
Why isn’t someone using my software product or open source tool? - mpweiher
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/921921604140937216.html
======
DogLover_
My pet peeve: Not providing screenshot, gif or video.

Some developers even do that with themes. Yeah, I am not going to DL a theme
file only to find out I don't like.

~~~
geff82
This is one of the most common errors that open source projects make: not
providing screenshots, not providing info for the beginner. There is almost
always some "help us" or "documentation" corner on the web pages, but the
screenshots, even if it is just a CLI tools, are too often missing.

~~~
__david__
What's the point of screenshotting CLI tools? I'd much rather have an example
command line that I can copy/paste than some image of a terminal...

~~~
moepstar
I, for one, have been helped much by some project providing screenshots or
even animated gifs of input and possible output by a tool...

~~~
romwell
And, for everyone's benefit, LICEcap[1] is a FOSS tool to make just that
(animated GIFs showcasing your software) from the guy responsible for Winamp
and Reaper DAW (the GIF's on the Reaper page are made using this tool).

[1][https://www.cockos.com/licecap/](https://www.cockos.com/licecap/)

------
adim86
I think the first points are the most salient. Developers undervalue the skill
of marketing and sales frequently. It is one of the most powerful secondary
skillsets a creator needs. If you are unable to inspire, trust and expertise
you will forever have a hard time selling your product. I wrote a post on this
area just a couple hours ago and what mindset can help fix that:
[http://blog.adimofunne.com/no-one-gives-a-
shit/](http://blog.adimofunne.com/no-one-gives-a-shit/)

~~~
ransom1538
Funny story. On my last 2 day hack project [1] I was really concerned about
"no-one-gives-a-shit". So the last project I created something everyone wants:
You trade Github stars. Even though the users loved it, it will not spread
because on any forum/twitter/channel it is down voted almost immediately. Even
though people do give a shit - the group that hates the project drowns it out.

[https://www.gitstarred.com](https://www.gitstarred.com)

~~~
Timpy
I'm not trying to be inflammatory but I think the first issue that comes to
mind is that giving stars at random kind of circumvents the meaning of stars.

~~~
pnloyd
The the reason this is disliked is pretty obvious IMO. It's undermining the
value of stars as an indicator of a projects health / usefullness. People
explore tools and libraries on GitHub to incorporate into the work they do at
their jobs. If this were to take off it could potentially make everyones job
harder, yikes!

------
blensor
My most important takeaway from my past projects is. No matter how
cool/sophisticated your product is, people are interested in solving their
specific problem and won't discover most of what your product can do. They are
coming to your site/product because they tried to solve a specific problem.

So focus on a very narrow use case and make that as simply and frictionless as
possible to solve (installers for all platforms, bundled libraries, simple
tutorial for the main use cases people are downloading your software for,
...). Your product may still support all the cool stuff you put into it, but
accept the fact that most people wont use those features.

Once your user is invested in your software he might try to expand his use
further which is what might keep your users invested, but to get there you
need those specialized narrow key use cases that are your hook to get them.

------
mattlondon
Missing: marketing? Just being able to find the product _even exists_ is
crucial in my experience.

They wont even get to reading the description or trying out the product/demo
if they don't know it exists. Point #7 is getting at this, but I personally
feel like this should be Point #1 and probably also have a load of sub-points
about it :-) A single post on a forum or a handful of blog/twitter posts
probably isn't going to cut it.

You need relentless self-promotion via appropriate communities (which might be
twitter, but possibly IRC, forums, mailing lists, hell even youtube) in a
_genuine & non-spammy_ way that is appropriate, interesting/useful, and
(crucially) relevant to the people in that community/discussion. Once your
product becomes more widely used and well-known enough in those communities,
then it starts to become a bit more scalable since your happy users will
suggest people use your tool for you, and you dont have to be the one to
pounce on every opportunity to suggest people use your tool to solve their
problem X.

Marketing is tough and its a really crowded space.

------
ElectronShak
This checklist misses the most important question; Are you using the tool
yourself?

~~~
teh_klev
And also..."Why should I trust you?"

~~~
krageon
You shouldn't trust random strangers on the internet at all, no matter what
good story they spin for you.

------
danesparza
Also: Have you built something people actually want to use? (There is a good
chance the answer to this is 'no')

------
sevensor
There's nothing wrong with this advice, but you could do everything on the
checklist and still attract no users. However, I'd like to question the
premise that that's a good way to measure the success of a project. Having
written a very successful open-source library with one user (me), I'm quite
satisfied with how it turned out. Some of my other stuff has more users, but I
can't say I'm happier with it.

