Chaotic Java

Just like with fresh businesses, the most important thing in making your framework known is ‘Location, Location, Location’. Choosing a location is not that simple: The variety is huge, the advantages and disadvantages in each are worthy of deep consideration, and a thought for future growth is required even when choosing that first ground to set roots at.

When considering a host, you need to take some qualities of the host into consideration:

• Promotion Potential Some hosts are more known than others. Some have better promotion capabilities and tools, and these are always worth examining.
• Web page Hosts might provide your framework with hosting space for a web page. The important thing to check is the size of the host, and the type of shell for configuration you’re receiving.
• Version Control The most important thing in a framework’s host is for it to actually have a version control system. However, even in that you have a choice: Between Subversion and classical CVS.
• Issue Tracking Another important feature is issue tracking, which allows you to manage with yourself, or with between other contributers and framework testers/users, the bugs and future features you and your co-developers are working on.
• Language Some hosts are meant to host only frameworks written in a specific language.
• Licenses Some hosts might limit the choice of licenses you may apply to your code. This might be considered as limitation to some, especially if you had a type of license in mind already.

I will go in further detail about the two qualities a host might offer, Promotion Potential and Web Page, and will expand about the rest in a later post to keep you readers at some suspense.

Web Page

It’s sometimes even more important for frameworks, especially those written for free-of-charge use and with an open source license, to have free host for the framework’s web pages. However, this free host does not always mean freedom in the host type you receive.

Some, like Sourceforge, will give you freedom up to the level of receiving shell access. However, limitation in size (100MB) and the relative slowness of their web pages might make some reconsider before using them.

Others, like Codehaus, the hosting is wiki-based (Usually using Atlassian’s Confluence as they provide free license for open source projects and non-profit organizations). Even though Wikis are very flexible, sometimes it is also very limiting.

Another point to check is whether the host provides statistical information about the visits to your web site. Sourceforge is a for it, even though they force you to place their logo in order for statistical information to be gathered (which in truth isn’t that bad).

Promotional Potential

Placing your framework on a projects’ host puts your framework on the map, sort of speak. Knowing where it would receive attention is important.

The more popular your host is, the more promotion it can potentially give your framework. That seems obvious; However, there is a catch: Over-populated hosts might make your project seem like a drop in the water and Sourceforge is a good example for it.

Hosts with smaller amounts of projects, usually having a tighter selection method than Sourceforge’s, have the privilege of placing your framework on the host’s home page. Examples for such could be the Apache Software Foundation or the Codehaus.

A big advantage to smaller hosts is that they provide more exposure not only to outside visitors but to the people hosting their frameworks. This kind of exposure is important; Many times frameworks in the same host start using each other, especially those with a strong community sense.

Another note about Sourceforge is their reward system for more active frameworks by placing them higher in search results and sometimes even in the monthly newsletter. Active projects are measured not only by their code commit but also by their activity in forums, issues being tracked (such as bugs and features) and the download rate of the project.

Some Conclusions

Since most frameworks aren’t mature at their first stages, I would suggest having some “incubation” time in a big, massively-populated host such as Sourceforge as these generally tend to have a more loosen system to accepting new projects. Once the framework gets into beta stages, promoting it by trying to get it into a more selective, yet more community-oriented host, is my preferable way to go.

Also, even not discussed here, using your private blog, code forums and mailing lists you have some influence in, and just word of mouth is always a good way to promote the knowledge about your framework. However, the way it reaches the general public is usually through the common people googling for what your framework should offer, so placing it in a popular place in the first place is one of the most basic things you can do.