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Tips For Making a Popular Open Source Project in 2021

232 points by makerdiety 5y ago

inshadows 5y ago
(deleted negativity)
- gtm1260 5y ago
  Maybe the next great library is sitting somewhere without a good readme so nobody goes on it /s
- ignoramous 5y ago
  Just a note: It is okay to not censor yourself (though, you could always leave a note that you're being overly critical). Criticism often lays bare the hard-truths everyone else has learned to ignore / suppress. The prospects that end up doing well, tend to address shortcomings pointed out by their harshest skeptics more often than not.
timdaub 5y ago
Wow, this looks like a great resource for a difficulty I've been struggling for myself since a long time. For the love of it, I can't understand what makes other GitHub repositories stand out over mine. I'm blogging about my work, I've added more information in the readme and over the course of a view years, I've also gradually shifted course to a more appropriate process. I always wanted to be the owner of a busy open source repo. I find the idea of making this experience fascinating. But many of my repos are still stale though I think my code is good enough. Actually, seeing that the repository probably needs a much better designed readme makes me sad to realize that also for something so deeply rational: it's the looks that count. On the other hand, it's true. Deeply living with a problem and solving it in code is a though challenge and I'm not sure I'm committing enough for my work to be popular. But I'm anyways happy to now realize that I'll have to market my repos better too.
- penjelly 5y ago
  im beginning to realize tons of things in life MUST be sold (or a case built which i see as a form of "selling") want a new code convention? best make a writeup and pros/cons for it to make it digestable to your fellow devs. want a code fix on a third party lib? best make a case for why its a value-add for the maintainers. want a new friend? best be interesting enough that the person has a reason to remember you. everything is a sell, though the buyers arent always buying with their wallets
  - grp 5y ago
    The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle
  - ignoramous 5y ago
    > im beginning to realize tons of things in life MUST be sold (or a case built which i see as a form of "selling") While this is true, one is better off from thinking about this from first principles, such as what are some undeniable truths that are constant over time given an intractable problem space. Evolving software over and over around those constants, under the constraint of that one problem space, makes for a viable sell (but one does have to sell) especially in a b2b setting. Note that, early adopters don't need much of a selling-to, by definition, if the software as much as interests them and fulfills a tiny modicum of their needs. Ref: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024 https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Isn't this just making the metric the target? We want popular projects because popularity is a sign of quality[0], but by focusing on becoming popular we're just gaming the metric. [0] supposedly. I'm not convinced.
  - sgc 5y ago
    I recently submitted a 2 character fix because someone used . instead of \. in their regex. Terse explanation because obvious. Rejected! More seriously, some of the best friends I have made is because I randomly took the initiative to start a study group with them despite the fact that we had never spent time together as a group. There is always an animator making things work. If you want to actually do interesting things, you very often need to be that person. While you might not get the ego boost of being a 'chosen' one, you will occasionally receive thanks from those who recognize what you did to make things happen for everyone.
penjelly 5y ago
great article, i know a few talented devs who would benefit greatly from these tips. I think some people are averse to hacking the growth of their project and think they just need to put up a terse readme and the people will come. But these tips seem innocuous enough, no dark patterns to motivate growth here, simply basic advertising and economics applied to github repos. i almost feel like the intro about stars may turn people away before they get to the article, which hopefully shouldnt happen.
- TAForObvReasons 5y ago
  "if you build it, they will come" and "terse readmes" work very well in problem domains that don't have a few compelling open source solutions. Fanciful READMEs and marketing matter a lot more in a competitive/saturated space.
  - penjelly 5y ago
    the article points out that the only way your repo will get attention if theres nobody else in the problem space, or your lib is much simpler then the other tools, so i think it can be both efficient in terms of description and mildly attractive visually. Also i think "fanciful" is a bit misleading here. Sure they recommend an icon, and/or an animation. i dont think thats necessarily overkill for some projects
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- OJFord 5y ago
  ..or they don't care whether people come or not? I have a lot of little things I'm going to work on no matter what, a few that I'd appreciate help with but I'm not so bothered that I'm going to start 'hacking the growth', and none where the goal is to have a 'successful' repo with lots of stars and users or whatever. (I do help maintain/triage a couple of popular ones now, but I didn't get them where they are.)
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Check out the READMEs (and documentation) on these puppies: https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware They aren't particularly popular (and I don't especially care -I'm really my only customer).
- pfalcon 5y ago
  > Check out the READMEs Ok. Tried https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_Spinner https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_Spinner. >> WHAT PROBLEM DOES THIS SOLVE? Looks like too many caps in titles to me, I'm mildly scared.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    No problem. Don't use it, then. That's standard heading stuff. No sweat off my back. I don't particularly care whether or not anyone ever stars these projects. They are really for me.
