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Ask HN: How large should a project be before open sourcing it?
1 point by vargas84 on April 15, 2014 | hide | past | favorite
I recently made the jump from finance to computer science and I am loving it - I've been trying to build as many small projects as possible in order to learn as quickly as possible. I think one project in particular, findhn.firebaseapp.com, actually has the potential to be useful to people so I would like to open source it. That way, I could hopefully find people to work with, continue to learn, and collaboratively make the project better.

However, the project is really tiny, I am pretty inexperienced, and it would be a significant commitment to anyone that might decide to contribute. With these factors in mind, should I go ahead and open source it? Is there a certain size/popularity level a project should be before open sourcing it? Should the maintainer have a certain experience level? I am confident in my ability to learn quickly but I don't really know what I'd be getting myself into. What kind of a commitment (time or otherwise) is it really to maintain a small open source project? I'd love to hear any personal stories on the matter.

Alternatively, I'm thinking that I could find a more established OS project to learn from first or find someone with a bit more experience to kind of show me the ropes with this project. Advice?



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