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I would actually recommend against starting by launching your project.

Havoc Pennington (GNOME guy) wrote "Working on Free Software" in 1999 to explain why. In my opinion every word there is still valid today, with possible exception of CVS.

http://ometer.com/hacking.html

And you see, it was called "free software" back then, not "open source project". Sigh.

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Except when you're a buck novice it can be very intimidating and difficult to make a contribution among people who know WAY more than you. It's unfortunately very common for expert programmers to treat novices with disdain, and this can be extremely discouraging.

I think there's a lot to be said for practicing your skills on your own so that you have a reasonable level of practice before trying to contribute to other projects.

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