    - brabel 5y ago
      Why do you post links here then?
      - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
        Why not? There's tons of reasons to do it, other than craving attention. I'm really enthusiastic about the tech I do, and I like to share my enthusiasm. Also, it helps to lend credence to what I say, if I can back it up. And some folks even like the stuff I post. Go figure. Another thing that I try not to do, is immediately attack others, on this (or any other) forum. It buys me absolutely nothing. I don't feel good about it, most folks around the place don't appreciate it, and it tends to make immediate enemies of potential friends. Pretty much the Platonic Ideal of "Zero Sum Gain." I've always found that life is easier for me, if I have more friends, and fewer enemies.
- q3k 5y ago
mellosouls 5y ago
The author's most starred repo: https://github.com/bee-san/pyWhat https://github.com/bee-san/pyWhat
- penjelly 5y ago
  i found the article good but honestly this readme seems overkill. An emoji for every single header gets tiring after a while.
  - brabel 5y ago
    The "API" header is a freaking pizza emoji. WTF?
  - fenesiistvan 5y ago
    Yes. Actually I can't read the readmee because my eyes are auto focusing on the icons :)
- Overclover9000 5y ago
  He has other starred repos with more stars, eg. https://github.com/ciphey/ciphey https://github.com/ciphey/ciphey and https://github.com/rustscan/rustscan https://github.com/rustscan/rustscan
  - mellosouls 5y ago
    Good catch; I was sorting within his user tree.
artembugara 5y ago
I have ~4k start in 2 Python libraries. Both help fetch live news articles. Links below. These were my first libraries. I took the approach of promoting them as any other product. You have to "sell" your code. Even if it's 100% free. In my opinion, the most important thing is DEMO. Just make a GIF where you showcase what your software does: * 80% of engineers won't even bother to read the description No one will spend their precious time trying to get through your code. [0] https://github.com/kotartemiy/newscatcher https://github.com/kotartemiy/newscatcher Programmatically collect normalized news from (almost) any website. [1] https://github.com/kotartemiy/pygooglenews https://github.com/kotartemiy/pygooglenews If Google News had a Python library
- MawKKe 5y ago
  Demos sure are important, however I would advocate using videos (.mp4) instead of GIF. That way you can pause and seek the video, to get better idea what's going on. So many times I've come across demo GIFs/animated shell sessions that "type" at about 1000 characters a minute, and the animation loops over before I even had a chance to blink.
  - artembugara 5y ago
    I agree, a live console/showcase website are even better.
    - Siira 5y ago
      The problem is that these don’t get inlined in Github/Gitlab, and people (including myself) don’t like waiting for an external link to load.
- artembugara 5y ago
  My article where I briefly explain how I approach open-sourcing my code: https://newscatcherapi.com/blog/how-to-present-showcase-open-source-projects-practical-guide https://newscatcherapi.com/blog/how-to-present-showcase-open...
JackFr 5y ago
He lost me when he said Juicero was a good idea.
flohofwoe 5y ago
Ah, but the real secret to maintaining open source projects is to make them popular enough to be useful to the right people, but not so immensely popular that maintenance becomes a burden. An "Ultimate Guide on how to make a Just-A-Little-Bit-But-Not-Overwhelmingly-Popular Open Source Project" would be much more helpful :)
- waltbosz 5y ago
  That's the thing I don't get about open source. Where do these maintainers find the time to volunteer ? I wouldn't wish super success for my project if all that means is more unpaid work. sure, there are growing platforms that generate revenue for them, but from what I've seen, it's all dependent on volunteer donations. I suppose it would be a dream job to get paid to develop my own code, but developing a closed commercial software product seems like an easier route to success. Linqpad is one that comes to mind.
  - pfalcon 5y ago
    If you really want to get paid for developing open source, nowadays you pretty easily can. But that likely won't be your own code.
    - waltbosz 5y ago
      For me, the priority is not open source, but rather the growth of my own creative invention. What I want is to get paid to grow my own vision, not that of someone else. For me, creating software is an expression of Creativity. I to be able to explore my creative interests. Not those of someone else. I want to create things that interest primarily myself. I suppose the key to that success is to find a topic which has enough people are of interest that would be willing to give me revenue to work on that topic.
  - pydry 5y ago
    There's a definite trend amongst OSS projects done by individuals to build maintenance-lite things. All code needs maintenance of course, but some types of projects require a lot less than others.
colinmcd 5y ago
I have two projects with a total of almost 7k stars. [0] It’s worth noting that GitHub stars truly don’t translate into anything worthwhile in the vast majority of cases. You can have a massively popular project, but it doesn’t automatically translate into Twitter followers or newsletter subscribers. And those things don’t directly translate into wealth or happiness either. Just get a job and make friends and have a life. That route has the highest expected value. I have been chasing GitHub stars for a long time, and it has never been fulfilling. I wouldn’t recommend it. [0] https://github.com/colinhacks/zod https://github.com/colinhacks/zod
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  How do you think the cash-in rate is for GitHub stars compared to Reddit karma? Somehow better or approximately the same?
  - kingforaday 5y ago
