
Ask HN: When is the best time to share an Open Source project? - max0563
I have always felt like I release my projects too early. They are either not in a great state, or I haven&#x27;t yet event evaluated how serious I am about the project which means it normally dies after I release it.<p>I am trying to get better at this and only share more quality projects, but I was just wondering what all of your takes on this is.<p>Do you think there is an appropriate time to share your OSS project?
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eesmith
The vast majority of OSS projects are in poor shape or incomplete/unserious.
Most are dead too.

A lot are of the sort "I played around with this idea over the last couple of
weeks. I want to get back to it (maybe) but don't have the time now. Here's
the code in case someone else finds it useful."

Even popular packages have a hard time finding people willing to contribute
code back.

So, I argue that you shouldn't worry about if it's the right time or not.

Now, there are certainly projects where worrying about timing is appropriate
and important. If you write a new text editor or database you want to make
sure it doesn't destroy user data even in the first release because the
project will get a reputation that it doesn't care about basic assurance
testing, which is important for those sorts of projects.

However, what you describe doesn't seem like one of those.

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max0563
> However, what you describe doesn't seem like one of those.

I actually am working on a project like that (database) so your point
resonated with me. For what I am building I'll take my time and I won't
release before it's stable because if it doesn't work properly for v1 then
that could be a problem.

I guess the answer for the original question though is that it just depends.

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lhorie
Really up to you and what your goals are, but ideally have at least working
code and your envisioned public API implemented. I think it's fine to
completely rework your API based on feedback after putting it out there, but I
wouldn't take a project very seriously if it got published while saying
something along the lines of "oh I'm not sure yet if this is the right API" or
if there's some giant, obvious gap of functionality missing.

Personally, I prefer releasing when docs cover the public API and I have at
least some test coverage.

