Community ProjectsDon't overestimate your chances of getting people interested in your project. Even the more successful projects usually consist of one, perhaps two people actually working on the code. And that is not due to a lack of need.
Brooks' Law states that the more people there are on a project, the longer the project takes. The only way around this is to split the project into parts which you get people working on, and only on. Good luck.
RecruitingThere are some things you need for standing a chance (and avoid being painfully told that you are a failure):
- If you have no established codebase, people will not join because they can see you lack experience and expect the project to fail.
- If you lack a (worked out) design, people will not join you because they can't see how your OS is more interesting than their own design.
- If your reputation doesn't precede you, especially the more experienced people will be very wary of you and lack the trust to join.
- If you don't have project management skills, the few rare people that do join will quit shortly because they are discussing stuff and do not get to code.
People that join nevertheless are usually worse programmers than the people for which this list was composed.