A question for those running their own OSS projects

[Madison Kelly]

G. Matthew Rice wrote:
> Madison Kelly <linux-5ZoueyuiTZhBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> writes:
> 
>>So to those of you who have your own semi-popular OSS program (or work on
>>one), how did you do it? How long did it take? How do you let the community
>>know it's out there?
> 
> 
> Some good ideas already (freshmeat, sourceforge, getting an article written).
> 
> You could also set up a *-user and *-developer mailing list, create a website
> for the project (with or without sourceforge resources) with a roadmap and
> plans for future releases, etc..
> 
> Create packages.  Not only for download but try to get it added to distros.
> Become the package maintainer for debian (that'll get it added quickly).
> 
> Also, tell the guys running the linuxworld toronto show that you want to give
> a talk.
> 
> And, lastly, don't expect to get the kind of attention that firefox or OOo
> gets.  You may never get more than the occasional patch (or nothing) from the
> community.
> 
> HTH,

It does, thank you!

   My worry about approaching distributors at this point is that my code 
is still young. I suspect there will be bugs and I don't want to risk my 
one chance to get into a distro like Debian (which would be a dream!). 
How do you think a distributor like Debian or Redhat would take to a new 
program that is admittedly young and still 'beta'? If they rejected it, 
do you think that would effect approaching them again in the future with 
a more mature version?

   I've developed it partially of Fedora and partially (lately) on 
Debian so I am pretty confident of it's stability on those platforms.

   I've built a web page and decided to use a Bulletin Board-style Forum 
you see a lot these days (already setup and running). Do you guys, as 
coders, think you might use a forum like that or do you think many 
developers are wed to traditional mailing lists like this? I am 
wondering if it might be worth setting up a mailing list along side the 
forum or if that would be spreading people too thin at this stage...

   I am hoping that my program (a web-based backup program) will have a 
certain amount of wide appeal but I have /no/ illusions of grandeur like 
that. Firefox, OpenOffice, Perl, Apache and such are where they are 
because of tremendously stable code and years of being smart behind 
them. My program is quite tiny be comparison but I still hope to make a 
mark in my niche. :)

Madison

PS - Is there generally a fee to present at the Linux shows? Maybe a 
booth wouldn't be a bad idea...

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