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Comment by swanson | Hacker News Reader

Really like your point on OSS. Even if you don't make a whole "marketing site" - you can get a lot of mileage by considering your README as a sales page (and not just a technical document).

Here's an actual example, compare the READMEs for these open source RSS readers:

https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/blob/master/README.md

https://github.com/SSilence/selfoss/blob/master/README.md

https://github.com/swanson/stringer/blob/master/README.md

https://github.com/Athou/commafeed/blob/master/README.md

https://github.com/feedbin/feedbin/blob/master/README.md

https://github.com/gothfox/Tiny-Tiny-RSS/blob/master/README....

Which ones jump out at you? Which ones are memorable? Which do you want to install/contribute to/star?

(I'm biased because I wrote one, but I was very intentional which how the README looks and reads!)

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Not sure the point you're trying to make. I opened all of them at once and just scanned each of them and the one most appealing to me is the one with the detailed changelog and list of credits. The least appealing was the one with the superficial graphics and screenshots, which turned out to be yours. Maybe I'm biased since I don't really enjoy working on the front end, except for maybe a few games side projects (but I would never make games as a career).

>Which do you want to install/contribute to/star?

To be honest, not yours. I'm immediately suspicious of "open source" projects written by OS X/iOS users and demonstrated on said platforms. Without installing your program myself, I can't expect it to work on GNU/Linux, since all of your screenshots are taken in Safari.

Thanks for the feedback - I'm curious if you have any suggestions for how I can assure you that it will work on GNU/Linux? The second sentence of the installation instructions links to "setup instructions for a Linux-based VPS".

Just taking your screenshots from Iceweasel/Chromium instead of Safari would be an easy step. It shows that you've tried your project on a GNU/Linux platform at least once. I don't use any Webkit-based browsers, so it doesn't help me at all if you've designed your site/project to work well with Webkit.

Will take that into consideration - to be fair, the existing screenshots are from Chrome (just running on OS X).

So perhaps you should keep doing what you are doing and not get derailed by someone whose goal is not to find a good software, but is to gripe about the marginalization of Linux even when it is completely irrelevant to context.

No, I would say showing screenshots from all "supported" platforms is a good idea. The cost is very low, and preventing people from feeling marginalized is a win for you and your software.

Anecdotally, I can say that I am going to have a look at the software, and this just because the author was willing to consider us Linux users.

If you really want to broaden appeal you should do what Dropbox does on their download page – show screenshots specific to the user's OS. If your serve the images embedded into GitHub README from your own hosting, you can do that very easily. But you'll have to take all these screenshots, no way around that.

That’s great advice. Thank you!

I find the "and was made with love!" stuff really off-putting to be honest. Rest looks helpful though.

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