Especially if all people are u
Sourceforge statistics (Score:2)
As far as "success" goes, you do need to define success before you can decide if you have it. There is no single definition. O
My guess (FWIW) (Score:2)
The normal way around this is for companies to sponsor a developer part time. That way they get what the need worked on, instead of just whatever the programmers happen to feel like. (You encountered this problem when the original developer decided to change the file formats. Well, companies do this also, but since it's GPL, you have the option of
Re:Maybe it's you. (Score:1)
If you went to the version at open-realty.org great. Those guys are doing a pretty good job as well.
Already i've had the time to read many posts relating to this lament, however the author here still hasn't updated his site that something is going down with his shiz... I've now gone to openrealty and the offshoot program and it's quite cute.
So, I originally submitted this last Wed. One week ago. It took that long to be accepted for whatever reason. Did the site