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"Please don't use HN primarily for promotion"

Sorry but is it still a promotion if I started an open source, have absolutely no commercial benefit from it and think it may be genuinely useful and helpful for people?

It's like telling linus torvalds to not talk about Linux because its "promotion" (not comparing myself or the scale but principally its exactly like that)

There doesn't have to be commercial gain for it to be promotion. The distinction is promotion vs contribution. If you view HN as a community and all you're doing is saying "look at the thing I made" rather than actively engaging with the community as a whole, then your contribution value to the community is low.

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