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Is there a reason not to use wordpress and develop your own blogging system?
Same goes with Durpal and our own CMS.
I am wondering since my marketing women disagrees with me that we should develop our own in house solutions because there are better solutions. She also says that we might even loose time and money on it since it is our responsibility to maintain it and solve bugs and we can't throw it on wordpress' dev team for example.
I don't want to invest time in something that might not worth it but I would really like to make more money.
Does it depend on the site's scale and visitors?
What are the factors of choosing one over anohter?
There's rarely a right answer to this fight. It's a question that has raged on since software was sold "off the shelf". Many pros are also cons.
Pro 3rd-party:
They cover a vast number of features
They (hopefully) look after security
Open source means other people can fix your platform.
You get improvements without having to work on your own platform
They have existed a lot longer than your newly conceived project. A lot bugs have been driven out.
Anti 3rd-party:
They don't have all the answers for every project
By extension, it may take you longer to hack in what you need than it would take to just start afresh
Unless you're using it exactly as intended, performance isn't going to be as good as it could be with a custom-built
Larger target for hackers and script kiddies
As they're older, they can be locked (via legacy support) into some bad habits (Drupal and Wordpress certainly have enough)
So if you're doing a blog, unless there are features or platform issues, I'd seriously consider WordPress. If you only needed a very simple blog attached to a much larger system that was completely non-blog, I'd probably write my own as part of that system.
Just to blur the lines, the modern frameworks (Cake, Symphony, Django, Ruby, etc) handle lots of the security, database, usability and let you develop the application without having to worry too much about anything. You get exactly what you want and you get it fast but it probably won't be as polished (eg for blogging) as WordPress.
Good question, +1 :)
My Opinion:
Whatever the scenario, if there is a solution out there that meets your needs, it's open source and your team as the knowledge to make any specific change it might need to meet your purpose, it is probably a good choice to use it. It will save you time(time is money) that you could use to other tasks.
From a developer perspective, it is way more appealing to create something from scratch.
You just have to keep in mind that this is not something you are doing as hobbie, you need to have a product out there as fast as possible, with as few errors as possible, with all the features that the users would expect.
Really it comes down to this:
How much time/money would it require to roll your own?
Does the open source solution you're considering have the features you need (and do they work*)?
How would maintenance of the two solutions compare?
Some "common" answers:
A lot, particularly if you need (or want) a lot of features.
Most of the mature systems have some kind of plugin system and heaps of functionality. Generally if you want it they got it, perhaps some minor tweaks would be necessary.
In-house code may need some time to mature, after this they will probably be about the same. If in-house code is low on features then it may be easier to maintain.
She also says that we might even loose time and money on it since it is our responsibility to maintain it and solve bugs
How is that worse than an in-house solution exactly?
This really depends on your business model.
If you are selling services using an existing open source product can make a lot of sense. (And by the way, you probably can get the wordpress people to work for you - you'll have to pay of course, but you also have to pay your in-house team)
If this blogging system is only for your own usage it makes even more sense to use an existing solution, and the open source solutions stand out in that area because there are a lot of people available that could code some custom solutions for you.
Only if you are actually selling the software the situation with open source becomes a bit harder to get a grip on money-wise.
Our host Joel Spolsky has written an interesting article on this subject.
Yes, there are a lot of reasons. Being open-source doesn't mean it'll automatically be well written.
However, sometimes it really fits your business model because you need to ship something fast, usable, not too specific in requirements and already tested by millions of people. In this case, doesn't make sense to produce something in house.
If you want to convince her of using Wordpress instead of building one, show the arguments on time and money that would be spent in trying to write from scratch instead of using an open source solution. Don't forget to show some live examples from big companies that are using Wordpress (check the official website).
For most companies, developing your own blogging solution is the equivalent of developing your own version of the machine that mixes the tarmac to make the road that leads to your office.
The only exception is if you want to get into the road-building business. But that's a hard and competitive business, an established stable market with a lot of capital requirements, not something to wander into.
