Linked by Bob "number9" Minvielle on Fri 13th Jun 2003 18:51 UTC
Having written open source software myself, and being a subscriber to mailing lists, etc, there is a realization that the number one thing missing from smaller open source projects is feedback from users.
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It's really hard to get the ball rolling with an opensource project. Even if you get decent exposure, people just download the program and forget about who made it.
Have you ever emailed the author of df? or dmesg?
It's really hard to get a momentum going with open source since users don't stick around. Even the ones that are interested seem to show up on the mailing lists every once in awhile and then once bored they move on to other things.
In my experience only the users who end up contributing are likely to stay to allow a community to form. It's very hard to come across those. You can have all the hits you like on your website,but if there isn't anybody who is willing to add your project to their list of hobbies your software isn't gonna form a community around it and it's gonna eventually get boring and forgotten..That is until the users start wondering why their program isn't being maintained and actually inquire about it.
Strange world this open source thing.