Ask HN: What's the best (non-spammy) way to promote an open source tool? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's the best (non-spammy) way to promote an open source tool?

38 pointszevir18 comments

I have an open source CLI tool for provisioning preview environments. I want to get it in front of relevant developers. What are the most effective methods for doing this? Thank you!

View on HN

Share it on relevant subreddits and make a gif out how to use it with https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs

Projects with gifs on reddit get more attention.

Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/z0zm8x/oc_nap_a_c...

I agree with this one. I have a niche open source project (ntfy) that is somewhat popular in its space, and my promotion so far has been almost exclusively in the r/selfhosted subreddit. It is very very tricky to find a subreddit that will even accept self-promotion, though, and you will always walk the line.

My strategy has always been to be humble, be kind, respect the subreddit rules, and only promote if you have something actually valuable to share (new features, relevant things). And then only one per month or so.

And, as OC said, posts with screenshots or GIFs do so much better.

I'm a Ntfy user and I really love this tool! Thank you so much for your work

> Projects with gifs on reddit get more attention.

Corroborates my experience, that is what I did to successfully get some attention for Lusift (https://github.com/lusift/lusift).

Example: https://old.reddit.com/r/vuejs/comments/wpuohd/i_created_a_j...

That's very meta. Explaining how to promote open source software by promoting some open source software. I like it

Share it here. Seriously, prepare a Show HN post and give enough info on what it is and why people might want to use it.

There are "awesome" lists on github, get in touch with maintainers

turns out most of these repositories have contribution guidelines. you can create a PR on your own.

FWIW I recently started listing these awesome lists to post your OSS project on GitHub. [1]

hope it helps!

[1] https://github.com/fmerian/awesome-developer-first-directori...

Thank you!!!

https://console.dev/tools/

I find a lot of tools from their newsletter.

I wish freshmeat was still a thing! Is there a replacement?

+1 for this.

Still fondly remember using the venerable freshmeat website to window shopping online for open source software.

Make a website showing several realistic scenarios of it doing helpful things, and document it well.

Be wary asking this. People may state how they prefer to be contacted / promoted to, but this may not align with what is actually effective.

Good projects don't need promotion. Unless you're looking to monetize it, surely the reward is creating the solution you needed?

Yes, but where would the world be if people didn't share things with each other?

But feedback is important, and we'd love to get it to more relevant people who can benefit from it!

Good projects need to be known. As a developer, you still come across new tools that you wish you knew earlier.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com