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Using GitHub as a landing page for small source‑available tools — does this model make sense? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 day ago by mietkiewski_dev@programming.dev to c/github@programming.dev

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I’ve been experimenting with building very small personal tools to help myself stay focused. One of them is a tiny terminal‑based Pomodoro timer.

For this project I’m trying a different distribution model: it’s closed‑source in the licensing sense, but the code is source‑available. The actual download with code is on Gumroad, where I’m testing a pay‑what‑you‑want model 0$+.

In this setup, GitHub works more like a landing page / documentation hub rather than a place where the full source lives.

Since I’m still learning how to distribute tiny solo tools in a way that feels “fair” and reasonable, I’m curious how other developers see this approach:

Is using GitHub as a landing page acceptable when the code isn’t hosted there?

Does PWYW 0$+ make sense for small, simple tools?

How do you usually distribute your own micro‑projects?

For context, here’s the project I’m experimenting with:

GitHub: https://github.com/Mietkiewski/MPomidoro

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[–] daeraxa@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I personally find it weird and confusing when I see things like this. There are loads of closed source projects that use GitHub purely for issue tracking and feature requests and it just kind of feels against the ethos of it. Honestly for those projects I'm not really interested anyway if it is closed so after a quick browse in the org repos to see if I missed something, I just leave.

In your case it seems even stranger, if you wanted to have a landing page in GitHub but nothing else then why not have it as an GitHub Pages website rather than a repo?

[–] mietkiewski_dev@programming.dev 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I didn’t know GitHub Pages was a thing for this use case. I’ll look into it — it might be a better fit for future projects.

[–] daeraxa@programming.dev 1 points 4 hours ago

Well in that it serves a free website rather than just being a bare repo. Still don't think it fits exactly but its better.

[–] Kissaki@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I assume it's not against GitHub terms, but I find it inappropriate and unfitting. Smells like marketing for discoverability with no content, just forwarding. Which is a thing of course, but if you're asking me as a developer and personally, I'd prefer the project not do that. A repo as a pure landing page uses nothing of what makes a repo a repo.

If it's a developer creating their portfolio and linking their distributed projects to their developer profile, I think I can see some value in that. But in that case, all of them should be in one repo.

[–] mietkiewski_dev@programming.dev 1 points 6 hours ago

Fair point — I get where you’re coming from. I’m still experimenting with distribution, so this setup isn’t final. GitHub Pages might be a cleaner option, I’ll check it out.