    Probably the same as the ratio of Stanley Nickels to Schrute Bucks.
- byteface 5y ago
  easy to say when you got thousands. I had to really grind for my 43 stars over 18 months and each one really made my day. (python): https://github.com/byteface/domonic/ https://github.com/byteface/domonic/
  - susam 5y ago
    Have you tried doing a "Show HN" post for your project? Creating a "Show HN" post is often a good way to get some attention and feedback for your project provided your post receives a few early upvotes in the first 30-40 minutes and reaches the front page.
    - byteface 5y ago
      I had considered but it's not quite good enough yet. I posted on reddit once and got 1 upvote and 1 comment. aha. Think it's as I did it really late on a sunday. Timing is everything. But it hepled me a lot with not stressing too much about posting.
q3k 5y ago
This all seems to rest on the assumption that more (drive-by, wooed by flashy logos) contributors => better software quality / functionality. That's... quite a bold claim. EDIT: And if you really want contributors, then maybe instead of building yet another logging or command parsing library with a cute mascot: contribute to and fix existing codebases, or discuss design and suggest changes to a standard library? There's plenty of existing communities of people that you can work with on a 'popular' library. If the target space is so crowded that what makes a difference is pure marketing, then maybe you don't need to make that space even more crowded in the first place...
- jmt_ 5y ago
  Agreed. Reminded of a classic: "What one programmer can do in one month, two programmers can do in two months" - Fred Brooks
- 0des 5y ago
  This is so true- especially in a flattened org structure, it can get tribal very quickly. > maybe instead of building yet another logging or command parsing library with a cute mascot I'll admit this got a hearty chuckle out of me.
- hehetrthrthrjn 5y ago
  No, but stars probably correspond to use or interest in your code. I don't think people always want contributors. I've found you're much more likely to get people who make a mess of things than coding soulmates.
oaiey 5y ago
Three things: community, community, community. Be friendly to the people. If they contribute, make sure you get their stuff released quickly. Attribute them in the release not es, your readme. Respect and gratitude. Be open for ideas.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lamplovin 5y ago
Not related to the content of the blog post, but I love the feature that enlarges the picture when you mouseover the picture. Such a nice feature!
remram 5y ago
I run a web app with 2k monthly users and 15k registered users (and about 14k downloads, which happen through the GitLab release page). I have 40 stars. It's just a silly metric.
- david_allison 5y ago
  Same. 2MM+ actives, 5MM+ installs. 4.3k stars.
- hedgehog0 5y ago
  Taguette? It looks quite impressive and interesting! What do you think it helps you financially?
  - remram 5y ago
    It doesn't make me any money if that's what you're asking. It would be difficult given my target domain.
junon 5y ago
I don't even know how many stars I have. Maybe the tens of thousands. On npm alone I have an upwards of billions of downloads a week. None of that really means anything, so I don't view that as a signal of authority on this subject. This article is exactly what's wrong with GitHub. Flashy logos and jargon-ey readmes fooling folks into thinking something is high quality, secure, thoughtful code that will benefit instead of hurt. These things are important for garnering views, sure, but open source isn't a marketing channel. You're optimizing for the wrong thing here. Further, in my experience this applies primarily to web (see: Javascript) and ML spaces. Most other areas of focus don't worry as much about this.
ThinkBeat 5y ago
That post made me vomit a little bit. """ The Ultimate Guide to creating a popular open source project in only 3 steps from someone with 10s of thousands of GitHub stars. """ These are tips to gain a person exposure. Look at me I am famous. I have so many stars. and all I did was write a 67 line Python code. yay. You can do it too!!!!! Marketing, logos, shiny, shiny. You are hyper focusing on the wrong metric To me, and I am too old to matter, it highlights a fairly substantial perversion of the reason and motivation to create great software that you give away for free. It sets you up to chase fame on GitHub just like people do in every other social medium, Twitter and Instagram followers. Look people love me!!!! So excited in the quest for brief moments of stardom. You get there by feeding the lowest common denominator. What does the mass of followers want? How can i get 1000 more. Oh they like my bikini shots. Ill just make it a little skimpier. yay. They like the drama with my momma, Ill stir up some real shit tonight yay. Oh I see the dig it when I go off cussing about politics and today Ill cuss like never before. Yay. With this type of mindset, you will not create anything original ot beautiful. It's a fast-food junkie stuck in a feedback loop with a race towards the bottom. It becomes an unhealthy addiction. I have 0 stars, 0 twits, 0 Instagram, 0 all of social media because I am a quarrelsome luddite. I would not get an account in any of those systems even if they paid me. It is a distraction. at best. more commonly an obsession and no good can come from it. It used to be that modesty was a virtue. A compliment from one my sensei when I was studying martial arts, Honest praise from my Lt when I had the misfortune of ending up in the army. The camaraderie from the band of brothers I discovered. A professor seeking me and giving me some life changing advice based on a couple of my essays he graded. Having one of my most respected "master" developers reach out to me to point out that I had made some errors in my code, but he liked these two other things. Meant he had actually spent some time looking. Praise should be earned, and it should not be given out freely. Seek it from those who really matter. The rest is noise.