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I know this is a general question, but I'd like to hear other people's opinion about our case:
I work in a small company. Our main development tool is PowerBuilder, which is a very limited IDE with a shrinking community. We've created some tools, which we use internally to solve a certain needs. They have neither been properly designed nor properly tested, and are not in production quality. OTOH, they do save us quite some time, and might help others as well. I'm sure other companies have the same kind of tools, and was wondering how common a practice is it to share them with others. As I see it -
The pros:
Good karma
More attention to our website
Perhaps getting fixes and improvements from others
The cons:
Without investing more development, the tools might make us look bad
Publishing of the code requires some effort
Some of the tools might be too specialized for our needs
The whole effort might go unnoticed given the shrinking community
Have you or your company ever contributed such tools, or used such tools developed by others? Is it worth the effort?
EDIT:
For those how wondered, the tools I had in mind include -
A tool that makes using SourceSafe easier, by listing objects that are checked out to the current user or others, backing up checked-out objects, and reconstructing PBGs.
A tool that recognizes PB controls at runtime, like Spy++ does (requires some infrastructure at the target app).
PBNI wrapper for SQLite (in-process access, no ODBC).
An SQL client, text measurement tool etc.
"Open source" originally meant you published a tool, and you made the source available. Because of some projects that expected, and in some cases through licenses demanded that changes to the source code be resubmitted for sharing, "open source" now quite often adds the concept of collaborative development to the mix. I did (or attempt to do) the latter; allow me to share.
There are magnitudes of difference between the effort associated with source available and collaborative development open source.
Leadership: You need to tell people the who, what, where, when, why and how of changes. And very possibly, you'll need to diplomatically poke and prod your volunteers. You may need to define the vision and prioritize goals of the project, and then enforce them when someone tries to take things another way. And, unless you only want people to come across your tool through serendipity, you'll have to advertise, running that very thin line (even thinner on the Internet) between attention-getting and gaudy. If the project is going to implement the concept of meritocracy, as many open source proponents say should happen, then someone will have to judge people's accomplishments and dole out the rights and responsibilities appropriately.
Work flow: I haven't done an exhaustive search by any stretch of the imagination, but I have yet to see a collaborative development platform that did all the things I needed. Part of the point of open source collaborative development is that the quantity involved in code review will cover any potential issues in quality of code submissions; I haven't seen a free tool integrated into a collaborative development platform that helped manage that cleanly yet (e.g. counting code reviews; auto-promoting after x reviews). We had to handle that, hacking manual methods into the existing tools. Probably at some point you'll have to define a version and create a build. Then there's the grunt tasks like documentation. (Ever try to release a new version of something free without release notes? The furor!! grin)
PB-specific issues: PowerBuilder is a commercial tool, and while there are cheap versions available, there are not free versions. The DRM added to PB11 has probably reduced or eliminated piracy that developers were probably doing to take copies of their office PB home, and while PB11 and later have a dual license policy that would allow developers to take home a copy legally (with permission and cooperation of the original license owners to create a second license), I don't see a lot doing it. (No scientific study, that's just what I see.) That cuts down a lot of potential collaboration, even from enthusiasts. Issues of compatibility of code between versions of PowerBuilder, plus the fact that very few people will own every version, will limit again your list of potential contributors.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see more collaborative development open source in the PowerBuilder community. I'd love to know how to work out the issues myself, and I have an effort in the works to see if I can make a new model work. (My first effort to follow the popular model failed miserably, IMHO.)
Is there a reason to feel badly about firing a ZIP file up to the web and forgetting it? I don't know. Is there any more pride or embarrassment in a 4 year old ZIP file as opposed to a SourceForge project whose last contribution 3 1/2 years ago was a post "Where the heck is everyone?" There is a reason why Sybase CodeXchange devolved from a collaborative development platform to a source available platform: next to no one was using the collaborative development features. If you source available open source your code, you'll have plenty of company.
