On 2007 02 19 13:35, Chris Weiss wrote:
<much good stuff />
I have spent a lot of time looking at various open source software
projects. It is interesting that there seems to be little
correlation between the quality of the code, the number of people
using the software, and the health of the community that surrounds
it. There are poorly coded projects with many contributors, popular
and well-written products with no contributors, and everything in
between.
One difference between a "surviving" project and a "vibrant"
project is that the vibrant ones have a very open attitude, some
people who are willing to evangelize the project, and an active
community of "givers".
I don't know how many users phpGW has, but I bet it's a lot more
than one would guess by looking at what's online. There are some
things that can be done to change this. Some effort on promotion is
required. Even OpenOffice asks users who register to answer how
they're going to support the project. I think it's a good thing to
tell people that the code is "free" because people give to it freely.
Three overworked developers doesn't make for a happy project when
it's as big as phpGW. What the project needs is one or more "people
persons" with some technical skills who can start up some forums,
build a mailing list for site administrators, encourage people to
put "I love phpGroupWare" banners on their sites, launch some
market research on desired features, and to ask people how they can
contribute when they download. This is all work that's not related
to the actual code. [I don't know if this is heresy or not, but you
might consider using code from other projects (a CMS like Joomla,
forums, etc.) to kick start a supportive community.] Once there's a
active community in place, you're much more likely to find people
who can make significant contributions to code, documentation,
quality and testing, translation, and more.
Unfortunately, I just use the code for personal purposes; I haven't
encountered a client who needed to use it, so it's never been a
"mainstream" project for me. If it was, I'd be contributing. As far
as I'm concerned, it's a responsibility to try to give back where
you can, not just an option.
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