5 Pitfalls to Avoid in Open Source Projects

Today, open-source software, open-source hardware, and the open-source philosophy are becoming increasingly popular. If you want to start a new open-source project, here are five “pitfalls” you must be wary of!

Five Pitfalls

1. Your Support

If you plan to release an open-source product, you need a deep understanding of what “support” means. Don’t expect the community to come flocking in to help provide product support for you. Everyone thinks their own work is the most important and will receive support from millions of people (but that’s impossible). Don’t expect hordes of community volunteers to flood your support forums and answer questions. You must take responsibility for your project. Your team will be responsible for handling various issues and encouraging user adoption to ensure users can easily implement your product.

2. About Innovation

Releasing an open-source product means it’s open—anyone can “pull” it down, “fork” it, make changes, and submit merge requests to the original author. This seems to imply that new features created by the community can help the product continuously improve. However, never rely on community innovation to do the work for you. You need to continually innovate the product yourself. You should take the lead in setting up new features, planning, and improving the product.

3. Open-Source Culture

Open-source culture is very different from the corporate culture found in most enterprises. The culture surrounding an open-source project team is extremely important. Volunteers and contributors donate their time and talent, but they don’t receive direct monetary compensation. If money is not a driving factor, what should you use to motivate them? The community atmosphere? Ideals about a great cause? Helping friends? Everyone participates in open-source projects for different reasons. Whatever the reason, as long as they gather together, they form the project’s culture. A product lacking an open-source culture is bound to fail.

4. Mission and Goals

Your open-source product and your organization must have a mission. You must clearly define your goal or vision. If you don’t define your mission correctly, people won’t understand the reasoning behind your decisions. Your mission and goals should be open and transparent. Be prepared to clarify them in the face of disagreements and differing opinions. If your mission is defined incorrectly, you will attract the wrong community, and that will ultimately lead to failure.

5. Facing Failure

Everyone fears failure; it’s an inherent weakness in human nature. But a successful open-source project needs to combat failure, overcome obstacles, and learn from differences. If you worry too much about failure and are afraid to try or innovate, you’ll lose the chance to succeed. The fear of failure manifests in many ways: indecisiveness, making decisions to please others, or missing opportunities by stalling on a decision even when it’s correct, simply out of fear of making a mistake. Your open-source community will sense this hesitation, this lack of commitment, and it will turn sour.

How to Succeed

Before you start your open-source project, failing to realize these five simple things could lead to major mistakes. Of course, there are other pitfalls to avoid as well. We can’t guarantee that following the advice in this article will definitely make you successful. Remember, open source itself is not a solution; it’s a method, a process, a community, and a product license. Don’t simply announce that a project is open source. When planning an open-source project, be careful of the pitfalls above and have confidence in yourself: you can succeed with open source. (Compiled by Open Source Uncle)

Original English Article: opensource.com   Original Author: David Hurley

via ： http://code.csdn.net/news/2819508

This Article’s Address: http://linux.cn/article-2942-1.html