TL;DR: has been done. It can use some refining, but you're going to have to be the person to either refine it or wish for it.
Specifically for Murmur, but also generally speaking.
Many things have already been tried, and resulted in the current participation level. There is little that can be done, practically speaking, to advance interest, and that is a fact that you will have to either accept or work to change. This requires work on your part, not just posting in a forum and insisting you're right.
Yes, a website update might help. That has been discussed, and is in progress. Unless you can do it, you can sit back and wait. There are threads dedicated to this and it has gone nowhere. Maybe it's in progress, but it hasn't happened, so nowhere as of yet.
Yes, updates might help. If someone were to develop, the best source is the subversion commit log. In the past, I've tried to summarize this. The audience was appreciative, but it added no developers that I'm aware of. The TODO list is "Find something that doesn't work, join IRC and talk about it, and then either fix it or help the guy that's fixing it." People fumbling for work are of little use. You may argue, but an operating system is such a huge thing, if someone has no idea where to jump in, they probably can't help. I have seen people make small suggestions, submit a few patches, and get developer status. Cameron Gutman happens to be someone I saw join the project and eventually take a leading role in a specific area, networking. At first, I did not trust his commits, because I wasn't reading the code, only the diffs. Either he got more comfortable, or got more accustomed to ReactOS, and he was obviously competent in very shot time. He got a branch, proved his worth, and got trunk access. I'm not trying to single him out, he's just the first person to come to mind who is a current developer who wasn't here when I started watching. Most people went through this, if not all. If you want to commit code, you have to prove yourself. Someone who has that fight in them will find somewhere to fit in. They are not going to follow some TODO list. If you think a TODO list is going to make people suddenly start to submit patches, you are delusional. A developer needs to be a user, as I've said, and see what's wrong. I will add a paragraph later to further hammer this point into your brain.
I found ReactOS through some advertising, so obviously it existed and worked. After this post maybe you will reconsider its effectiveness, but I no longer care. Slashdot had some information, and I dismissed it, but later found it while searching for something else. I checked it out, and it was interesting to me. But there is little to advertise. Slashdot has covered it, but it could use another story when a breakthrough is reached. KDB or the recent networking improvements would be a great benchmark to cover. Anyone can submit a story to slashdot, if you think you can put something together that's interesting enough go for it. The most recent thing I found was the beginning of ARWINSS, rather poorly summarized and the comments were full of confusion. There are references in threads devoted to the death of Windows XP, some "alternative OS" threads, and random updates. Yes, it has made slashdot for a number of years. I've never been to Reddit, but have at it.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/01/18 ... e-Infusion
Recruiting: Please help our operating system that doesn't work yet. It copies Windows. No it doesn't add anything, and no you can't use the leaked windows source code as a reference. Most developers who have interest in Windows and open source have probably seen the leaked code. A few otherwise qualified people who post on these forums have seen it. For that reason, they do not post technical details. Yes, I know who some of them are, and no I won't name names unless I see something amiss, and only then just to Aleksey so he can deal with it, and no I haven't had to do that. GSoC is the single most attractive recruiting point, and ReactOS has been participating as much as possible. It goes to students, and the projects are available to other tech oriented people who might want to contribute.
I hate to be a downer, but IT HAS BEEN DONE. What you are suggesting has been done, to the best of anyone's ability. If there is more to do, this community is going to need some more specifics. Some people are suggesting that core ReactOS project people get together and do the work. They are already doing work, and already doing most of what has been suggested. Some updates could help, but only marginally.
If you want the work to be done, you are going to have to assume the role. Label yourself the PR guy, go to the IRC meetings, get your agenda on the official agenda, and talk. If you are asking for things and not doing the work, you are no different from a developer watching the project and not contributing code (i.e. me). I have really good reasons for not contributing code, and I try to support the people who do as much as possible in stead. "Contact me" is not acceptable. I hope I don't have to repeat this, but I don't represent this project. But as a member of the community, this reads as something passive, where you push responsibility on to someone else. I have ideas, you say, but no one asks me. I'm not on the agenda even though in my mind this is important, you think. People are doing work, and if there is more work to do you need to step up and do it.
Asking the project to recruit more people, while not doing it yourself, is the single most selfish thing I have seen in these forums in my time here. You want other people to ask other people to do work so that this project, which is important to you, develops faster? Take a second if you are offended, and consider whether that, objectively, applies to you. Do you know how Linux developed? Linus wrote the code, and he released it, and people contributed because they thought it was a good idea. And because it was just the kernel, it developed faster. People with a vested interest, the GNU foundation used Linux as a core until Hurd was ready (it still isn't). Without GNU, Linux would be a hobbyist project with little reason to exist other than Unix is expensive. ReactOS has to be a whole operating system - kernel, usermode, utilities, base drivers. It's a huge project. What's my point with this ramble? Enough people found it worthwhile that they contributed. If you are on the non-contributing side, sit back and watch what happens. If you want to contribute, find something you're good at and jump in. I want to do this, I want a voice in the monthly meeting, I want to control this part of this bit.
What happens on the forums? Fuck-all, that's what. Lots of talk, lots of nothing going nowhere. Do, or do not, there is no try. I'm mildly inebriated and obviously irritated by this whole topic, but this is the summary of what I've been thinking for the past 2 months or so about many of these forum posts. So tate it as you will.
Here's the paragraph I promised above, I bet you forgot. I've made several open source tools under many names, and every time it was filling a gap that either didn't exist or didn't turn up in searches. Most recently I picked up a Java application. I've never done Java before, but I figured it can't be that different from C++, JavaScript, C#, or any other curly brace / semicolon languages. I didn't ask for help, I just forked some code that hadn't been updated in about 2 years and started posting updates. I'm fixing parts that are important to me, and as users notice I'm changing things they report issues and I consider fixing those if I can. Often, I can fix those things quicker than what I want to fix, so I commit something in half an hour or an hour and it's fixed. The point is, it's for me. I write things for me, because it benefits me. If it helps someone else, great, I feel good when I go to sleep. But if it benefits me, I feel better the next day when I use it and it works better, and every day I use it thereafter. You don't have to be a developer to own something, but you do have to have a reason for doing it. You need a feeling of ownership, of passion. There is no way to give that to developers, they need to develop it themselves. And the only thing the ReactOS community can do is get the name out in as many ways as possible and hope someone bites the hook. You specifically cannot talk the project coordinators into magically coming up with people who want to write code for a Windows clone, who haven't seen the leaked source code, who aren't under some contract giving their employer rights to the code they write during their employment, who have time to learn operating system level code. Keep trying, someone might join and you can take credit for it, but it won't be because of you. It will be because someone wanted, truly and objectively, for that part to work or work better.
I don't represent the project, I only post here occasionally.