Marketing your open source project

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Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier

If your project sucks, no amount of marketing effort will make it successful.

90% of the projects on SF are "benign neglect" projects.

You can wait for users to stumble on your neglected page, but I don't recommend it.

No amount of money can build real community.

Spread the word and make a quick buck at the same time by writing about your project.

Have a really good web page goes very far. Many projects have web pages that look like Myspace threw up.

Don't forget your users. Non-develoeprs are vital to projects

  • Docs
  • Artwork
  • PR & marketing
  • Helping new users

Do not hide code in a repository. Always make it available as a tarball.

  • Bad: Source repo only
  • Better: Source tarball
  • Sweet: Distro-specific packages
  • For the win: VM downloads

Don't spam mail, but we do want to know when a project is updated.

Users & organizations need a reliable roadmap.

Work with the press

  • Put out press releases
  • Have a dedicated PR contact
  • Do interviews
  • Establish relationships with reports who cover your beet
  • Never ever flame. Don't fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.
  • http://www.netpress.org/careandfeeding.html

Regular users shold be involved in nearly every stage of a project -- design, testing, documentation. Don't hyperfocus on developers.

Get to know your users

  • What do you know about them?
  • Too many open source projects lack the stats to make good decisions
  • Fedora is doing good work here


QUESTIONS: Should I just write to linux.com and say "Hey I want to write about...."

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