Be the next big thing in open source

By David M Williams
Monday, 10 March 2008 03:28

Opinion and Analysis

So you’ve got an idea for a great app and you’re thinking of making your own open source project? Here are some items to consider and some sites that will help you on your journey. We’ll also see how some well-known open source teams did it. Even if you haven’t considered releasing your app as open source you’ll find something useful here. However, do think about whether you have reasons for not going the open source route. It may be simply you didn’t think of it as an option. Or you might be worried about profitability and protecting your intellectual property. We’ll come to these soon; despite the apparent anomaly, going open source doesn’t mean you’re resigned to a life of abject poverty and blatant rip offs.

The idea
There’s no sense putting fingers to keyboard until you know what you want to achieve. I have a belief that the best software is borne out of genuine need. This isn’t to say a clever person can't sit down and think about what could be a profitable niche market but when I do this all I can conceive are things already done without any real point. Maybe I could think to myself, “I know! I’ll build a kick-ass new web browser!” but unless I have a clear distinctive then really I have nothing compelling.

Firefox, for instance, stands out because it is cross platform, it is standards compliant and it evokes fond memories of the original Netscape web browser. Opera stands out because it is lightweight and runs on a plethora of mobile devices. Even Lynx stands out because it runs in a text console. What would be distinctive about a web browser I produced? What is its raison d’être?

The point is not that you shouldn’t write a web browser, by any means – but that you should know in advance what you are going to achieve. Maybe your web browser will be the fastest on the planet. Maybe it will have a really clever 3D visualisation of an entire web site, or the relationship of the site with others.

Or maybe your idea will not be anything that presently exists and you have identified a genuine need for it. Here’s where I think success can come through sheer passion and enthusiasm of the author coupled with its utility to the market.

While not open source, Steve Outtrim of Sausage Software fame became a multi-million by this approach. As an out of work programmer he decided to advertise himself on the World Wide Web back in its infancy. At the time he believed there were no decent web page editing tools and set about writing his own, as an aid to his original goal.

Outtrim produced the first version of his HotDog web page editor and made it available for download in case it was useful to others. Such tools are commonplace now but his was novel at that time. It was downloaded en masse. Yet, the downloaders were not silent. They flooded Outtrim with positive feedback and suggestions for improvement. He incorporated these and made a shareware release. Soon the money came flooding in.

Envious types like myself would justify our own lack of millions by jokingly suggesting we weren’t rich because we were good enough to get jobs in the first place – but the point to grasp is Outtrim struck a niche market because he met a genuine need. And that’s good software.

So, once you’ve got an idea, where to next? Please read on.

CONTINUED