Finding open source project teams

David M Williams
Monday, 17 March 2008 08:22

Opinion and Analysis

After diligently searching you might discover that what you want to do is unique and does merit its own project. That's perfectly fine too; the point above is merely to search first because just as you would want enthusiastic people joining your project by their own self-discovery so too others would appreciate you joining theirs. And, really, this is one top way of getting a good project team together – people of a similar mind simply finding each other and saying effectively, "Hey, we both want to achieve the same goal. Let's work together."

To create a project in SourceForge merely click on the bold "Create Project" tab. You'll be asked to log in, or sign up if you don't have a current account, define the goals of your project, the target platform, the license you wish to be covered by and more.

Once you have done this, you need to perform a bit of marketing. Check out the SourceForge community forums to locate people offering help, especially in the Project Ideas topic area. Flick through the pages in that topic and you will find many bright people offering their services.

Don't just limit yourself to programmers. As discussed, you'll want artistic people and wordsmiths to be part of your project. Check out web sites like Open Designs for artists, and the Open Source Writers Group for authors.

There are other people you'll want to locate. You need quality assurance. These are the guys who will locate bugs, check new features don't break existing functionality, and advocate new features and options.
You'll want people who can consider other open source projects or proprietary platforms you might want to integrate with. Back in the web browser example, you may wish to import bookmarks from other products. Or if you are producing a database or commerce product you will definitely want to have linkages to and from other software. This takes a keen mind coupled with a sense of architecture and a wide knowledge of other apps in the space you are targeting.

You'll want people to contribute support. These guys might answer questions on your forums or on mailing lists. They can write HOWTO guides and package the software so it is ready for distribution with a variety of Linux distributions or as a Windows installer app. They should also keep a look out for relevant online discussions where your project can help meet someone's stated need. This in turn leads to promoting your product more and gaining interest both from potential users and potential team members.

Involvement doesn't even have to be a major investment of anyone's time. Scott Granneman provides a lengthy list of ways anyone can contribute to an open source project with or without programming.

Stick with it. Flesh out your idea. Scour the web. Join an existing project or start your own. Then produce code, promote the app and don't be afraid to ask for help. The open source community is a friendly one. Good luck!