I’ve been experimenting with building very small personal tools to help myself stay focused. Recently I wrote a minimal terminal‑based Pomodoro timer because I was struggling to start my side projects and wanted something simple that just works.

While building it, I realized I also need to learn how to distribute small projects properly. Right now I’m trying a simple approach: closed‑source, pay‑what‑you‑want, no DRM, and users just get the right to use the tool.

Since I’m still learning how licensing, expectations and “fairness” work for tiny solo projects, I’m curious how other developers see this model. Is this a reasonable way to distribute small tools? What would you expect as a user or developer?

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

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

TL;DR: I'm not a programmer. I'm a sysadmin with a dream: a distributed forum database with no owner, no single point of failure, client-side filtering (like VLANs for content), and optional Nostr/ZeroNet/Atlas transport.

What exists: database replicated across nodes, each node chooses what to store and what filters to apply. Moderation = subscribing to trusted filters. No crypto required.

What I need: reality check, technical feasibility analysis, database schema advice, prototype devs (PHP/Go/Rust), testers.

What I offer: small budget ($100-200/mo for specific tasks), domain/hosting funding, endless gratitude.

Full article (detailed, 8000+ words, includes philosophy and use cases): https://write.as/zyhlc76pi2op3.md

Please be brutal. I can take it.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45047387

Title...

I'm kinda disgusted with Microsoft and Github has been declining into an AI-Centric hellhole, to the point my recommendations are almost exclusively AI related... And let's not forget, the new Copilot Training enabled by default (which honestly, how do you get rid of this thing, VSCode also feels intrusive with AI-First bullshittery)

I've been wondering about moving to Gitlab but.... "Finally, AI for the entire software lifecycle." is literally plastered in the landing page. So.. that feels like a no-go.

Codeberg is very decent, it's based on Forgejo so ActivityPub is also a thing (but is cross-instance contributions possible?) but it's exclusive for Source-Available and Free Projects, which, by all means, totally fine! Half of my "active" projects are for free, and are open source (does that make them FOSS even though I'm basically the only dev?)

And last but not least, Forgejo and Gitlab themselves are self-hostable, but...how expensive (price and storage) would it be to self host a Git Forge??

And maybe I'm being narrow-sighted... For FOSS projects in Github, sadly I'll have no choice but to contribute there, if that's the only place where the project resides, same for Gitlab, and Codeberg* (unless cross-instance contrib is a thing)

For now, I'm thinking of moving FOSS/OSS projects to Codeberg, but for personal projects? What are some good options?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/45214693

Also vm repo