232 points by makerdiety 5y ago

inshadows 5y ago

(deleted negativity)

gtm1260 5y ago
Maybe the next great library is sitting somewhere without a good readme so nobody goes on it /s
ignoramous 5y ago
Just a note: It is okay to not censor yourself (though, you could always leave a note that you're being overly critical). Criticism often lays bare the hard-truths everyone else has learned to ignore / suppress. The prospects that end up doing well, tend to address shortcomings pointed out by their harshest skeptics more often than not.

timdaub 5y ago

Wow, this looks like a great resource for a difficulty I've been struggling for myself since a long time. For the love of it, I can't understand what makes other GitHub repositories stand out over mine. I'm blogging about my work, I've added more information in the readme and over the course of a view years, I've also gradually shifted course to a more appropriate process. I always wanted to be the owner of a busy open source repo. I find the idea of making this experience fascinating. But many of my repos are still stale though I think my code is good enough. Actually, seeing that the repository probably needs a much better designed readme makes me sad to realize that also for something so deeply rational: it's the looks that count. On the other hand, it's true. Deeply living with a problem and solving it in code is a though challenge and I'm not sure I'm committing enough for my work to be popular. But I'm anyways happy to now realize that I'll have to market my repos better too.

penjelly 5y ago
im beginning to realize tons of things in life MUST be sold (or a case built which i see as a form of "selling") want a new code convention? best make a writeup and pros/cons for it to make it digestable to your fellow devs. want a code fix on a third party lib? best make a case for why its a value-add for the maintainers. want a new friend? best be interesting enough that the person has a reason to remember you. everything is a sell, though the buyers arent always buying with their wallets
- grp 5y ago
  The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle
- ignoramous 5y ago
  > im beginning to realize tons of things in life MUST be sold (or a case built which i see as a form of "selling") While this is true, one is better off from thinking about this from first principles, such as what are some undeniable truths that are constant over time given an intractable problem space. Evolving software over and over around those constants, under the constraint of that one problem space, makes for a viable sell (but one does have to sell) especially in a b2b setting. Note that, early adopters don't need much of a selling-to, by definition, if the software as much as interests them and fulfills a tiny modicum of their needs. Ref: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024 https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Isn't this just making the metric the target? We want popular projects because popularity is a sign of quality[0], but by focusing on becoming popular we're just gaming the metric. [0] supposedly. I'm not convinced.
- sgc 5y ago
  I recently submitted a 2 character fix because someone used . instead of \. in their regex. Terse explanation because obvious. Rejected! More seriously, some of the best friends I have made is because I randomly took the initiative to start a study group with them despite the fact that we had never spent time together as a group. There is always an animator making things work. If you want to actually do interesting things, you very often need to be that person. While you might not get the ego boost of being a 'chosen' one, you will occasionally receive thanks from those who recognize what you did to make things happen for everyone.

