To achieve this, many aspects have to be considered of which
I want to outline two at this occasion:
- Add screenshots on the homepage (in case your tool has a GUI).
People like to get a visual impression on what they will
get when going to download and install a software.
Note: Looking at screenshots takes a few seconds while
download and installation takes considerably more time.
- Offer anonymous download.
With offering Free Software, a mandatory registration for
download will decrease the number of try-outs.
People are reluctant either to spend additional
time or to give away personal details in order to give the
software a try.
The arguments that second mandatory registration I've heard so
far are (a) to track users and send them update information and
(b) that people registering express a 'real' interest rather than
a quick try-out-and-drop-after-incomplete-evaluation.
Ad (a): If people are interested in a software or project, they
will subscribe to corresponding mailing list on their own.
You will have less people on such a list, but more who
are really interested.
Ad (b): You will loose those reluctant to spend additional
time or relucatant to provide personal data who might
otherways come to the conclusion that they like your project.
In case your project gets very popular, sooner or later
copies will be available from other sites anyway.
- Apply a common license
In the past, a set of Free Software licenses has been developed
that cover all sensible legal variations on how to distribute
a Free Software.
With choosing another than one of the well known ones, you will
irritate potential users and contributors.
Your own license text is less reviewed than standard
licenses or even written by a legal department not familiar with
Free Software at all.
An unclear or hard-to-interpret license makes it less
attractive to contribute to or use the Free Software.
David Wheeler wrote an
essay:
"Make Your Open Source Software GPL-Compatible. Or Else."
which details this issue a bit more and provides some numbers.
- Maintain a single Copyright holder
Many projects have developers joining the project for some specific
reason and leaving it again. If those temporary developers leave
their copyright on their parts of the code, this could lead
to problems in the "legal maintainability" of the project.
In some cases, e.g. license changes, you need to have the OK from
all developers or you have to drop their code contributions.
This can become arbitrary complicated if you think of invalid email
addresses (the only contact you usually have) or developers that died
meanwhile.
One example is the story about the license change of Mozilla.
With tremendous efford and quite some luck they managed to get
confirmation of all the developers.
So, you should take to maintain a single copyright holder.
How this is done in legal terms differs a bit on where you are located
(there are differences regarding this for example between USA
and Europe).
2004/10/05
