What to do to keep the tiny Open Source project active and sustainable?

Question

A few months ago, I coded a tiny tool that we need to work for a specific task, and I decided to share it with CodePlex. It is written in C #, and frankly, it doesn’t matter, but since this is the first project I have ever created from scratch in this language and with the goal of opening it from the very beginning, it ends up being emotionally connected with it I mean, you want people to really participate, whether it's criticism, a bug report, or whatever you have.

So my question is: what can I do to really encourage participation, stimulate curiosity, or just get more feedback about it?

By the way, this is the project I'm talking about: http://www.codeplex.com/winxmlcook/

Answer 1

I know that I sound like a broken record constantly publishing this book, but almost everything you ever needed to know about starting an open source project is here . In particular, pay attention to these two chapters:

• Beginning of work
• Volunteer management

Answer 2

You should:

• Contribute to this if you think it will be relevant (forums, mailing lists, etc.). Try not to spam - this will create a backlash.
• continue to provide updates to create the look of an active project until more people pick it up.
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, -;)

Answer 3

First you need to acquire users by selling the tool. If you have users, this means that you will begin to receive feedback.

One thing I noticed is a description of your project, which does not sell the project well. For example, enter “winxmlcook” into Google, what is displayed is a description of your project, but hardly anyone clicks on it.