penjelly 5y ago

great article, i know a few talented devs who would benefit greatly from these tips. I think some people are averse to hacking the growth of their project and think they just need to put up a terse readme and the people will come. But these tips seem innocuous enough, no dark patterns to motivate growth here, simply basic advertising and economics applied to github repos. i almost feel like the intro about stars may turn people away before they get to the article, which hopefully shouldnt happen.

TAForObvReasons 5y ago
"if you build it, they will come" and "terse readmes" work very well in problem domains that don't have a few compelling open source solutions. Fanciful READMEs and marketing matter a lot more in a competitive/saturated space.
- penjelly 5y ago
  the article points out that the only way your repo will get attention if theres nobody else in the problem space, or your lib is much simpler then the other tools, so i think it can be both efficient in terms of description and mildly attractive visually. Also i think "fanciful" is a bit misleading here. Sure they recommend an icon, and/or an animation. i dont think thats necessarily overkill for some projects
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
OJFord 5y ago
..or they don't care whether people come or not? I have a lot of little things I'm going to work on no matter what, a few that I'd appreciate help with but I'm not so bothered that I'm going to start 'hacking the growth', and none where the goal is to have a 'successful' repo with lots of stars and users or whatever. (I do help maintain/triage a couple of popular ones now, but I didn't get them where they are.)
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Check out the READMEs (and documentation) on these puppies: https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware They aren't particularly popular (and I don't especially care -I'm really my only customer).

pfalcon 5y ago
> Check out the READMEs Ok. Tried https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_Spinner https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_Spinner. >> WHAT PROBLEM DOES THIS SOLVE? Looks like too many caps in titles to me, I'm mildly scared.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  No problem. Don't use it, then. That's standard heading stuff. No sweat off my back. I don't particularly care whether or not anyone ever stars these projects. They are really for me.
  - brabel 5y ago
    Why do you post links here then?
    - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
      Why not? There's tons of reasons to do it, other than craving attention. I'm really enthusiastic about the tech I do, and I like to share my enthusiasm. Also, it helps to lend credence to what I say, if I can back it up. And some folks even like the stuff I post. Go figure. Another thing that I try not to do, is immediately attack others, on this (or any other) forum. It buys me absolutely nothing. I don't feel good about it, most folks around the place don't appreciate it, and it tends to make immediate enemies of potential friends. Pretty much the Platonic Ideal of "Zero Sum Gain." I've always found that life is easier for me, if I have more friends, and fewer enemies.
q3k 5y ago

mellosouls 5y ago

The author's most starred repo: https://github.com/bee-san/pyWhat https://github.com/bee-san/pyWhat

penjelly 5y ago
i found the article good but honestly this readme seems overkill. An emoji for every single header gets tiring after a while.
- brabel 5y ago
  The "API" header is a freaking pizza emoji. WTF?
- fenesiistvan 5y ago
  Yes. Actually I can't read the readmee because my eyes are auto focusing on the icons :)
Overclover9000 5y ago
He has other starred repos with more stars, eg. https://github.com/ciphey/ciphey https://github.com/ciphey/ciphey and https://github.com/rustscan/rustscan https://github.com/rustscan/rustscan
- mellosouls 5y ago
  Good catch; I was sorting within his user tree.