BTW, CodeXchange may be an answer to your concern about visibility to the PowerBuilder community, although you'll lose the web site traffic. The PowerBuilder Web Ring is another, significantly less effective, method to help your visibility that keeps traffic on your web site, but it demands a navigation bar on the target page on your site. CodeXchange may also be a way to get over your concerns about code quality and narrowness of purpose of what you have to share. grin
What should you do? Don't underestimate the effort with a collaborative development sharing, but don't let it stop you from a source available sharing.
Good luck,
Terry.
You can probably discount one of your cons: Anyone interested enough in this kind of tool to be evaluating your offering is unlikely to be writing Company X are teh suxors on your feedback form; rather if they find some deficiency in what you have put out there, you are likely to get helpful bug reports or even patches.
If you can get your company to buy off on contributing to the community then I would go for it. it is always worth the effort to give back a little bit and this would definitely be a good way to get some of your tools out to the public and improved upon by the community.
As far as the cons go, I wouldn't worry too much about the criticism, it can only help you guys improve the next product you deliver and people will respect you from learning from your mistakes, nobody is perfect.
Even if your effort goes unnoticed by your shrinking community, future employees and clients will see that you are contributing outside of the company and may help with your reputation with them.
I think the pros far outweigh the cons on this one.
In short: go for it. I doubt there's little to lose, but much to gain.
The pros:
**Good karma*
never a bad thing to have.
**More attention to our website*
possibly a con if your code is really bad :)
**Perhaps getting fixes and improvements from others*
this is possibly the best thing you get from open-sourcing your code. Its all about sharing and helping each other, you get to use other's code, they get to use yours and everyone's gained from the trade.
The cons:
**Without investing more development, the tools might make us look bad*
I'd search through to remove dodgy/rude/stupid comments, tidy up the formatting etc.
**Publishing of the code requires some effort*
requires barely any effort - set up an account in Sourceforge, create a SVN repo there and import your code. Then create a binary package (a zip file will do) and release it using the website. Might take you an hour, if you stop to read all the documentation.
**Some of the tools might be too specialized for our needs*
You could set the whole lot up as a group - eg PowerBuilder Tools, then people who see the really specialised tools won't have wasted their time getting them, they'll still have the 'more readily useful' tools.
**The whole effort might go unnoticed given the shrinking community*
Possibly, but then there's really no reason not to release the code. If you don't it may get completely lost to everyone when/if you change development tools.
Publishing your source is a great way to get feedback. If you look bad because of it, that's ok. Just be willing to fix the problem. If you want help with your improvements I can't think of a better way than asking for help.
By the way, plenty of open source projects can be credited with the growth of communities that were previously shrinking.
I think you've done a good job of identifying the pros and cons. And it's probably true that the pros will outweigh the cons. If no one likes the utilities and does nothing to or with them, then you've lost nothing really; bad code shouldn't scare experienced developers (most experienced developers, especially PB ones, have seen their share of legacy code). If even one person benefits, then you get the karma, eh?
If you proceed to submit your tools to the open source community, do as you have here, and admit up front that the tools are not polished. This may deter some from even looking at them, however, if they are at least functional and can be easily modified, then they still represent a head-start for any prospective beneficiaries. As a PB user myself, I would be curious to know more about free tools that can give us an edge in productivity.
Have you looked into Sybase CodeExchange? They have some open-source PB things there, including the PowerBuilder Foundation Class framework.
I just saw your response to my question - amazing that you have developed something similiar already. :-)
Regarding your question: the company I work for has a specific section on the web site where tools which we used internally and/or simple solutions (or code snippets) which customers frequently ask for are published. The license of these offerings is very liberal as well, I think it qualifies as open source.
In your particular case, I'm fairly interested in the Spy++-like application you talked about since I was looking for (and/or trying to develop) something like that myself.
I'm aiming for something which doesn't require any infrastructure in the target application, but so far I'd be happy to play with anything which works, even if it requires modifications to the applications. I'm just not familiar enough with the PowerBuilder API yet to make a judgement on whether this is possible without modifiying the target application.
