Ask HN: How do you know if there's a market/need for an OSS project?

Hi HNers, I've started working on an open source Applicant tracking system and, seeing the volume of work needed, I started to have some second thoughts if there's actually a need for something like this.

Right now there's just one open source ATS that got a bit of negative feedback because it's licensing and security issues.

So, my question is: How do you know if there's a need for a OSS project? Do you treat it just like a commercial project and do the market research before actually starting to work on it?

Sadly, I don't have any connections on the industry which makes things a lot harder.