artembugara 5y ago

I have ~4k start in 2 Python libraries. Both help fetch live news articles. Links below. These were my first libraries. I took the approach of promoting them as any other product. You have to "sell" your code. Even if it's 100% free. In my opinion, the most important thing is DEMO. Just make a GIF where you showcase what your software does: * 80% of engineers won't even bother to read the description No one will spend their precious time trying to get through your code. [0] https://github.com/kotartemiy/newscatcher https://github.com/kotartemiy/newscatcher Programmatically collect normalized news from (almost) any website. [1] https://github.com/kotartemiy/pygooglenews https://github.com/kotartemiy/pygooglenews If Google News had a Python library

MawKKe 5y ago
Demos sure are important, however I would advocate using videos (.mp4) instead of GIF. That way you can pause and seek the video, to get better idea what's going on. So many times I've come across demo GIFs/animated shell sessions that "type" at about 1000 characters a minute, and the animation loops over before I even had a chance to blink.
- artembugara 5y ago
  I agree, a live console/showcase website are even better.
  - Siira 5y ago
    The problem is that these don’t get inlined in Github/Gitlab, and people (including myself) don’t like waiting for an external link to load.
artembugara 5y ago
My article where I briefly explain how I approach open-sourcing my code: https://newscatcherapi.com/blog/how-to-present-showcase-open-source-projects-practical-guide https://newscatcherapi.com/blog/how-to-present-showcase-open...

JackFr 5y ago

He lost me when he said Juicero was a good idea.

flohofwoe 5y ago

Ah, but the real secret to maintaining open source projects is to make them popular enough to be useful to the right people, but not so immensely popular that maintenance becomes a burden. An "Ultimate Guide on how to make a Just-A-Little-Bit-But-Not-Overwhelmingly-Popular Open Source Project" would be much more helpful :)

waltbosz 5y ago
That's the thing I don't get about open source. Where do these maintainers find the time to volunteer ? I wouldn't wish super success for my project if all that means is more unpaid work. sure, there are growing platforms that generate revenue for them, but from what I've seen, it's all dependent on volunteer donations. I suppose it would be a dream job to get paid to develop my own code, but developing a closed commercial software product seems like an easier route to success. Linqpad is one that comes to mind.
- pfalcon 5y ago
  If you really want to get paid for developing open source, nowadays you pretty easily can. But that likely won't be your own code.
  - waltbosz 5y ago
    For me, the priority is not open source, but rather the growth of my own creative invention. What I want is to get paid to grow my own vision, not that of someone else. For me, creating software is an expression of Creativity. I to be able to explore my creative interests. Not those of someone else. I want to create things that interest primarily myself. I suppose the key to that success is to find a topic which has enough people are of interest that would be willing to give me revenue to work on that topic.
- pydry 5y ago
  There's a definite trend amongst OSS projects done by individuals to build maintenance-lite things. All code needs maintenance of course, but some types of projects require a lot less than others.

colinmcd 5y ago

I have two projects with a total of almost 7k stars. [0] It’s worth noting that GitHub stars truly don’t translate into anything worthwhile in the vast majority of cases. You can have a massively popular project, but it doesn’t automatically translate into Twitter followers or newsletter subscribers. And those things don’t directly translate into wealth or happiness either. Just get a job and make friends and have a life. That route has the highest expected value. I have been chasing GitHub stars for a long time, and it has never been fulfilling. I wouldn’t recommend it. [0] https://github.com/colinhacks/zod https://github.com/colinhacks/zod

BeFlatXIII 5y ago
How do you think the cash-in rate is for GitHub stars compared to Reddit karma? Somehow better or approximately the same?
- kingforaday 5y ago
  Probably the same as the ratio of Stanley Nickels to Schrute Bucks.
byteface 5y ago
easy to say when you got thousands. I had to really grind for my 43 stars over 18 months and each one really made my day. (python): https://github.com/byteface/domonic/ https://github.com/byteface/domonic/
- susam 5y ago
  Have you tried doing a "Show HN" post for your project? Creating a "Show HN" post is often a good way to get some attention and feedback for your project provided your post receives a few early upvotes in the first 30-40 minutes and reaches the front page.
  - byteface 5y ago
    I had considered but it's not quite good enough yet. I posted on reddit once and got 1 upvote and 1 comment. aha. Think it's as I did it really late on a sunday. Timing is everything. But it hepled me a lot with not stressing too much about posting.