As I mentioned, I already developed similiar Spy-like applications for ordinary Windows applications as well as managed code applications (which require interaction with the VM to query the state of the object tree), so my hope is that I'll be able to find a solution which does not require any target infrastructure.
Do you have the source code up somewhere already? It doesn't need to be compileable, I'd just be happy to look how you did it in principle so that I can (hopefully) derive something from it which solves my particular problem. In case you didn't upload the source code yet, maybe you can provide some email address which I can use to contact you privately? I tried looking for something on your profile, but so far - no luck. :-)
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For an university project on usability I'm looking for an open source project that is useful but hardly usable. My group would do a complete usability review and give recommendations over a period of approximately 3 months.
Of course this is no purely altruistic idea and the best-case-scenario would be:
Our recommendations get implemented thus we can include an review of the improved version in our paper.
Are such one-shot usability reviews useful for (and wanted by) the average developer or are they just "better than nothing".
Do you know (actively developed) projects with poor usability that we could contribute to?
Besides sourceforge's "Help Wanted" and openusability.org do you know where to turn to?
Regards,
FGK
Update:
We are looking primarily for an end-user application because we want to include things like hallway testing with potential users.
(Thanks to Pekka Gaiser for raising the question)
2nd update: accepted answer:
Thank you all for your help. I think we'll go for libpurple and its graphical incarnations. The Linux and Windows versions of pidgin are truly a mess... :-)
I would suggest the GIMP - it's a very functional photoshop alternative, but it's not without its confusions...
Instead of choosing to help a project that is already bad, why not look at something heavily used?
There are many web based applications that may (or may not) benefit from a usability review - I'm thinking of things like Wordpress (in fact that's pretty much what I'm thinking of purely because I use it a lot).
It would be interesting to see what a group of "experts" think about Wordpress and how they would improve the UI - purely because any improvements made have the potential of helping/improving the experience for vast numbers of people.
Whether or not the Wordpress team specifically would implement any of your suggestions or changes is an unknown but even having a discussion and recommendations is most likely beneficial to the community.
Perhaps take a selection of projects (again I'm thinking web based because web usability is more defined [in my mind] - CMS/Blogging Software: Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress? Or E-Commerce applications? Forums?
Send out some "feeler" messages to the projects mailing lists to try and get an idea of whether or not they'd be open to the idea of help. I can't imagine many projects would be against the idea? Actually implementing changes may well be more difficult.
If you don't want to look at web applications maybe look at some of the "media" apps. Boxee or XBMC generally or Miro.
None of the projects I've mentioned are neccesarily bad (usability wise) but they're things I'm interested in so, from a slightly selfish point of view, it'd be beneficial to me (and I think a chunk of others) if you looked at something with a large user base.
Anyway, good luck.
Please, please, choose Audacity! That UI could be improved so much it's not funny...
How about Pidgin? It's a relatively popular open source project (I use it all the time) that is fraught with (in my opinion anyway) lots of usability mistakes, both minor and significant.
Usability reviews are ALWAYS useful, as well as being better than nothing.
Do I know actively developed open source projects with poor usability? can fish be shot in a barrel? :D look at the big projects. there's always lots of controversy about them (especially their versions for osx, since osx users tend to have a higher standard). I'd suggest gimp as the prodigal one, but I hear they're making great strides there. or maybe pidgin? I use the os x version (Adium) and the windows one and the contrast is brutal.
that said, the big projects probably won't really care about your input. some of the devs might pay attention, but as a whole, you probably wont steer that titanic unless they've already been spending a lot of time talking about this.
my advice? go on an ubuntu forum and ask the users there what they hate the most about their software. that'll give you good feedback because ubuntu is heavily used, which generally means there's going to be a conversation about this.
either way, if you want to see your recommendations implemented, you'll have to open up a dialog with the devs. you'll need at least one that believes in your cause to implement your thoughts (it may not be merged into the main trunk, but it'll at least be implemented in his branch)
good luck!
