There have been a multitude of views regarding how success can be measured in an open source project. Some of the most commonly perceived measures of success have included the number of users a project gains, the size of its community and number of contributors, even the amount of funding it’s able to collect.
Shifting open source trends as of late however, have altered a lot of previously prevalent perceptions, and the general view of open source success has definitely not eluded this shift.
Size Isn’t Everything
One of the now prevailing views on open source success is how it can’t be based on just numbers or size. While large, big-name projects may automatically be considered successes, success is by no means limited to just these big projects.
Numerous small yet secure and scalable open source projects have proven to be very valuable in building up many other projects and products, and as such can also be deemed successful. A good example of this would be s2n, which fixed the OpenSSL security problem. What makes these small projects even more valuable is the fact that more often than not they aren’t monetized by just one single vendor. Projects that are monetized in that way may have a more stable source of funding, but tend to close off code in order to please one party, and this often limits project development.
When it comes to contributors, large numbers are also not a requirement for success. Quality has always trumped quantity in this area, and even just a handful of committed developers can be enough to move a project forward.
Where Success Starts
Given that even small, community-funded open source projects can be considered just as successful as large-scale, vendor-funded ones, it follows that funding also isn’t a good determinant for success. Where project success really lies and what actually instigates funding, is the need for such a project and its continued development. When the community recognizes the need for such software, eventually everything else deemed essential to project success falls into place– more funding, more contributors and more development. So where open source project success really begins is in answering the needs of the community.
Of course, it isn’t always possible to answer every need the community has. The key here is to focus on a specific yet pressing need that a project can effectively fulfill. And to continue that success, it’s important to listen to the community’s feedback and communicate well with them. When projects relay important information and respond promptly and sufficiently to the input of its community, misunderstandings and disappointments are less likely to occur, and success much easier to grasp.
My project http://sourceforge.net/projects/duplexpr/ is pretty much the definition of minuscule. It has no funding and no “community”, but with over 6000 downloads (please don’t laugh too much) and a small amount of user feedback over the years, it still feels like a success to me. Of course, it helps that I use it every day.