I noticed today that POP Forums hit its 2,500th download today, since making it an open source app on CodePlex. It took me about 10 months from the first preview version to the final, and then I went another 8 months before updating it again. Now I'm more into a rhythm of trying to update it. The ironic part is that I'm not really using it myself right now, though getting it to a particularly useful state is part of the plan for my own use, on CoasterBuzz and what not.
The exciting part for me is how interested people have become lately. When I opened it up for translation, I immediately found people to do a few more languages. It now works in English, Spanish, German and Dutch. I've also had people file a few bug reports, and I've got those fixed. I haven't truly opened up, hosting the source control up there, but that hasn't stopped people from jumping in and getting the source code at release points.
I'm really excited about the next thing, which I can't talk about yet because it aligns with Microsoft stuff that they were good enough to share with me. I will say that I hope to have the app in a feature area that most forums don't currently do.
Since I'm not writing code in a day job capacity at the moment, I've been really energized to work on this project. It won't make me any money (well, technically ad revenue on my sites once I'm using it), but it's very satisfying to work on something that a lot of people get value out of. I'm starting to come to peace with the idea that this thing has in many ways defined my developer career for more than a decade, and that's OK. And hey, I even got a free ReSharper license for maintaining an open source project!
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