
Ask HN: Attributes of a successful Open Source project? - Sean-Der
I have a small Open Source project https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Sean-Der&#x2F;fail2web and would love to see it succeed. For me that means the code is clean, users are not frustrated and contributors can easily improve it.<p>What are some things that you like to see in an Open Source either as user or contributor? On that same note what are the things that instantly make you avoid a project? I have also thought about<p>* A official IRC channel on Freenode, for support and people can ask me questions directly.<p>* Buy a domain and give some basic documentation and images (gh-pages)<p>* A public mailing list so I can have release announcements<p>I am getting to the point where the code is mature enough for me, so I want to assure that the project doesn&#x27;t stagnate. Perhaps I am trying to artificially give the project more life than it warrants?<p>thanks
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webmaven
Buying a domain may be overkill for most projects. Simply using a subdomain
somewhere (such as a projectname.github.io or projectname.readthedocs.com) is
likely sufficient.

By far the greatest determinant of success for a project are productive and
engaged developer and user communities, and open lines of communication
between these groups (where they are different).

 _Which_ communications channels are most important for _your_ project(s) is
something that can't be reduced to simple advice, and will change over time in
any case. Try one at a time, invest more into the ones that have the most
engagement, and smooth the speed-bumps wherever you can.

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higherpurpose
1) A forum (you can use this:
[http://www.discourse.org/](http://www.discourse.org/)) or subreddit where
users can complain about issues or suggest features. Or both.

2) You could try UserVoice for feature request voting, too.

I've been following an open source project myself as a user. They use all 3 of
these suggestions, and I've been keeping up to date on them.

Probably not as necessary, but if you think it can work for you, you can do a
blog, too, for bigger version announcements or longer posts and so on.

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gprasanth
My Favorite..
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar#Le...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar#Lessons_for_creating_good_open_source_software)

