Top 10 reasons for open source success - Is the Hippo up to the task?

In real life, a Hippo is a fairly quick animal. It can run up to 25 mph (40 km/h). I even heard rumors of people saying the animal passed at a striking 30mph! That's an amazing pace. Even more so if you realize they weigh around 4,000 lb (1.800 kg). Unbelievable.

A blogging Hippo however isn't always that fast. Almost two months ago thechangelog posted a blog summing up the top 10 reasons why an open source project is not used. A couple of days later, Stefane Fermigier of Nuxeo ECM posted a reply asking "How does Nuxeo stack up?". As for the Hippo, well... unlike the real animal. This Hippo runs a little late. You're lucky you didn't really wait for him. Crossing the finish line 50 days behind to finally form a response. Weighing each word carefully with his 4,000 lb of body weight. So today is the day that the Hippo finally hopes to cross the finish line.

It seems like Nuxeo did stack up to all the questions and maybe therefor is used and supported by an engaged community of developers. Is Hippo up to the same task? You'll soon find out. But before we start. Why don't we give our little guy a cheer? Hurray. Hippo. Hurray.

The ten questions:

1. You don’t have a friggin’ Readme
All info can be found at our project's website. It includes installation instructions, links to register on mailingslists, our bugtracking system, which developers contribute to the source code and it describes which other open source projects have been used. Hippo likes to repay the open source communities by participating in these projects. Either by contributing code or helping other developers on mailinglists. Since our external source code mostly relies on projects from the Apache software foundation, Hippo likes to sponsor and participate at their conferences.

2. You don’t include tests, specs, features, examples
We use Hudson and Sonar to continuously monitor the projects.

The features and possibilities are best described at our company website: www.onehippo.com. Each plugin for Hippo CMS usually contains an example and documentation. A showcase demo website can be found here . It features a website for a non-existing sustainable company called Hippo Go Green. We tried to make a showcase project combining widely used plugins while keeping the demo simple enough for people to understand. If you're missing features or have any other suggestions, I would surely appreciate your feedback. You can mail me directly (mdotbrandatonehippodotcom) or add a comment on this blog.

3. You have no project home page
http://www.onehippo.org.

4. You need design help
For new features we often make a couple of prototypes and organize usability testing during the whole process. This generally results in a user interface that is both very user friendly and cool :)

If you want to keep track of the latest and greatest interaction designs or even participate now and then to make the product better? Great! You can start by reading Rolf van der Steen's blog and participate in his experiments.

5. You don’t have a domain name
onehippo.com and onehippo.org

6. You don’t have a Twitter Account
We have one account for all Hippo related twittering: http://twitter.com/#!/OneHippo. Our blogs, like this one, can be found on planet.onehippo.org/.

7. Your licensing is unclear
That's an insult ;) We have a license.txt in the svn code repository of each project. A general description can be found on our www.onehippo.org.

So how do we make money? Check out "what we sell" on www.onehippo.com.

8. You don’t reach out to me
We often organize webinars; always announced on our company website and free to join. Of course we twitter about them as well. We have a user group on linkedin. Video's can be found here including one that will help you start developing in no time. The best responses for (technical) questions by developers can be found on our mailing lists / forum. You'll generally receive great responses if you're new or found a difficult problem to solve. If you want us to invest more time to help you succeed? We offer guaranteed response times and a personal touch through our support subscriptions. We have one that fits in any situation.

9. You don’t speak about your project at conferences and meetups
Sure we do. Why don't you join our get togethers? We regularly organize them and we're announcing one again soon. Just sign up ;) Next week we're at the Gartner summit in LA. Feel free to visit us at our stand.

If you're interested in having a meetup near you? Ping us on twitter!

10. You didn’t submit it to The Changelog
Your slogan reads: "Open source moves fast, keep up". Okay, from a blogging perspective we're clearly not up to that task yet. But I'm pinging you right about now.

Hurray!