Ask HN: How do you show your free software projects to the world?

3 points by MaxwellJensen 14 days ago | 8 comments

Hello.

As in the title, how do you show your free (as in freedom) software projects to the world? I like creating useful niche tools for my personal workflow in Linux, but often these things scale to something more than just simple things for my use. Adding sophisticated interfaces to CLI tools through relatively simple means, like cobra in Go, is a compelling idea. There are many frameworks to make fully-featured CLI tools easily and quickly. I feel like these tools could be beneficial and interesting to the public, but these tools have to be visible first to be tried.

However, the websites for discussing software seem to be pretty much just Hacker News and Reddit. Subreddits have a blanket ban on self-promotion, even if it is free software. Show HN looked like an option, but apparently new accounts cannot post on it.

I have heard some suggestions like Dev.to, a very dead website, and afterwards even more dead websites.

Is there anything left?

geordee 14 days ago |

https://terminaltrove.com ?

MaxwellJensen 14 days ago | |

I actually did take a look at this before, but I assumed it was for already-pro and already-popular projects. However, after taking a look again and after having exhausted all the options, I can see there's a few projects there that have only a handful stars on GitHub. Maybe I should try submitting my project to the admin.

david927 14 days ago |

On the second Sunday of every month, there's an "Ask HN: What are you working on?" post. Feel free to show your projects there!

andrewfromx 14 days ago |

ask yourself the tough question: why am I trying to make a brand new repo and get people to look at that vs. contributing to an existing repo that already has momentum?

https://ossinsight.io/

And there are tiers within all the repos there. You can find small niche ones and make PRs with your ideas. Much more likely to get use.

MaxwellJensen 14 days ago | |

Of course. Like most people, I am inclined to first look through GitHub or other places to see if someone already has a solution for the problem I am trying to solve. I am not too keen on reinventing the wheel. The stuff that I am talking about is indeed something that nobody has made before, at least publicly and as free software. And, to be clear, stuff that is more complicated than stitching three existing programs together with a 12-line Bash script.

This is a cool website, though. I bookmarked it, although I haven't encountered a situation yet where I felt like I could make a PR within my technical skill that meaningfully improves the free software on my computer for everyone.

andrewfromx 13 days ago | | |

this gave me an idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48010902

what do you think? If this site helped you find exactly the repo where you could jump in and contribute would that like solve the itch you are trying to scratch?

blinkbat 14 days ago |

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