Open-source projects have to prevent five traps

Nowadays, open source software, open source hardware and open source concepts have become more and more popular. If you want to start a new open source project, here are five "traps" you have to guard against!

Your support

If you plan to release an open source product, you need to have a deep understanding of what "support" means. Do not expect the community to help you provide product support, and everyone will think that what they do is very important and will be supported (but impossible) by millions. Do not expect a large number of community volunteers to flood your support forums to help you answer questions. You have to be responsible for your project, your team will be responsible for dealing with various issues, encourage http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/6579.html "> users to ensure that users can easily implement your product .

About innovation

Publishing an open source product means that it is open, and anyone can "Pull" it down, "fork" it, make changes, and then submit a merge request to the original author. This seems to mean that new features created by the community can help keep things going. However, never rely on community innovations to serve you. You need to constantly innovate products. You should take the lead in setting up new features, planning, and product improvements.

Open source culture

The open source culture is very different from the corporate culture of most businesses. The culture surrounding an open source project team is very important. Volunteers and donors dedicate their time and talents, but they do not receive direct monetary returns. If money is not a driving factor, what should you use to motivate them? Community atmosphere? Ideal for a great cause? Help friend? Everyone is involved in open source projects for any number of reasons, for whatever reason, as long as they come together to form the project's culture. A lack of open-source culture of the product will inevitably fail.

Mission and goals

Your open source product and your organization must have a mission. You must be clear about your goals or vision. If you do not define your task properly, people can not understand why you made the decision. Your mission and goals should be open and transparent. For differences and disagreements, be prepared to clarify it. If your mission is misdirected, you attract the wrong community, which ultimately leads to failure.

Face failure

Everyone fears failure, an inherent weakness in human nature. However, a successful open source project needs to fight failure and need to overcome obstacles and learning differences. If you are too worried about failure, afraid to try, afraid of innovation, you will lose the possibility of success. There are many manifestations of fear of failure: indecision, making decisions to please others, or obviously the right ones, but missing the opportunity due to fear of making mistakes. Your open source community will feel this indecisiveness, a lack of commitment, and then worse.

How to succeed

Before you start your open source project, it can lead to major mistakes if you are not aware of these five simple things. Of course there are other pitfalls to avoid. We can not guarantee that you will succeed in following the advice of this article. Remember that open source itself is not a solution, it's a method, a process, a community, and a product license. Do not simply announce the open source of a project. When planning an open source project, be careful about the pitfalls above and confide in yourself: you can succeed on open source.

Original link: http://opensource.com/business/14/4/five-common-pitfalls-open-source