Traction Getting Traction for (your) Open Source Projects Michael - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Traction Getting Traction for (your) Open Source Projects Michael Boelen michael.boelen@cisofy.com T-DOSE 2016, 12 November (NLLGG track)

Why? (developers) Promote your open source project ● Users ● Feedback ● Invisible benefits 2

Why? (non-developers) Use your knowledge ● Contribute ● Improve software you use ● Enhance your resume 3

Michael Boelen ● Open Source ○ Lynis, Rootkit Hunter ● Business ○ Founder of CISOfy ● Other ○ Blogger at Linux-Audit.com ○ Board member and program committee NLUUG 4

Traction? Something that is “going” and grows (quickly) Example: my open source project, that continuously gains in popularity, and becomes well-known. 5

Traction Channels ● Trade shows ● Search Engine ● Affiliate programs Optimization ● Offline advertising ● Content management ● Search Engine ● Demo’s Marketing ● Community building ● Social advertisements ● Speaking engagements ● Viral marketing ● Reaching out to blogs ● Business development ● Social sharing ● Public relations ● Email marketing 6

Is that really needed for FOSS?

Importance of Traction Software is written to be used 8

Translating to Open Source Components ● Quality of software ● Promotion ● Community 9

Promotion

Experiment Great tip: …………………... by @mboelen at @TDOSE (@nllgg track) 11

Low-hanging fruit

Name ● Remember (or forget…) ● Length ● Goal 13

Name Good Bad Rootkit Hunter Lynis (rkhunter) 14

Versioning Semantic! Major.Minor.Patch Learn more: semver.org 15

Change Log ● History ● Trust ● Troubleshooting Learn more: keepachangelog.com 16

Documentation ● README.md ● Get Started ● Other documentation 17

Project Description GitHub SEO 18

Best Practices for CLI --full-throttle-engine, -f --help, -h, or help --version, -V Learn more: doctopt.org 19

Best Practices for CLI ● Share progress ● Dots 20

Best Practices for CLI ● Use exit codes ● Data output ● Integrations 21

Updates ● Newer is better? ● Perform update check ● Make it easy 22

Releases ● Release often ● Who picks it up? ● RSS Trick https://github.com/ CISOfy / lynis /releases.atom 23

Packages Good Bad ● Promotion ● Needs maintainer ● Easy of use ● The “stable” bug 24

OpenHub See more details: OpenHub 25

Takeaways ● Structure ● Simplicity ● Quality 26

High-hanging fruit

Sites about news/tools 28

GitHub 29

Referral 30

Social Media ● Interact ● Share at the right time ● Challenge 31

Takeaways ● Know good sources ● Share and promote ● Monitor activity 32

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High traffic websites ● Hacker News ● Reddit ● Slashdot ● TechRepublic 34

Quality traffic (for security) ● Packet Storm Security ● ToolsWatch 35

Jackpot Personal Direct feedback Fans 36

HN Effect Traffic 2016-11-04: 4478 2016-11-05: 1656 2016-11-06: 1201 37

HN Effect Stars 2016-11-02: 1110 2016-11-04: 1200 2016-11-05: 1770 2016-11-06: 2130 2016-11-07: 2340 2016-11-08: 2670 38 Source: http://www.timqian.com/star-history/#CISOfy/lynis

GitHub (Trending) 39

Side effects 40

The “sticky” effect There is more behind the peak 41

Jackpot Multipliers ● Ask ● Networking ● Persistance 42

Lessons learned

1 - Be a Marketeer Promotion is needed 44

2 - Humble versus Pride Balance 45

3 - Quality It takes time: ● Get the basics right ● Focus on simplicity ● Understand your users 46

More? Articles on linux-audit.com ● Why we use your open source project (or not) ● How to Promote your Open Source Project Share this presentation! ;-) 47

Questions? Connect ● Twitter (@mboelen) ● LinkedIn (Michael Boelen) 48