Ask HN: How do I go about open sourcing a project?

[jeremyt]

I've been working on a startup idea for over a year, and I have a fully functional prototype. I've decided that I don't want to pursue the idea, but I don't want all of my work to go down the drain. I do mentoring for startups often and find that there is a lot of reinventing the wheel when it comes to getting an MVP going. It seems that the vast majority of the code that I've written could be repurposed for almost any other web-based startup in a couple weeks. How do I find out whether there's any demand for this and if so are there any guides to properly open sourcing a project? I don't want to just dump the code out into the ether.

[BillBohan]

I'm no expert on this and have not yet done it but from what I've seen people used to create a project on SourceForge until it fell into disfavor and now they are putting it on GitHub.

I also have a project which I would like to open source and have been debating where I should put it. It is a processor design so I also have the option of putting it on OpenCores.

I would be interested in hearing recommendations about where I should put it.

[fiedzia]

If you don't have people asking you for source, most likely there is no demand, end of story. Why would anyone work repurposing untested code instead of creating what they need? Sure, people reinvent the wheel, but they know its the wheel that suits them.

[jeremyt]

Nobody knows about what I have. It's not public, and the product never went out of private beta.