Last week’s JavaOne had a separate track on open source, and there’s been a substantial number of very interesting panels, discussions and presentations. However, i felt that these talks concentrated mostly on big, well-established and very broad open-source communities. While it is perfectly understandable, the few dozens of these high-profile communities do not reflect the specific problems of a much vaster landscape of the open-source in general. Here I’m talking about literally hundreds of thousands of projects that only have a single active developer. I call it the "party of one" type of project, and these pose a number of quite significant challenges to their "owners", especially if it is done as a part time hobby. I had a number of such projects (where i am the only developer) over the last decade, and some of them are still quite active. I have written a blog series that talks about the specifics of one-man projects and how to maintain a long-term level of commitment.

• Part 1 - introduction
• Part 2 - develop
• Part 3 - maintain
• Part 4 - promote
• Part 5 - conclusion

If the terms such as steering committee, constitution, incubation and governance models do not apply to your project, take a look.