Why doesn’t anyone use my library?

01:45 PM - 02:10 PM on August 15, 2015, Room 704

James Robert

Audience level:

novice

Watch:

http://youtu.be/l4NLunN0rhQ

Description

When, why, and how to open source code, and how to get it into real-world use. Lessons learned working on Pydub (audio for humans, a la requests). It's grown to incorporate contributions from around the world, over 1000 stars on GitHub and the nicest API you'll find this side of the DAC.

Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/jiaaro/why-doesnt-anyone-use-my-library

Abstract

Stories from Pydub's history, good ideas I've had along the way, and life lessons I've learned from the experience. Mainly patience.

I never would have thought I'd end up contributing to PyPy or finding questions (and answers!) about my project on Stack Overflow, but here we are!

I originally came to open source software young and excited, but I was disappointed when nobody used my projects. I think (hope) I've learned a few things about which Open Source projects get used and why, and also about what creators can do to help the process along.