How to Market Your Open Source Project

@ben_nuttall
How to market your open source project
This talk is (mostly) not about marketing!

@ben_nuttall
Ben Nuttall
●
Software Engineer at BBC News
Labs
●
Former Community Manager at
Raspberry Pi
●
Based in Cambridge, UK
●
Creator of gpiozero & piwheels
●
Contributor to opensource.com
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twitter.com/ben_nuttall
●
github.com/bennuttall

@ben_nuttall
What this talk is not
●
How to buy a billboard to advertise your
project
●
How to design a Google Adwords strategy
●
How to be a social media pro
●
How to go viral
●
How to run a great Mailchimp email campaign
●
How to optimise Google Analytics
●
How to get a celebrity endorsement for your
project

@ben_nuttall
What this talk focuses on
●
Things you can do as a developer to make it
easy for you and others to promote your
project
●
Things you can do to promote your project
●
How you can leverage any potential company
support you might have

@ben_nuttall
What does marketing mean in open source?
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Reaching new users
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Advocating for its use
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Showing how it can help
●
Sharing case studies
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Building a community
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Promoting a bigger project (e.g.
this project makes the Raspberry
Pi look more appealing)

@ben_nuttall
Examples
gpiozero
●
Python library - “zero-
boilerplate” alternative to low-
level RPi.GPIO
●
Easier for beginners, nicer
experience for advanced users
●
Intended to replace the need for
RPi.GPIO in all cases
piwheels
●
Python Package repository
●
Provides pre-compiled
packages for Raspberry Pi
●
Makes “pip install” fast on
Raspberry Pi
●
Easy to go back to the old way
if needed

@ben_nuttall
Examples
gpiozero
●
Requires a change in behaviour
●
Requires learning something
thing new
●
Lots of tutorials showing how
to do things the old way
●
Hard to measure success
piwheels
●
No change in behaviour
required
●
Users get the new way by
default
●
Works the same as before
●
Automatic collection of detailed
usage statistics

@ben_nuttall
Fundamentals
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Access to source code
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Ease of installation
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Documentation
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Choosing a sensible name
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Choosing an appropriate licence
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Sensible versioning, backwards-
compatibility & deprecation policy
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Meeting expectations

@ben_nuttall
Rome wasn’t built in a day
xkcd.com/2231

@ben_nuttall
Choosing a name
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Short, precise and descriptive - ideally obvious
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Well scoped (don’t overpromise)
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What’s available? Check PyPI/npm/etc
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Pronounceable (i.e. not kubectl)
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Easy to spell / not confused with something else
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Is there a convention? e.g. flask-X
●
Capitalisation: lowercase, hyphenated, full English?

@ben_nuttall
Bad things to hear about a project
●
“You can’t install it the normal way - you have to download the tarball
and build it from source”
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“Don’t bother asking for help - they’ll laugh at you and call you stupid”
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“Documentation? Just read the source code”
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“It’s on SourceForge” (sorry)
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“They only support Arch Linux”
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“It’s a more complicated way of doing X”
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“It’s not worth the pain”

@ben_nuttall
Good things to hear about a project
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“There’s a great community”
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“It has great documentation”
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“It’s so much easier than X”
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“It’s much faster than before”
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“It has a really nice API”
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“It’s easy to get started”
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“They accepted my pull request”
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“It’s easy to extend”

@ben_nuttall
Defining your project
●
What is your project?
– Snappy one-liner: it’s X for Y; a simple way to do X; a Python wrapper for X
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Who is it for?
– Beginners? Advanced users? Both? People using X with Y? People using X on platform Y?
●
What problem does it solve?
– Easier? Faster? Cheaper? Automates X?
●
What’s the alternative? What’s the route to change?
– How is it better than X? How to migrate from X?

@ben_nuttall
Expectations - finding the project
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For Debian/Ubuntu? Can I apt install?
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Python package? Can I pip install?
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NodeJS package? Can I npm install?
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On GitHub? github.com/org/project
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Where are the docs? readthedocs?
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Is there a website?

