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Phoenix666 submitted:

Snoyberg's The Do's and Don't's of Running an Open Source Project:

Real title should be: how to get members of any open source community to be interested in helping you. But the given title is catchier.

There's an old "ha ha, only serious" joke. If you go to a Linux forum and ask for help fixing your WiFi driver, everyone will ignore you. If, instead, you say "Linux sucks, you can't even get a f*&$ing WiFi driver working!" thousands of people will solve the problem for you.

This story is a great example of manipulating people, but it's obviously a negative take on it. I'd like to share some thoughts on this from a much more positive standpoint, which will help you get people to pay more attention, be more helpful, and—perhaps most importantly—create a healthier open source community over all.

These items will appear in no particular order, and will almost all fall into either the attractor or obstacle category. An attractor is something you can do to make people want to participate with you. An obstacle is something you should not do, which would prevent people from interacting with you.

And it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: this is an opinionated list, written by one guy. I'm including in here things that I personally care about, and things which friends and colleagues have shared with me. No example is specific to any individual, so don't think I'm calling you out: I'm most certainly not. And some people may disagree, or have other items for this list. Sharing such differing thoughts would be very healthy.

The list:

• Don't waste people's time
• Demonstrate you've tried
• Help other people
• Don't be rude
• Say thank you
• Admit if you're new
• Offer to help
• Give money

Saying, "Lennart Poettering sucks" is not on the list of recommendations.

Original Submission