q3k 5y ago

This all seems to rest on the assumption that more (drive-by, wooed by flashy logos) contributors => better software quality / functionality. That's... quite a bold claim. EDIT: And if you really want contributors, then maybe instead of building yet another logging or command parsing library with a cute mascot: contribute to and fix existing codebases, or discuss design and suggest changes to a standard library? There's plenty of existing communities of people that you can work with on a 'popular' library. If the target space is so crowded that what makes a difference is pure marketing, then maybe you don't need to make that space even more crowded in the first place...

jmt_ 5y ago
Agreed. Reminded of a classic: "What one programmer can do in one month, two programmers can do in two months" - Fred Brooks
0des 5y ago
This is so true- especially in a flattened org structure, it can get tribal very quickly. > maybe instead of building yet another logging or command parsing library with a cute mascot I'll admit this got a hearty chuckle out of me.
hehetrthrthrjn 5y ago
No, but stars probably correspond to use or interest in your code. I don't think people always want contributors. I've found you're much more likely to get people who make a mess of things than coding soulmates.

oaiey 5y ago

Three things: community, community, community. Be friendly to the people. If they contribute, make sure you get their stuff released quickly. Attribute them in the release not es, your readme. Respect and gratitude. Be open for ideas.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lamplovin 5y ago

Not related to the content of the blog post, but I love the feature that enlarges the picture when you mouseover the picture. Such a nice feature!

remram 5y ago

I run a web app with 2k monthly users and 15k registered users (and about 14k downloads, which happen through the GitLab release page). I have 40 stars. It's just a silly metric.

david_allison 5y ago
Same. 2MM+ actives, 5MM+ installs. 4.3k stars.
hedgehog0 5y ago
Taguette? It looks quite impressive and interesting! What do you think it helps you financially?
- remram 5y ago
  It doesn't make me any money if that's what you're asking. It would be difficult given my target domain.

junon 5y ago

I don't even know how many stars I have. Maybe the tens of thousands. On npm alone I have an upwards of billions of downloads a week. None of that really means anything, so I don't view that as a signal of authority on this subject. This article is exactly what's wrong with GitHub. Flashy logos and jargon-ey readmes fooling folks into thinking something is high quality, secure, thoughtful code that will benefit instead of hurt. These things are important for garnering views, sure, but open source isn't a marketing channel. You're optimizing for the wrong thing here. Further, in my experience this applies primarily to web (see: Javascript) and ML spaces. Most other areas of focus don't worry as much about this.

ThinkBeat 5y ago

That post made me vomit a little bit. """ The Ultimate Guide to creating a popular open source project in only 3 steps from someone with 10s of thousands of GitHub stars. """ These are tips to gain a person exposure. Look at me I am famous. I have so many stars. and all I did was write a 67 line Python code. yay. You can do it too!!!!! Marketing, logos, shiny, shiny. You are hyper focusing on the wrong metric To me, and I am too old to matter, it highlights a fairly substantial perversion of the reason and motivation to create great software that you give away for free. It sets you up to chase fame on GitHub just like people do in every other social medium, Twitter and Instagram followers. Look people love me!!!! So excited in the quest for brief moments of stardom. You get there by feeding the lowest common denominator. What does the mass of followers want? How can i get 1000 more. Oh they like my bikini shots. Ill just make it a little skimpier. yay. They like the drama with my momma, Ill stir up some real shit tonight yay. Oh I see the dig it when I go off cussing about politics and today Ill cuss like never before. Yay. With this type of mindset, you will not create anything original ot beautiful. It's a fast-food junkie stuck in a feedback loop with a race towards the bottom. It becomes an unhealthy addiction. I have 0 stars, 0 twits, 0 Instagram, 0 all of social media because I am a quarrelsome luddite. I would not get an account in any of those systems even if they paid me. It is a distraction. at best. more commonly an obsession and no good can come from it. It used to be that modesty was a virtue. A compliment from one my sensei when I was studying martial arts, Honest praise from my Lt when I had the misfortune of ending up in the army. The camaraderie from the band of brothers I discovered. A professor seeking me and giving me some life changing advice based on a couple of my essays he graded. Having one of my most respected "master" developers reach out to me to point out that I had made some errors in my code, but he liked these two other things. Meant he had actually spent some time looking. Praise should be earned, and it should not be given out freely. Seek it from those who really matter. The rest is noise.