Griffon Year One
"Build it and they will come" is probably one of the biggest lies you could tell yourself when it comes to open source. In this arena, the adage should really be, "Build it, market the sh@t out of it, engage and build a community, and they MAY come." So many cool projects have withered on the vine because the creators didn't properly pimp and promote them. That's my major takeaway from Griffon's first year: soft skills like giving presentations, blogging, and being adequately responsive to bug reports/questions are really important.
In one year's time, we've gained a couple core committers, a boatload of plugins, seen Griffon presentations take place in Austrailia, Europe, and all across North America, and decent IDE support. And we haven't reached 1.0 yet!
Year two is already looking to be really exciting. There are a bunch of presentations this fall and Griffon in Action drops in March.