12 votes

Is there a website to propose/join open source groups?

I'm interested in working on an open source project from scratch with a group of like minded people and curious how to get something like that started. Does anyone know of any websites that facilitate that kind of thing? Like where people might propose an project and others can tentatively join?

7 comments

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    1. Rocket_Man
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      That does make sense but is unfortunate because I think there's an opportunity for like minded individuals to get together and plan the foundations of a project. I am somewhat surprised that there...

      That does make sense but is unfortunate because I think there's an opportunity for like minded individuals to get together and plan the foundations of a project. I am somewhat surprised that there might not be a niche site for this though. Perhaps that's the first general project I'll try and get people on-board with.

      2 votes
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      Rocket_Man
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      This is a good resource to have and has been bookmarked, thank you. But my initial though was for projects that haven't been started so that it's more of a team project where everyone get's a say...

      This is a good resource to have and has been bookmarked, thank you. But my initial though was for projects that haven't been started so that it's more of a team project where everyone get's a say in the planning stages.

      1 vote
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          1. [2]
            petrichor
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            I disagree about Discord - I've found it's increasingly being used as an IRC replacement / supplemental, similar to what I've seen from Matrix. This could be my personal bias of course, but it...

            I disagree about Discord - I've found it's increasingly being used as an IRC replacement / supplemental, similar to what I've seen from Matrix. This could be my personal bias of course, but it seems to be remarkably popular for open source applications / projects (off the top of my head, Godot and most Nintendo Switch development), and even some programming languages (Rust and Nim come to mind).

            (I don't think this is a good thing, Discord has issues. Once Matrix polishes up its spec some and gains a good desktop client, more communities will probably migrate)

            2 votes
            1. [2]
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              1. petrichor
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                That's fair! Most of my other examples were Pokémon hacks and other source-available, but certainly not FOSS, projects. Matrix has greatly improved in the past two or three years, hopefully in...

                That's fair! Most of my other examples were Pokémon hacks and other source-available, but certainly not FOSS, projects. Matrix has greatly improved in the past two or three years, hopefully in another couple it'll be a strong competitor to Discord.

                1 vote
  3. skybrian
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    This will be quite hard because in some sense you are asking for free labor and few people will work for free unless they are really enthusiastic about your project. And even when we are...

    This will be quite hard because in some sense you are asking for free labor and few people will work for free unless they are really enthusiastic about your project. And even when we are interested, some of us are just really lazy about getting around to it :-)

    To get people interested in a project, you're going to have to "sell" it to them. How persuasive are you?

    You might want to write up your project idea and post it here though? You aren't terribly likely to find a partner, but advice is free.

    It's also possible that software exists already that someone can point you to, or something close to what you want exists and a few changes could make it work. Maybe you could join someone else's project?

    3 votes
  4. Kremor
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    Project Unicorn is trying to create something like that but for home-grown projects. It only has a handful of active users though.

    Project Unicorn is trying to create something like that but for home-grown projects. It only has a handful of active users though.

  5. heavyset_go
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    Solve a problem people have with your code, and let people know it exists. If people want to use it, they'll end up contributing to it in one way or another. If you have a vision for the project,...

    Solve a problem people have with your code, and let people know it exists. If people want to use it, they'll end up contributing to it in one way or another. If you have a vision for the project, build a roadmap and make it easy for people to come in and improve the project along those lines.

    Getting open source contributors for a project is very much a "build it and they will come" type deal. People are only going to contribute if they get something out of it, and that "something" is usually solving whatever particular use case they have and that's it.