Where to look for open source project developer?

5    24 Jul 2015 05:05 by u/leixiaotie

Let's say that I have an idea for a small open source project. I can and have developed it, but under C#, which is not open source. It will later have problem with license so I don't want to risk it.

Now, how/where can I share the idea to the community and looking for someone who maybe will be interested and willing to develop it in other open-source language, such as java?

EDIT 2015-07-26:

20 comments

1 u/ITW 24 Jul 2015 16:31

So.. you are good to release whatever with Visual Studio Community (free) until you make like a million dollars or so off of whatever you made. You can look into the license but it's basically by the time you violate the license you will probably have gotten an MSDN subscription anyway and it wont matter.

1 u/leixiaotie [OP] 26 Jul 2015 17:13

At first this seems like a bad, ignorant answer. But the sad truth is it is true :)

0 u/ITW 27 Jul 2015 15:15

scratches neck You got that upvote man?

0 u/varialus 24 Jul 2015 05:17

Have you thought about the Go programming language? It's real easy to learn and it's got a nice permissive open source license rather than a restrictive copyleft license like Java. As for where to find someone to work on it, that's gonna depend on how cool a project it is. Lots of good discussion happens over at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/golang-nuts and you may be able to find some people who might be interested there, but you're probably not gonna find someone who's gonna want to just do the transition themselves. Get something working, then announce it or ask whether anybody would be willing to review your code. If you have trouble along the way, ask questions and such. If there's interest, they'll help. If not, then maybe not.

1 u/leixiaotie [OP] 24 Jul 2015 05:26

Thanks for feedback!

Haven't tried any new languages after expertise with C#. Looks like in next several months I want to begin learning new one. I have choices between Lisp, Python, Haskell, Ruby. Preferably Lisp since it's said to be most powerful. Or Python since it's seems popular.

Haven't really consider Go until now. Could you ELI5 me what's good about Go and how it stand between those open-source language?

Edit: add Python

0 u/varialus 24 Jul 2015 05:57

It kind of feels like a mix between C and Python with some pretty sweet native concurrency. It has a "less is more" philosophy which keeps the language small and concise. Programs are generally compiled into static executables that include a small runtime that does garbage collection. Static executables make deployment easy because they don't need any dynamic library dependencies. It's still a pretty new language, but it has a stable feature set and a great community that is growing fast. It's not perfect, but it's far and away my favorite programming language. Other languages have their own strengths and weaknesses, but as far as learning it goes, I think it'd be much easier to learn than those other languages that you mentioned. Here are a few resources for learning it.

Online Interactive Tour: https://tour.golang.org/welcome/1

Free Online Book for Beginners: https://www.golang-book.com/books/intro

Really Well Written Introduction: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Phrasebook-Developers-Library/dp/0321817141

Good Reference for Language Details: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Go-Creating-Applications-Developers/dp/0321774639

0 u/Master_Foo 24 Jul 2015 05:46

Finding people to do it is easy. Providing the incentive is the hard part.

Give me enough incentive and I'll gladly develop it for you.

0 u/leixiaotie [OP] 24 Jul 2015 06:33

IMO it's as easy as put them under ODesk/Upwork if the capital is easy part here. I can't say that there is any incentive that I can give. However, given the fact that the final product itself can be beneficial to the programmers itself, is it enough incentive?

0 u/Master_Foo 24 Jul 2015 07:35

My advice then, would be to find a business which uses / values this tool and ask them to sponsor your project.

  • Either sponsor you with money to pay a developer.

  • Or preferably, ask them to lend 10% of one of their developer's time to contributing on your project.

Just say something like, "I am happy that you are using my tool and would like to continue to develop it for your use. Can we talk about sponsorship?"

In this way, it is win-win for both you and the business which uses your tool.

0 u/Master_Foo 24 Jul 2015 07:46

Another thought continuing from my last post.

Find people who use and value your tool and provide incentive for them to donate. For instance, poll you user base on features they'd like to have implemented. Then provide a bounty program in which they can donate towards this feature.

So, for instance, you find that a certain % of users want XYZ feature. (Making it open source, etc). You determine it is going to cost $ABC to pay a programmer to do this. When you talk to the people who use your tool about feature XYZ refer them to the donation page, which is kind of like kickstarter, showing how much is needed and how much has been donated.

1 u/TheFutureIsBright 24 Jul 2015 09:23

Another thought would be, just open the source code, do not distribute binaries. If other programmers find the functionality appealing, you may see a spontaneous port to other languages. In this case, the only incentive would be that you provide programmers with source code.

1 u/leixiaotie [OP] 26 Jul 2015 17:14

Nice advice. Looks like I try to use this path though.

0 u/leixiaotie [OP] 24 Jul 2015 19:01

Woah the answers here are awesome and many. Tomorrow I'll try to respond each one and summarize them!