Over the last months we’ve been analyzing SourceForge historical data, looking for trends and correlations. We’ve found factors that can help project administrators to get both more downloads and more visibility.
- Project Icons
- Screenshots
- Project Title, blurb, and full description fields
- Feature bullets
- Accurate project categorization
- More frequent releases, and flag latest release
- Rapid turnaround on tickets
All things being equal, projects with these elements are more prone to capture people’s interest than projects without them.
A user visits a Project Summary Page either because they know exactly what they are looking for - in which case you don’t need to provide them with nuts and bolts - or because they are looking for something, and they don’t know if your project solves their problems. In this latter case, you have just a few moments to make a good first impression. Here’s a few tips to help you do just that.
- “Put an alligator over the pocket” (W. Allen, With our Feathers - “The Scrolls” - 1975).When you put a logo on your project, people associate it with certain core values like trust, quality, reliability, experience, etc. If you don’t believe it, read Woody Allen’s “put an alligator” and learn how Lacoste eventually became famous!
Read the full article at SourceForge blog.
I asked Giuseppe Maxia, formerly MySQL Community Team Lead and now Director of QA at Tungsten, to tell us more about his personal experience with community awards.
Giuseppe, you have been awarded twice as community contributor, in 2006 and in 2011. What’s the difference and what did you learn from 2006? Continue reading ‘Open Source Community Awards, A Personal Perspective’
Outercurve - the open source foundation previously known as CodePlex foundation (coverage) - just announced that the new project Chemistry Add-In for Word has been added to Foundation’s Research Accelerators Gallery.
Paula Hunter, Executive Director at the Outercurve Foundation, told me more about galleries and to who are they aimed.
Continue reading ‘Open Source Foundations: OuterCurve’s Model’
The Linux Foundation report about who writes Linux is always a worth reading, especially if you take a moment to look back at 2009 report and see how things are changed.
It is interesting to compare relative increments to learn more about how changed the attitude of the usual suspects to Linux and how newcomers are doing. Continue reading ‘Who Backs Linux, Some Numbers in Perspective’
The 451 Group kindly provided me with a copy of their latest report “Control & Community“, enlisting facts, figures and findings around open source communities and how to interact with them.
Continue reading ‘Open Source Communities: Control & Community Report (The 451 Group)’
Michael Meeks, famous hacker and LibreOffice advocate, replied to my earlier post giving his perspectives on many different subjects related to LibreOffice development.
Having read his views with great attention - and keeping in mind his long coding experience with OpenOffice.org, as well as his ability to dig deep into complex subjects like copyright assignment – I want to take a chance to go deeper into some points.
Continue reading ‘The Unsaid Document Foundation (talkbacks)’
The will be Document Foundation is out from a month, and it is now time to share some thoughts about past, present and future actions taken around subjects like copyright, the legal and governance structure and the code development process.
Continue reading ‘The Unsaid Document Foundation’
The second Innovators barcamp - a meet-up organized by the Italian innovators group to pass from talking about innovation to do it in and for public administrations - was the perfect venue to share some ideas about “Open Source & Multi-sided Markets“.
My ignite talk was around on one of the most important value of open source, if not the only one that makes open source a “different thing”: the community. Having had the opportunity to share my thoughts with over 100 attendees in a bare 5 minutes talk, I want here to talk deeper about why the community matters, focusing on its different constituents and their relative interests.
Continue reading ‘The Quintessence of Open Source’
The Free Software Foundation announced an alternative OpenOffice.org extensions repository, which will list only extensions released under free software licenses. Before that the FSF asked the OpenOffice.org Community Council to list only free software extensions or to provide a second independent listing, but the OOo council responded negatively.
Are two better than one?
Black Duck few days ago announced its membership in Open Health Tools (OHT), an organization dedicated to open source health-care IT systems aiming at the creation of an open source eclipse-like ecosystem.
Peter Vescuso, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, told me more about this Black Duck initiative. Continue reading ‘Open Source Health Care: Black Duck joins OHT’
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