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Ask HN: According to your experiences, best way to promote an opensource project
3 points by open-source 1656 days ago
According to your experiences, what is the best way, sites etc to make an open source project known?
1 comments

I saw a guy freaking out on youtube the other day about his new-ish PHP framework, pleading for github stars, "cause that's the only way _they_ can't ignore us".

His target was 100 stars, and when I checked, the project was up to 200+ stars.

Thanks, so one of a valid way is to made a video on youtube that explain the project, right?
i think so.

however, my full meaning probably did not come across in my comment.

while that particular project's author did promote his own software, and criticize other software -- both fair and fine -- his video was _really_ an emotional appeal to give his project a github star based on anti-establishment sentiment or similar.

i.e. it was essentially dishonest, in my opinion.

so, that said, most/all advertising/propaganda is dishonest, in my opinion, and i don't know that we need near purity, but that's my general take -- if you are appealing to peoples' emotions, like a despot or dictator would, and leaning on/regurgitating populist meaningless slogans, then what you are _really_ offering is probably shit -- worthless -- or worse.

so i think videos and examples and MVPs and other things are fine and great -- but for the style and substance of what those things offer, i would prefer to see honesty and rationality and calm discussion and things like that -- not fake diatribes against invisible enemies.

and i think it's ok/fine/good to entertain, and be emotional, and all that -- but i prefer honesty.

so, if you like Chicago-style pizza, you could say, "Hey, our pizza will actually fill you up!"

this is a good/valid argument, imo, and it is emotional.

or you could say, "New York-style pizza is _shit_ because the _people_ are shit because they _hate_ Chicago pizza!"

this is a bad/invalid argument, imo -- it relies on harmful/destructive deceit, and emotion, and in this case, in part because the argument does not make any sense, the argument has to be evil, so that the emotion of the argument overpowers the substance of the argument (none).

wow, thank you very much i agree with you!