I have no idea whether they'd accept your input, but I think it would be interesting to compare KDE version 3 and 4. As a developer, I find version 4 all but unusable (and am switching to Gnome as a result). However, for the vast majority of users, their "award-winning" changes may have been an actual improvement.
If you want to see your changes implemented, be really sure to approach only projects with a high activity rate and people prepared to invest some serious time - you will need very motivated developers if you want to see (possibly fundamental) changes implemented. No matter which project you choose, be prepared for a lot of sometimes tooth-grinding work.
When thinking about web apps, Wordpress comes to mind. The back-end is crap (even though a lot of effort is being put in it), I hear people everywhere complaining about it. It is a very big name which is good for you and the probability to see suggestions actually implemented.
I recommend RIDE -- and IDE for developing robot framework tests. This tool is fairly young and has many classic mistakes, a few good features, and some good ideas with weak implementations. I think it would make an excellent candidate for a usability review.
I make this suggestion not because I want to point out the flaws in RIDE (after all, I was a developer on that project for a short period of time so it might show off some of my flaws), but because I think a) it has the potential for the study to help improve the product, and b) I think the tool makes some common mistakes you and your group could learn from.
It also has the advantage of being cross platform, so it should be suitable no matter what platform you're interested in.
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I've got a framework for PHP that I've developed for about 3 weeks total, but it's quite ready to be released ... if I choose to do so. In this economy I cannot just take what I have done and release it for free and feel just (because I need the money it could garner), and yet I am torn by my appreciation for open source projects. I want to eat and I want to share as open source. I'm sure some understand my conundrum right off the bat.
As an example of the pros and cons of my project, here's a very quick comparison against CodeIgniter. My framework is 10x faster at the base speed (blank CI versus the basic demo of mine) and gets upto 20-30x faster elsewhere. Yet, my framework lacks many things that CI has like advanced routing (with regex, or named parameters) and ORM. If I was to compare it to a similar framework in another language, I'd call my work the Sinatra, or Ramaze, of PHP.
I need some extra income. This is a flat-out fact, and yet I don't want it to be a strictly commercial project.
I like open source, and I want to contribute my own work. Yes, I know frameworks for PHP are a dime a dozen, but I think I might have something here. So, I don't want to let my work go entirely.
So I remain torn. Licensing can help, but only when people are honest. I don't believe in putting "DRM" into my software. Yet, I don't have enough features to say, "If you donate/pay you'll get X other features!" and make a benefit to this.
How do I (can I) sell this? How do I promote it and release it as open-source for free uses? How do I license my work adequately for these purposes?
What is your general policy or tips for projects like this? Especially when you want a cut of the profit someone would get using your project commercially. What licenses, restrictions, etc, do you think would work in this model?
I appreciate any answers which might help me to figure out what to do.
Edit:
To clarify on what I'm thinking, let me add this: this is my pet project. It's something that I made because I felt its lack in the market of PHP frameworks, and have been maintaining it for my own works. But, unlike most my work, I would really like to make this public. I want people to see it, try it, use it, and work with it.
However, I've put in enough off-hours time into this for it to be just given away. I appreciate the open source model, but I don't see how I can just donate some 80+ hours of work for free for a speculative increase in my "reputation" within the software world. PHP frameworks are a dime a dozen and I think I've made a good one, but I'm sure there are just as many others who've done the same. Mine may be better, but it's got an equal or greater chance of being average to poor.
I'd love to release my pet project to the world under an open source license. But, I'd rather someone not take my work and make software that nets some $30k in profits, and not give me a small slice of it. I'm not being greedy--I wouldn't care if it were only $100 for a profit that large.
I am simply trying to figure out how, when, or if I even should, monetize the work that I've done for myself.
I feel that if you actually believe you have started something big, release it to the open source world. If it get's adopted and becomes a standard for many, this in itself will open many more profit making opportunities for you as the creator/inventor. The biggest potential for you to make big money (in my opinion) is to be a major player/founder of a big initiative.
To be absolutely frank, you probably have an overinflated idea of how good your framework is and how ready it is to be released (in any form).
