Why Freeloaders Are Essential To FOSS Project Success 86
dp619 writes "Outercurve Foundation technical director Stephen Walli has written a blog post arguing that attracting users is fundamental to the ability of open source projects to recruit 'new blood' and contributors who are willing to code. 'So in the end, it's all about freeloaders, but from the perspective that you want as many as possible. That means you're "doing it right" in developing a broad base of users by making their experience easy, making it easy for them to contribute, and ultimately to create an ecosystem that continues to sustain itself,' he wrote."
Re:Force in numbers (Score:5, Informative)
If your FOSS project only has a handful of users, it's nice.
If your FOSS project has thousands of users, it's good.
If your FOSS project has millions of users, it's not as good as it used to be, the devs are idiots, and I've been using [abandoned fork] for two years.
FTFY