Does an open source project need a news group?

Question

I open-sourced a tool I created to scratch an itch. From the downloads for the installer on the project page I can see I'm not the only one interested. About 5 people seem to have upgraded from the previous version. But I know next to nothing about them.

Do I need a news group? A mailing list? Or how would you start to build a (little) community?

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 19 '10 at 08:11

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It mainly depend what kind of interaction you want with them.

With such a few people the mailing list or a news group looks the most appropriate.

A forum with such a small number of people is generally not very active. (From other people it may looks like an inactive project).

answered Mar 19 '10 at 08:11

Phong

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Thank you. These are good points. – Daren Thomas Mar 19 '10 at 08:57

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 19 '10 at 08:10

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If you have webhosting, the simplest to set up is an online forum or bulletin board (e.g. phpBB, vBulletin.) I used to an open-source tool for Nagios and shamelessly used their mailing lists for support, and people started e-mailing me directly using my e-mail address from my posts.

I see you're hosting on Google - Google Groups does newsgroups, so maybe set one of those up for your tool?

answered Mar 19 '10 at 08:10

Andy Shellam

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;) didn't you know Jeff Atwoods mission statement is to kill phpBB? – Daren Thomas Mar 19 '10 at 08:56
I hope he achieves it! It's a decent application but it does get exploited way too much and way too quickly. – Andy Shellam Mar 19 '10 at 09:17

Does an open source project need a news group?

2 Answers2