Firstly, you said it took you three weeks to develop. Well if you can do it in three weeks, so can a bunch of other people and that's a fact.
Secondly, release of a commercial product would require having a license (count on a lawyer for this one), writing documentation, building a Website to promote the product, having some means of payment, getting a suitable legal structure to sell software, insurances (generally speaking you'd need some sort of professional indemnity--open source is generally provided without indemnity; commercial software is different), bookkeeping, accounting and so on.
Third, it's PHP so source code protection will be an issue. My advice would be to treat this as a social rather than technical problem, meaning if someone is going to steal your software, there's not a whole lot you can do. More to the point, don't hurt (or even inconvenience) your legitimate users for fear of pirates and thieves.
Lastly, one of the advantages of open source is that you can get community effort in development. You lose that as soon as you go commercial. Even if you go dual license, you can't take someone's GPLed (for example) code contribution and release it under a commercial license.
You may need money but selling software is generally a terrible way of doing it. A longer term view would be to have you build a profile and a name for yourself by people adopting your framework and the best way to make that happen is for it to be open source. Linux may be free but I can guarantee you Linus Torvalds earns a healthy income from his efforts.
If the framework is indeed good, and sees a minimum adoption after it is released, you might be able to land some PHP consulting work.
For me the main problem with new software is credibility - it might be the best software yet, but if no one is using it and if reviews are nowhere to be found, I don't want to be a guinea pig. Making money from commercial software can be very hard if you don't find customers early on...
You could try the QT model: Dual-license you framework with a free copyleft license (you'll have to check which one is appropriate) and a paid-for commercial license.
You better choose dual licence.
Its similer to MySQL.
The best way may be to ask for donations. I would definitely donate if I liked your framework.
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We have a series of closed source applications and libraries, for which we think it would make sense opening up the source code.
What has been blocking us, so far, is the effort needed to clean up the code base and documenting the source before opening up.
We want to open up the source only if we have a reasonable chance of the projects being successful -- i.e. having contributors. We are convinced that the code would be interesting to a large base of developers.
Which factors, excluding the "interestingness" and "usefulness" of the project, determine the success of an open source project?
Examples:
Cleanliness of code
Availability of source code comments
Fully or partially documented APIs
Choice of license (GPL vs. LGPL vs. BSD, etc...)
Choice of public repository
Investment in a public website
There are a several things which dominate the successfulness of code. All of these must be achieved for the slightest chance of adoption.
Market - There must be a market for your open source project. If your project is a orange juicer in space, I doubt that you'll be very successful. You must make sure your project gets a large adoption amongst users and developers. It is twice as likely to succeed if you can get other corporations to adopt it as well.
Documentation - As you touched on earlier documentation is key. Amongst this documentation is commented code, architectural decisions, and API notes. Even if your documentation contains bugs, or bugs about your software it is ok. Remember, transparency is key.
Freedom - You must allow your code to be "free" - by this I mean free as in speech, not as in beer. If you have a feeling your market is being a library for other corporations a BSD license is optimal. If your piece of software is going to run on desktops then GPL is your choice.
Transparency - You must write software in a transparent environment. Once you go open source there is no hidden secrets. You must explain everything you do, and what you are doing. This will piss off developers like no other
Developer Community - A strong developer community is required. This must be existing. Only about 5% of users contribute back to the project. If someone notices there haven't been any releases for a year they wont think "Wow, this piece of software is done," they will think "developers must of dumped it." Keep your developers working on it, even if it means they are costing you money.
Communications - You must make sure you community is able to communicate. They must be able to file bugs, discuss workarounds, and publish patches. Without feedback, it is pointless to opensource the project
Availability - Making your code easy to get is necessary, even if it means pissing off lawyers. You have to make sure your project is easy to download, and utilize. You don't want the user to have to jump through 18 nag screens and sign a contract in order to do this. You have to make things simple, and clean
I think that the single most important factor is the number of users that are using your project.
Otherwise its just a really well written, usefull and well documented bunch of stuff that sits on a server not doing very much...