@ben_nuttall
GitHub repository

@ben_nuttall
Welcoming contributors
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Make it easy for someone to set
up your project for development
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Provide developer documentation
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Tests!
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Lay out your contribution
expectations
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Respond to issues & PRs
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Thank people! (even for small
contributions)

@ben_nuttall
Noting contributors
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Maintain a list of contributors
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Include small & non-code
contributions (ideas,
suggestions, finding bugs, other
help)
●
Name & thank contributors in
the changelog
●
Mention contributors in comms
(social, blog posts, etc)

@ben_nuttall
Noting contributors

@ben_nuttall
Issues & questions
●
Signpost to where you want people to go, e.g:
– Check the FAQs first
– Issues & bugs: GitHub issues (use templates!)
– Q&A: GitHub discussions / Stack Exchange / community forum

@ben_nuttall
Documentation
●
Use appropriate tools e.g. sphinx
●
Host the docs e.g. readthedocs
or custom domain
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Host multiple versions
(sphinx/readthedocs does this)
●
Mix of automated docs (from
docstrings) and written docs
●
Include diagrams & pictures (e.g.
graphviz & fritzing)

@ben_nuttall
Documentation - reference vs guidance

@ben_nuttall
The Documentation System
documentation.divio.com

@ben_nuttall
Documentation contents
●
Landing page
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How to install / upgrade
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Getting started / examples
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Concepts explained
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API / CLI reference
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Development
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Changelog
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Migration guide
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Deprecations / breaking changes

@ben_nuttall
Migration guide
●
Help people migrate their code
and introduce new concepts
●
Compare and contrast
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Cover all areas included and
highlight any gaps
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Explain benefits
●
Cover migration FAQs
●
Cover migration back if
necessary

@ben_nuttall
Escape hatch vs Ejector seat
What happens when users hit the limits of your abstraction?
●
Option 1: go down with the ship
●
Option 2: the ejector seat
●
Option 3: the escape hatch
https://anvil.works/blog/escape-hatches-and-ejector-seats

@ben_nuttall
Open discussions & roadmap
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Be open about project goals
●
Public roadmap
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Discuss decisions in public
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Issue-driven development

@ben_nuttall
Social media - Twitter
●
Personal
– Use your own account to tweet / RT about the
project
– Follow search terms (e.g. TweetDeck column)
●
Company
– Tweets & RTs about your project from a
company account could have more reach
●
Project brand
– Consider setting up an account for the project
– Twitter bot
– Use third-party services like Buffer to help

@ben_nuttall
Social media - Twitter

@ben_nuttall
Having a website
●
Could your project warrant a “home”
on the web beyond its GitHub repo,
documentation site, package page,
etc?
●
Does your project naturally have a
website as part of its purpose?
●
Does it make sense to have a landing
page pointing to downloads, docs,
source, issues, social media,
community, etc?

@ben_nuttall
Having a website
●
Is there a collection of similar projects
like SciPy or Pallets Projects?
●
Does your company have an open
source projects page?

@ben_nuttall
Blogging
●
Could you write semi-regular updates
about your project?
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Could you collate/accept community
contributions?
●
Start simple - use something like
hosted WordPress
●
Integrate into your website if/when
you get one

@ben_nuttall
Blogging
●
Is there an existing blog you could
contribute to?
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Tweet and promote the articles

@ben_nuttall
Conference talks
●
Could you give a conference talk
about your project?
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Even if the talk is not about your
project, but about another
concept using your project
●
Consider lightning talks and
local user groups too
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Promote community members
speaking about your project
●
All Things Open CFP!

@ben_nuttall
Logo
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Can you design something simple?
– Word logo with simple shapes?
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Can you do a call for a design
contribution?
– Create a GitHub issue
●
Can you ask a designer for a quote, and
raise the funds to pay it?

@ben_nuttall
Hitch a lift
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Is there a relevant email
newsletter you can submit to?
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Build a demo using another
project, see if you can blag a RT
out of it

@ben_nuttall
Make & share resources
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Documentation
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Books
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Articles
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Videos
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Live streams
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Structured courses
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Q&A
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Worked examples (PRIMM)

@ben_nuttall
Write for opensource.com!
●
Contributions welcome
●
Any topic related to open source
●
2 million readers per month
●
Your article will get more hits here than
your own blog
●
Twitter:
– @opensourceway
– @JenWike
●
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