Building a healthy community around FOSS project

Dear Lazyweb, I am looking for suggestions for building a healthy community around one of my FOSS project.  Recently I initiated re-launching of  Zope 3 project with a new name: BlueBream. You may know from my old posts that I am very interested in Zope 3 and Zope Component Architecture (ZCA).  I have written an entire book about  ZCA in 2006. You can read more about the new project in the BlueBream project blog.  I am looking for your suggestions.  You can send mail to me: baiju.m.mail AT gmail.com or add comment here.

Well, I will continue with my past experience with FOSS. This is my second largest FOSS project, the first project which I started in 2001 (SMC) is still very active.  However, for the past few years, I am not active in that project. I still watch that project growing (of course, I help them whenever possible). There are more than 500 members in the group itself.  The developers regulary meet at various events.  They organize lots of workshops, camps etc. SMC might be the most active FOSS project from India. However, there are so many differences between SMC and BlueBream.  The scope of these projects is very different. SMC is an i18n,l10n and more over a "local language computing" project.  BlueBream is a Python web framework.

These days, I am thinking more about this project and its success.  I know, a FOSS project is not just some source code released. There should be active contributors, regular community activities, good documentation, presence in various events etc.  So, how to attract contributors to this project.  How to build a healthy successful community around this project.  At this point, I have taken the role of "self-assigned release manager".  I think that's a good way to lead this project. I am looking for your thoughts :)

Popular posts from this blog

Some thoughts on Python 3 adoption

IMHO, every Python community member should try to promote Python 3. I know there are criticisms about Python 3 -- whatever it is, " Python 3 is the present and future of the language ". Constructive criticisms should be welcomed and that should lead to better Python 3.x releases. As a community member what we can do to promote Python 3 ? I am looking forward to your thoughts on this.  Please write your comments here or you can write it in your blog and leave a link here. Before giving any new suggestions, let me check what are the small things that I have tried. In the beginning of 2011, I have created a website with the help of other community members to increase the adoption of Python 3 by collecting issues in a central location.  That idea didn't worked well, then I dropped that project. I have given a lightning talk about that project during PyCon 2011 in Atlanta . I have tried to use Python 3 for my personal projects and written blogs about my experience . ...
Read more

PyCon India 2014 - Call for Proposal

The Sixth edition of PyCon India is being held in Bangalore,India from 26th September 2014 to 28th September 2014. The organizers of PyCon India 2014 are looking for talk and workshop proposals to fill the formal presentation and workshop tracks. We accept proposals on a very broad range of topics related to Python programming. Submit your proposal here:  http://in.pycon.org/funnel/2014/
Read more

Ugadi, Weekend, Office, Zope 3, Buildout

I thought just to write something now. Today is Ugadi [1], a few days back only I heard this word. This is a festival in Karnataka and some other parts of Deccan region of India. I am from Kerala [2], we have a similar festival coming up in next month called Vishu [3] . So happy Ugadi to all ! . Today is leave for my company [4], so we got 3 days consecutive leave. I could have gone to my home, but for some reason I postponed it to next week. One reason is that my wife's final year exam is starting today, so I though let she study :) Remember my last post about Zope 3 [5], I wrote there that Zope 3 is evolving. Today morning I came to office to explore Zope 3 and Buildout. (I don't yet have a laptop, so office is the only place where I can do some coding) I am sitting alone in this big office now, oh! what a silence !! Today I manged to run a Zope 3 application solely from egg [6] Oh! I cannot write anymore, I think I am feeling loneliness now. Hmm.. better to go to ...
Read more