To acquire contributors, you first need users, then you need some incompleteness. You need to trigger the "This is cool, but I really wish it had this or was different in this way." If you are missing an obvious feature, it's extremely likely a user will become a contributor to add it.
The most important thing is that the program be good. If its not good, nobody will use it. You cannot hope that the chicken-and-egg will reverse and that people will take it for granted until it becomes good.
Of course, "good" merely means "better than any other practical option for a significant number of people," it doesn't mean that its strictly the best, only that it has some features that make it, for many people, better than other options. Sometimes the program has no equivalent anywhere else, in which case there's almost no requirement in this regard.
When a program is good, people will use it. Obviously, it has to have a market among users--a good program that does something nobody wants isn't really good no matter how well its designed. One could make a point about marketing, but truly good products, up to a point, have a tendency to market themselves. Its much harder to promote something that isn't good, so clearly one's first priority should be the product itself, not promoting the product.
The real question then is--how do you make it good? And the answer to that is a dedicated, skilled development team. One person can rarely create a good product on their own; even if they're far better than the other developers, multiple perspectives has an incredibly useful effect on the project. This is why having corporate sponsors is so useful--it puts other developers' (from the corporation) minds on the problem to give their own opinion. This is especially useful in the case that developing the program requires significant expertise that isn't commonly available in the community.
Of course, I'm saying this all from experience. I'm one of the main developers on x264 (currently the most active one), one of the most popular video encoders. We have two main developers, various minor developers in the community that contribute patches, and corporate sponsorship from Joost (Gabriel Bouvigne, who maintains ratecontrol algorithms), from Avail Media (who I work for sometimes on contract and who are currently hiring coders on contract to add MBAFF interlacing support), and from a few others that pop up from time to time.
One good developer doesn't make a project--many good developers do. And the end result of this is a program that encodes video faster and at a far better quality than most commercial competitors, hardware or software, even those with utterly enormous development budgets.
In looking at these issues you might be interested in checking out the online version of a course on open source at UC Berkeley, called Open Source Development and Distribution of Digital Information: Technical, Economic, Social, and Legal Perspectives. It’s co-taught by Mitch Kapur (Lotus founder) and Paula Samuelson, a law school professor. I have a long commute and put the audio of the course on my iPod last year – they talk a lot about what works, what doesn’t and why, from a very broad (though obviously academic) perspective.
Books have been written on the subject. In fact, you can find a free book here: producing open source software
Really, I think the answer is 'how you run the project'.
All of your examples matter, yes, but the key things are how the interaction between developers is managed, how patches etc are handled/accepted, who's 'in charge' and how they handle that responsibility, and so on and so forth.
Compare and contrast (the history isn't hard to track down!) the management of the development of Class::DBI and DBIx::Class in Perl.
I was just reading tonight an excellent post on the usability aspect of successful vs unsuccessful open source projects.
Excerpt:
A lot of bandwidth has been wasted arguing over the lack of usability in open-source software/free software (henceforth “OSS”). The debate continues at this moment on blogs, forums, and Slashdot comment threads. Some people say that bad usability is endemic to the entire OSS world, while others say that OSS usability is great but that the real problem is the closed-minded users who expect every program to clone Microsoft. Some people contend that UI problems are temporary growing pains, while others say that the OSS development model systematically produces bad UI. Some people even argue that the GPL indirectly rewards software that’s difficult to use! (For the record, I disagree.)
http://humanized.com/weblog/2007/10/05/make_oss_humane/
Just open-source it. Most probably, nobody will start contributing yet. But at least you can write on the press-releases that your product is GPL or whatever.
The first step is that people start using it...
And maybe then, after users get comfortable, they will start contributing.
Everyone's answers have been good so far, but there's one thing missing and that's good oversight. Nothing kills an open source project faster than not having some sort of project management. Not to tell people what to do so much as to just add some structure and tasking for the developers you are hoping to attract.
Disorganized projects fall apart fast. It's not a bird you just let go and watch it fly away.