How to evaluate an open source project with joining in mind

Not a good idea, in my mind. None of the OSS programmers I know would respond to such a bounty.

So, what does incentivize people? According to Dan Pink people are motivated by:

• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Purpose

Then to attract good programmers, find a way to provide some or all of those items.

A second approach that can be done concurrently with the first is to display a home page that tracks the progress of the project, showing the status of each of the functions along with the person who provided the function that first passed the unit tests (you do have tests, right?).

Finally, it's been my experience that a compelling project doesn't need much help in attracting contributors. Take a look at what you are doing and if you are having a hard time attracting and keeping programmers to work on it, think about what that is telling you about the usefulness of your project.

Since you can't compete on price, then compete on all of the other selling points that the software has:

• features
• quality
• effectiveness
• integration with other software
• service
• support
• direct selling

Basically, you do what every other company does when they're in price competition: keep pace, or change the game.