Small survey: What makes a good OS community?

For a short article series about Opens Source communities on TXPMag, i like to ask you:

What makes an open source community a ’good’ community for you?

Obviously a well organized forum is a precondition to build up a community but ahead that, what are your expectations of a well driven open source community?

First, leave aside the fact that I would not usually expect an open source community to be good. If I did have a preconception that something was good, then the following would be things that would make me agree with the labels "well driven" and "good", in no particular order:

* Additional code being generated and supported by people not directly involved in the project.
* People who *are* directly involved in the project floating around the support area.
* A regularly updated bug tracker.
* Feature requests that are seriously considered.
* Users with a wide variety of setups and needs reporting bugs that would not otherwise have been spotted.
* Bugs being fixed.
* Latest released version actually installable without reference to a list of known issues.
* Inexplicable compulsion to check forum regularly.

Hi Alex

You already know my answer to that and I won’t spoil txpmag readers by answering this just yet

<teaser>They’ll get that in due time </teaser>

Quote from: davidm at Nov 22, 2006, 10:27 AM

<teaser>They’ll get that in due time </teaser>

Now you’ve just made me super curious.

hint, hint, Patrick

Hi Patrick

David refers to an interview i took with him. Along with the interview I like to see what OS community members regard to have an impact on a ’good’ OS community. I did post my small survey over at txp forum too and will on 2, 3 other OS communities as well.
It´s just a small survey.

So what would you answer??

egos checked at the door... an openness to ideas, feature requests, criticisms, and suggestions

passion for the project, from the developers as well as the users... but not to the point where it becomes blinding

useable information... without it, especially the basics, you’ll either turn people away as they can’t figure out how to do anything with the great masterpiece being created, or they’ll bog down the community with the same "how do I do this" type questions of the most basic level

interaction and accessibility... core developers, founders, users, outside developers

accountability and dedication to quality... all too often it seems all too easy to pull the "well it’s OS, so it isn’t costing you anything" card to justify an short fall in the community or to excuse poor coding, etc. This goes beyond just the quality of the software and affects the entire community. Once this becomes acceptable, it will erode the foundation and lead to a mediocre product, experience, and a community that no longer cares.

• Open and Accessible Leadership with an ear on community
• Transparency in development and direction
• Feature Requests that are taken seriously
• Active and open community whcih welcomes new commers. I actually think this is number one for me. New blood keeps projects fresh
• Passion

I also could not agree more with Identity regarding the "where’s the patch?" answers to requests. It’s just alienating.

David and Alex might notice some of these missing in the community I am more active in. Luckily it makes up in others.

Quote from: hakjoon at Nov 22, 2006, 07:39 PM

• Transparency in development and direction

Holy crap... I don’t think this can be stressed enough. This is one thing (one of many things) that this community should receive an award for!!!
If you know where a project wants to go, and where they are right now, it gives a feeling of honesty that really makes you feel connected to something. not like your real family (LOL)... like the family you would want to have!

-sD-
Dr. Scotty Delicious, Scientist.

An interresting read on the web about this :
http://feather.planetapache.org/2005/10/26/what-constitutes-a-good-open-source-projectfrom-a-users-perspective/