Once you have gotten your project started, you have overcome the
most difficult hurdles in the development process of your
program. Laying a firm foundation is essential, but the
development process itself is equally important and provides
just as many opportunities for failure. In the next two
sections, I will describe running a project by discussing how to
maintain a development effort through interactions with
developers and with users. In releasing your program, your
program becomes free software. This transition is more than just
a larger user base. By releasing your program as free software,
your software becomes the free software community's software.
The direction of your software's development will be reshaped,
redirected, and fully determined by your users and, to a larger
extent, by other developers in the community. The major
difference between free software development and propriety
software development is the developer base. As the leader of a
free software project, you need to attract and keep