On 08/13/2012 10:30 PM, Eric Chadbourne wrote:
Hi All,
Making code GPL is easy. Putting it on an open version control (github, sourceforge, etc)is easy. In short the "mechanics" of what you want to do is easy and well documented.
Two things in your email suggest it won't get a lot of following: "20 different applications" and "too expensive." This is usually a indication the you are in a vertical market where the population of potential users/contributors is quite small. Even today most Windows developers have never been to source forge. The idea that someone in your field will look for an open source version of this tool is remote. The fact that there are 20 different app's to choose from may indicate that it is a problem that is reasonably solvable and more to the point, may be fun to solve and without needing a lot of coding infrastructure to support the function.
Creating the "community" is quite difficult. Assuming you can get the word out about your project (which isn't easy), it has to be something people want and written in such a way that people will want to use it instead of writing their own. It has to be more efficient to learn how to use your project than it is to write their own. Depending on what the app is, there is a "trust" issue, they'll need to reasonably believe it will work before they even download it to test it. They'll want the familiar configure/make paradigm, bells and whistles, docs, etc. It will need to be easy to configure and should have some examples so that they can see it work immediately, we are, after all, and impatient bunch. Just getting your system, what ever it is, to the point where it has a chance is a lot of work.
All in all, search github or sourceforge for projects, there are tons of them! Some really cool, but most, it seams, largely abandoned. My advice to you is to put it in GPL if you like, it costs nothing and *maybe* someone will benefit. However, there is no hard and fast way to create a viable community. Even with the best of projects its hard and unlikely.
Where I work we needed some software. We evaluated about 20 different applications, free and non-free. They were either too expensive (I work at a non-profit) or just sucked. So we rolled our own. I just had my annual review and all I asked for was to make our app gplv3 and allow me to release it. The boss doesn't mind. So I'm tiding things up and will release before xmass. We use this application to manage constituents daily. I wrote it all. Not the best code but works as advertised. My question is, how to release in a way that lays the foundation for a community? I just read http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-Release-Practice-HOWTO/index.html and like it mucho. Any other tips from BLU? Thanks, Eric _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
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