~~~
objectivetruth
Maybe somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that there's an
implied and generally understood "...that I want other people to use," at the
end of that headline.

~~~
sevensor
There is. It's what I'm responding to here; I want to contest the idea that
attracting users is a measure of success. I wrote a library to do something
that nobody else really wants to do. But I wanted to have it, I think it was
well-executed (one design flaw notwithstanding), and I'm glad I wrote it. So
it's a success, and it has exactly one user.

------
aequitas
"4\. Do you compare your tool to other similar tools so people feel educated
about pros/cons of yours?"

This I find is an important one most developers forget. I want to know why you
consider your tool/library different from the solutions already out there. It
might be better in some respect, it might sacrifice some functionality for the
benefit of simplicity, usability, etc. Or you might have created a 'yet-
another-X' in which case I probably won't bother as I might already have a
solution I'm fine with.

------
DC-3
> And if the tool is meant to be used by devs, still describe your tool in a
> way a non-developer can understand

Why?

~~~
pjc50
The dev-specific explanation will often be dull and hyper-specific, narrowing
your target market _even among developers_.

~~~
matte_black
And at the same time, don't make the explanation sound too patronizing or
infantile, or litter your landing page and docs with stupid little memes.
Strike a professional tone.

------
grosjona
This checklist is a petty distraction from the most pertinent truth; it's all
about trust. Reputable people and companies don't trust your project because
neither you nor your project have connections to famous people or companies.
Big companies don't trust projects that aren't used by other big companies.
Especially open source projects; this is because companies don't trust someone
who works for free and has no skin in the game (nothing to lose). Small
companies and individual developers also tend not to trust projects that
aren't already used by big companies so it's a catch 22 from any angle. Trust
in open source is about money; you need connections to big capital. Everyone
follows capital like moths to a flame. You can have the worst product in the
world, but if you have connections to big corporate capital, you will succeed.

That's what I learned from my own open source work; without meaningful social
connections, it took me about 10 years working nights and weekends to get one
of my projects to reach 200K+ downloads per month. I have about 4 full years
of 'failed' projects behind me; even though they were actually successful from
a technical perspective.

~~~
maze-le
>> neither you nor your project have connections to famous companies or people

It may come across like this, but most often, a decision is made against a
solution by an individual, because the risk of a project like this not being
maintained after a while is quite high.

~~~
grosjona
If you're talking about a small/trivial/low-complexity open source library
then that is probably the whole story but if you're talking about something
more ambitious and opinionated (like a framework or platform) then the element
of trust becomes very significant.

------
WhitneyLand
Related: If you’re trying to decide between two projects you want to start is
there any methodical but simple way to determine which might be more useful or
gain more traction?

I don’t mean methodical as in heavy or complex. Example, there’s a short book
on designing good usability into a UX with some really simple and quick
methods ([https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Surgery-Made-Easy-Yourself-
ebo...](https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Surgery-Made-Easy-Yourself-
ebook/dp/B002UXRGNO)).

Isn’t choosing which open source project to invest in a bit like market
research, as is UI/UX design? Maybe that’s stethching an analogy.

The point is I always have strong intuitions and opinions about what project
to invest time in, independent of interest/passion. However, it seems even one
or two more methodical decisions processes could be provide useful data points
to factor in.

If you feel roughly as passionate about two projects, why not try to maximize
your chances all the work will go somewhere?

------
dredmorbius
Good advice.

"Please forward to marketing" is based on one of my highest-rated HN comments.
It starts:

Tell me what your product is. What it does, where it works, how it does it,
what it requires. Is it a physical product (or is it shipped in one), an
interactive application, a Web service, a programming language / tool? As a
reader notes, don't make me use Wikipedia to figure out WTF your company does.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_forward_to_marketing_how_to_present_your/)

------
keredson
You have to get it linked on HN for some shameless self promotion. For
instance, check out my project
[https://github.com/keredson/gnomecast](https://github.com/keredson/gnomecast),
a linux native Chromecast broadcaster for local files, which supports MKV
files, subtitles and 4K! I'm only a few stars shy of 1000! Help me out here
guys! =P

------
aaron-lebo
Is it too much to ask for evidence for any of these claims? More than "trust
me"?

~~~
carlmr
>If you know of good resources for the folks interested in learning more about
marketing or sales, reply with links and I’ll happily RT.

She's crowdsourcing it, very efficient from her perspective.

------
mbrumlow
Is this the new trend?

Somebody relatively new to the tech industry who seems to have time to write
tons of "expert opinions"?

