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Ask HN: How do you grow OSS projects?

4•tarasyarema•7h ago
Hey there, founder of a startup here which main product is an oss project.

We've been trying to grow the project for months, and it's lowkey growing in stars and adoption. But it's linear.

We see other projects do big jumps and hit thousands of stars in days. Going viral in HN, X, etc.

We believe that real adoption might not come from one day to another, and the teams using us are happy and want to use us more.

Now, I hate to spam in places like hn or other forums, but what strategies have you found working? Specially in the realm of AI.

Obviously if you ask ai, it's always: launch in HN, PH, etc, etc.

We post a lot on x, linkedin and such, but would love to push the adoption curve up.

Any help welcome!

Cheers,

Won't spam my project here, if you want to check it it's on gh -> desplega-ai/agent-swarm

Comments

prologic•7h ago
When you figure this out, please let me know!
tarasyarema•7h ago
:D I guess it's like asking "how to get rich"
axegon_•6h ago
I never really figured that one out but I never really tried to be honest. Mostly because my motivation has always been to fix my problem, I never really cared who else was using it or not. I've only received a handful of PR's over the years across all my projects. I suspect I'll never get any new ones since I got fed up with github and moved to codeberg, which (to my delight) is like kryptonite for sloppers.
codingdave•2h ago
This is the same answer as growing a for-profit product. You need to stop spraying random marketing attempts, and look deeper at who uses it today, and why. What problem does it solve for them? Who else has that problem, and where does that audience actually spend time - both IRL and online. Then you craft a message that clearly and concisely show them that you understand their problem and have a solution available, and you share that message in the specific locations that your specific audience knows and trusts.
boricj•45m ago
I've built a niche Ghidra extension that managed to form a userbase. Haven't put much effort into publicizing it, it just kinda snowballed on its own through word-of-mouth. In fact, I keep stumbling into Discord forums where I then learn that I had users there that I've never heard about before.

Word-of-mouth happens when someone who has a need finds your project, uses it and likes it so much they talk about it to other potential users. It's effectively a chain reaction and the way to leverage it is to make something people want to use.

caranlharris•29m ago
Are people spamming projects here and PH? that's concerning and yes I am new!

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