Open source projects that do not provide an easy-to-find stable build will find usage low.
“The ant-ogg open source library was designed to play a tune when the ANT build completed. The project had been going for many years and was technically a great solution - even a candidate for inclusion in mainstream ant project. However to use it at all, a developer had to follow a complex process:
become a member of the CVS project by registering
check out a copy of the source
work out how to build it with a specific classpath
manually copy the resulting .jar into the ant/lib folder.
At least it had a build.xml file, but the manual processes required to use it meant the barrier for acceptance was too high.
The competing open source project ant-mp3 was technically deficient, but it provided a stable .jar for easy download via its homepage. The ant-mp3 jar team increasingly won prestige and donations, had complimentary articles written about them, got invited to conventions and were given Sun Microsystems caps to keep. To keep!!”