I have seen more and more of these sorts of articles coming on HN, and other
tech orentend places on the internet. I am starting to question if coding is
the right path for anybody doing tech, and simply skip stratit to being a
expert in field that takes decades to master even a small segment.

It's not every single post. The ones I am talking about are ones where they
have worked a hand full of a jobs -- about a year each and yet find themself
speaking at conferences and writing grand articles as if they are somehow a
proven expert in the topic they are talking/writing on, but lack the actual
experience to justify their stance.

To me, the real experts who have something valuable to say are probably too
busy writing code and solving problems. It is not until much later in their
career can they even begin to connect the dots of their mistakes and success
to be able to talk about them.

I think people should be leery of advice given by those with no real track
record to support their views and positions.

Yes, I know this is a bit of rant, but it seems to me that the industry is
starting to look a lot like other industries where a class of people who
actually can DO things are getting left at the sidelines while those who only
talk about things are being trumpited as superstars and leaders of the
industry -- without ever writing any significant amount of code or being a
valued team member.

Please feel free to correct my thought process on this, I am open to other
interpretations of what is going on.

~~~
Jasper_
Stephanie Hurlburt cofounded Binomial, which builds Basis, an image
compression system that's licensed to Netflix because of its quality. She's
very much an expert in her field, and she indeed writes a lot of code.

~~~
mbrumlow
First off, all text available seems to indicate Basis is a WIP. Everything
talks about what it will be, or how it would work, and if GPU manufacturers
did X.

Furthermore Basis seems based off the open source work of Richard Geldreich.
The company seems to be attempt to license this work, or license derivatives
of this work. Richard appears to still be involved.

~~~
Jasper_
Binomial was founded by Stephanie Hurlburt and Rich Geldreich. They both work
on Basis. Basis it not a WIP, it is used by games today (and also Netflix).
All of this information is available on the single page that is their
homepage.

[http://www.binomial.info/](http://www.binomial.info/)

~~~
mbrumlow
> making Basis

I nearly watched/listen to everything posted by this company. Every wording in
in future tense, with the exception to crush which is the free version, that
had been available before the company existed, and was written by Rich
Geldreich. There seems to be no information on the different between the free
crush -- that existed before the founding of the company -- and the Basis,
nothing you can tell from the there website anyways.

There is no doubt that people are using crush, and that even some people did
buy licenses to the crush taken private version. The slides seem to indicate
-- again crush is what is in use, and Basis "will" do x y or z. It seems they
are using crush and basis interchangeably.

But even so, the slides clearly state that Rich wrote the software, and it
seems to do so in such a way to make it clear that it was Rich. But that
doesn't even matter. The point of my comments was not to argue about what
somebody has or has not done.

But none of that actually matters, if I took everything the site said, and
everybody else is saying here at face value the company, the people involved
with maybe the exception of Rich are not industry experts on starting
companies, running companies, or pioneering technology yet.

Simply having a one big named customer is like winning the lottery, so any
advice anybody there would have about that would be a waste on the vast
majority of people trying to start a company.

If you simply dug deeper you would see what Binomial is. The history goes a
bit like this.

1) Hated interviewing (interview processes seemed to be rated if there was a
job offer or not) 2) Hated working with people. 3) Found Rich. 4) Liked
working with Rich, and Rich with Stephanie 5) Both decided they hated working
with people and that people seem to be the problem. 6) Both decide to start
working together as contractors. 7) Rich had crush, which was a successful
piece of software. 8) Idea!!! Take free software and make a for pay software
company out of it to pay the bills!

None of this is really up for speculation, she blogged all about it over the
past 5 years.

Stephanie and Rich are super smart and talented people, and are doing some
cool things.I look forward to seeing if they do become the type of people I
think should be having blog post and articles posted on sites like HN. But as
my main point is scuessess is not a switch, it does not happen instantly. The
company, is too new, and at least the main member of it speaking at
conferences and simply lack a history that suggest that they have consumed
enough of information to really understand how they got to where they are and
if there is anything they could say that would help others.

No I am not trying to stop people from writing about their experiences, but
what I am concerned about is how HN and sites like HN seem to get flooded with
tech and business articles from people who -- again -- seem to have a ton of
time to write about things on a constant bases -- but lack a history around
them that supports their views and thoughts on subject matters.

I have a lot more to say but don't have time time. But I should make it clear
that the issues I have are with the poster, and that stupid site that
concatenates tweets into articles. Things like that I feel are a plight on
getting ture information transfer from those who know to those who don't know.
I expect the bar to be a bit higher.

